The Forest Sector in the Congo Basin countries: 20 years of AFD intervention AFD w Ex post Evaluation
6.2. Economic aspects and impact on industrial development The FMP tool did not have clear cut economic, industrial or financial objectives. The objectives were rather underlying and there are several relevant impacts to be reported. Safeguarding access to the resource and impact on the sector
The first impact of forest management is the provision of long-term access to the resource to companies. This is specifically and logically related to State/private sector contracting embodied in a long-term convention. Sustained access provides critical visibility to the company, which is relevant in planning and investments. It sustained supplies and stabilized the entire timber sector in the Congo Basin. The second impact spurred companies to further diversify exploited species and by extension, processed species. The requirement to add more value to felling areas also led companies to focus on new species. In this regard, FMP helped to increase resource knowledge and planning. Several telling examples are found in companies or in statistics of exploited species in Congo, with greater diversification of lumber species, bearing in mind that the economic crisis also led countries to seek new markets with less known and cheaper species. However, the diversification of exploited species is primarily related to market needs, economic policies of countries and compliance by operators. Today, the local timber market is stagnating due to inappropriate national policies and unfair competition from informal operators. The FMP approach has eased, but not resolved core problems. Lastly, there is increased professionalism in the timber sector, though resulting primarily from the bidding system to award concessions, which favoured the generally professional large companies. Sustaining and opening markets
A second and greater type of impact helped to sustain and even open European markets. Large companies adopted FMP for primarily commercial reasons to: (i) sustain markets following pressure from international NGOs (boycott threats in the 1990s and 2000s), FMP having been designed to respond to criticism and prevent the boycott looming on the impugned large groups; (ii) penetrate potential certification markets. In fact, it is not by chance that the most advanced concession holders received the greatest criticism or threats at the time (CIB, for instance). Š AFD / May 2012 101