Can – or should – the charcoal trade be regulated?

A dispatch from Kenya this morning made me wonder if efforts to ban the charcoal trade in various African countries is at all effective. Can it be enforced? Who suffers? Has this strategy yielded results somewhere? I don’t know.

What is clear is that the pace of decimation of African forests for charcoal and woodfuel is rapidly reaching crisis point in various countries — Uganda, Malawi, parts of Kenya and Tanzania.

Excerpts from news dispatches help paint a picture.

From the article mentioned earlier, reported by Wildlife Direct:

“According to  Elias Kimaru of the Kwale landscape project of the WWF in the area more than 3,000 bags of charcoal are getting out of the area on daily basis to supply Mombasa and Nairobi. “It is also believed that some charcoal is being exported to Middle East.” Kimaru told WildlifeDirect. Is African charcoal really being exported to the Middle East? Does anyone know?

“Most charcoal bags weigh 50 kgs (heavy charcoal from indigenous trees). Probably hardwood. “Taking the rate of conversion from wood to charcoal to be 10%, we are talking of more than 1500 tonnes of woods is being converted from trees to charcoal daily”, adds Kimaru Is there a formula to convert this to standing trees? I realize there is no “standard” tree but perhaps there exists one for actuary purposes.

“According to Kimaru, most of these trees are harvested from private ranches and county council land (unprotected public land).” Although not directly related, the ongoing battle between settlers of the Mau forest and the government’s decision to evict them comes to mind.

From an IPS news service article:

“The World Bank estimates that one million tonnes of charcoal are consumed in Tanzania each year, roughly half of this in the capital, Dar es Salaam. Juma is part of a small business collective whose members put their money together to purchase charcoal – often illegally produced – by suppliers far outside Dar es Salaam.

“Press reports on illegal timber exports and growing awareness of deforestation led government to impose a total ban on charcoal in 2006. A March 2009 study of charcoal use in Tanzania by the World Bank says the ban’s only impact was to deprive the government of revenue from licensing production while brisk trade carried on illegally. It sounds like the WB is not too keen on charcoal bans. Prices for charcoal went up – and stayed up – as did corruption of officials.

“The ban lasted only two weeks.

“The goverment’s search for more effective action is complicated because responsibility falls between various ministries. Policies on better management of forests have been put in place; taxes on gas and the cylinders it’s sold in have been lifted, with limited effect.

“The World Bank study’s recommendations begin with improving how government taxes on charcoal are collected. The authors call for fees to be collected as the fuel is transported, instead of attempting to license tens of thousands of small producers on-site; more of this revenue should be left at the district level, where it should be spent on reducing forest degradation through community-based management and training charcoal producers on more efficient techniques.

“At the other end of the chain, more efficient stoves would reduce demand while saving poor households money; and affordable alternatives to charcoal, such as ethanol gels or briquettes pressed out waste materials like sawdust should be supported.

“The failure of the ban illustrates how any policy combination will have to be thought through with care. The charcoal industry generates an estimated 650 million dollars a year, employing hundreds of thousands of people, as producers, transporters, artisans who manufacture charcoal stoves, and retailers like the Jumas.”

And finally this, from our friend Emmanuel de Merode, Chief Warden of Virunga National Park in the DRC.

“Follow the trail of charcoal,” Emmanuel de Merode had said at the WildlifeDirect office. “Charcoal is the biggest threat to the park.”

Charcoal, as we discover over the next few days, is the main source of energy, and evil, in North Kivu. Charcoal is used by 98 percent of the households for cooking, boiling water to make it potable, and also for heat. In the city of Goma, a constant pall of charcoal smoke smudges out the sun and makes the rough streets, rumpled with hardened lava from the 2002 eruption of Nyiragongo, appear to be pathways to hell.

Hardwood charcoal is the economic prize in the DRC and it comes from old growth hard wood trees found within Virunga National Park — home to half the world’s population of mountain gorillas.

A sack of charcoal sells for $25 on average. Doing the math De Merode estimates that in 2006, when gorilla tourism brought in less than $300,000, the Virunga charcoal industry was worth more than $30 million.

It is estimated that at the rate that charcoal is harvested from the park, the entire southern portion of the park will be gone in ten years. An area considered to be perhaps the most biologically diverse and best of its kind, may soon vanish.

Aware of these facts, and the local implications, neighboring Rwanda has banished the internal production of charcoal. However, this approach does nothing to mitigate Rwanda’s own internal demand for the product. They just buy it from the Congolese.