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EcoVitality Combining Conservation and Development in Poor Countries

Manufactured Wood Products from PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Non-sustainable logging is among Papua new Guinea's largest industries and is threatening one of the world's last remaining large rainforest regions.  The central idea underlying EcoVitality's original forest conservation program in PNG was that value-added manufactured wood products created by PNG villagers and craftsmen could be sold for a much higher price PER tree than anyone in PNG is now earning for sales of raw logs or sawn timber planks.  This value-added wood products enterprise was intended to reduce current income-related pressures for widespread deforestation.  The conception required market research by us  to look for wood products that could be made in PNG and effectively marketed in developed consumer nations, and it also required finding woodworkers in PNG willing and able to produce high-quality products on a reliable basis.

We first became involved with a West New Britain Province NGO, the IRECDP, primarily funded by the European Union.  We provided an extensive list of relatively more complicated wood products (wine racks, bed serving trays, and coffee tables) and relatively less complicated wood products (cutting boards, bread boards, end tables made from cross- sections of tree trunks, and hand-carved clothes hangers).  We also supplied diagrams and suggested dimensions for these products, and a roughly comparable Chinese-made clothes hanger to serve as a model.  In retrospect, it might have been preferable for us to recommend only one or two wood products--some months later we were informed that the IRECDP staff and villagers were "overwhelmed" by the variety of products we proposed they try to manufacture.  Our collaboration with the IRECDP group ended when they completely stopped communicating with us for a period of three months, despite the frequent messages we sent them.  When we complained about this lack of communication, the IRECDP staff leaders became angry at us and severed the relationship.

Despite this initial failure, we continued to believe the value-added wood products idea was desirable for several reasons:

• PNG villagers will obtain greater economic returns from each tree, potentially much greater, which will reduce the pressures to harvest a large number of trees.

• They  will be able to use wood "scraps" from the timber milling process that otherwise would be wasted.

• They will be able to diversify their economic base and reduce their vulnerability to downturns in world timber markets and local timber prices.

• They will often be able to manufacture these products at times of their own choosing, and will be able to
  scale their production efforts and resulting incomes to their perceived needs.

To this point, however, we have not yet been able to find any PNG villages with the necessary skills and attitudes.  We therefore began to look for local woodworking businesses that could make our recommended products and at the same time provide training for villagers interested in becoming wood craftsmen.  Ideally, the newly-trained villagers would eventually set up workshops in their home communities .  We were able to find one established woodworker in the Rabaul/Kokopo area of East New Britain Province who is willing to try making wine racks fashioned from a variety of PNG hardwoods.  This craftsman has recently sent us several prototype models of his wine racks, and we are now looking for potential buyers and asking furniture and wine store managers for feedback on various alternative design features.  We expect the commercial production phase to begin early in the new year.

         
          16-Bottle Black Walnut Rack      32-Bottle Black Walnut Wine Rack      16-Bottle rosewood Rack     

We expect this wine rack enterprise will prove commercially successful after we settle on a final design.  The wine racks will be shipped to New York by container in a disassembled state and then assembled in the U.S.   Given the quality of the hardwoods and craftsmanship, the question is not whether we can sell these racks but whether we can sell them for a high enough price to make the venture profitable for both the manufacturer and EcoVitality.  We will use our share of the profits to fund conservation and ecoforestry education programs in PNG.  Moreover, we have reached an agreement with the manufacturer providing that he must purchase his wood from the "client" villages of the Pacific Heritage Foundation, a conservation-oriented local NGO, to ensure these products promote sustainable ecoforestry.

Despite this one likely success, our greatest difficulty has been in finding PNG craftsmen with the requisite skills and interest in making high-quality wood products for the export market.  We have not yet tried to work with villagers in the Sepik River region of PNG, where the wood carvers are famous for the originality and quality of their hand-crafted artwork.   Several furniture manufacturers in PNG are now hiring Sepik carvers to decorate dining tables and coffee tables manufactured in Port Moresby, the PNG capital.  We would like to expand on this idea by relocating the carving and product manufacturing process to the Sepik River communities in return for forest conservation agreements with those villagers.  However, we need to find local community organizations or established Sepik-area NGOs willing to collaborate with us in order to provide adequate communications with the local villagers and quality-control for whatever products they manufacture.  We will be trying to establish these connections during the next year.

Our Australian Partner, Rob Latham of Eco. Furniture and Timber, has tried to teach two woodworking operations how to make the comparatively simple but very attractive bread boards he sells in Australian and European markets.   Some of his designs follow, and more can be viewed on his web site:  http://www.ecofurn.com.au/ 

               
             Single-Handle Oblique Cut     Double-Handle Straight Cut     Double-Handle Oblique Cut    

Given the abundant forests and long tradition of hand-crafted woodworking in Papua New Guinea, we believe there must be numerous village artisans who would be willing to make these products if we provide a reliable market for them.  We will have to keep looking for these people and establish better connections with local NGOs that can doubtless identify some interested craftsmen better than any foreign organization could.  Rob Latham has the expertise and tools to manufacture several dozen bread boards per day, but making only 10 or even 5 per day would substantially increase the income of rural New Guineans.  And hundreds of these bread boards could be made from a single large tree, thereby increasing the value of that tree to a PNG community by 10 to 100 times in comparison with selling the tree as a raw log.

In the case of every manufactured wood product we import from PNG, EcoVitality will adopt three compatible marketing themes:

------The products must be useful as well as decorative.

------The products must be distinctive, reflecting some form of PNG carving, painting, and/or especially attractive wood grains and burls from PNG hardwood trees.  This is an attempt to create "product differentiation" and "niche markets" that will facilitate more stable and diversified economic returns.

-----The products will also be marketed using a prominent conservation theme: Buying this cutting board, table, wine rack, etc., from Papua New Guinea helps protect biologically invaluable forests against destructive logging and widespread deforestation.

The villagers participating in any EcoVitality wood products or ecoforestry program must agree not to enter into contracts with large commercial logging companies, and must be educated on the merits of reforestation and selective forestry that will allow younger trees to mature.  If our projects are successful in increasing the economic returns the villagers  can earn from selective forestry, which is our plan and expectation, we will request that the villagers replant several trees of a given species for each one they cut down in areas where the natural regeneration rate is not high--this will ensure that no significant changes occur in tree species diversity or relative abundance in the local forests as a result of our activities.  We will also request that the villagers follow other forest NGO  guidelines and not harvest trees with diameters less than 70 cm, though this requirement may be more difficult to enforce in some settings.  Most important, we will have an independent  forestry expert inspect participating areas every two or three years and determine whether desirable ecological conditions are being maintained.

As in our other rural development projects, EcoVitality plans to market PNG manufactured wood products stressing the theme that buyers in developed consumer nations are paying for "Conservation in Papua New Guinea," not just for attractive hardwood products.  In light of the widespread publicity about rainforest destruction and large public contributions to rainforest- oriented NGOs, we believe many furniture and housewares retailers will be disposed to give conservation-compatible manufactured wood products from PNG an opportunity to succeed on relatively favorable terms.  Indeed, one large retailer might be able to sell the entire production volume from one of our projects , because we cannot allow mass production in PNG to jeopardize the integrity of participating forest areas.  If this PNG wood products project proves successful, the same approach could be adapted to support selective forestry in other developing countries, and EcoVitality could function as a "service bureau" to assist rainforest protection efforts of  many environmental NGOs and multilateral organizations.

Rob Latham is the copyright holder for the bread board photos on this page. 
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