Back to the Forest
Give up lucrative cattle breeding and plant trees that won't yield for decades? Doesn't sound like a tempting alternative. But it can be if state funds support the difficult start.
Where cattle graze today, there was once a forest - dense, untouched jungle, a paradise for a diverse living environment. Only ten percent of them have survived in the highlands of Hawaii, a fate that the islands share with many other tropical regions: Where profit-seeking people spread, indigenous people, animals and plants have to give way.
Back to nature is a demand expressed worldwide, but it is rarely realized. Because reforesting the deforested areas initially costs money, a lot of money. And it will be decades before income can possibly even be generated again through sustainable management. But that's what counts for the private owner: that his wallet stays well filled. It may be a lofty goal to improve other ecological factors such as drinking water supply, biodiversity, carbon storage and much more with reforestation - it rarely makes a difference in the landowner's coffers.
But it could be, according to Joshua Goldstein from Stanford University and his colleagues. The researchers modeled the income from different management strategies on a 200-hectare plot. Based on field studies, literature research and intensive discussions with scientists, foresters, locals and government officials, they developed the boundary conditions of the various future scenarios and thus simulated their development. They compared insistence on pure livestock farming, a combination of reforestation with grazing, pure afforestation for forestry purposes, and trading on carbon equivalents along the lines of emissions trading introduced by the Europeans. They also linked these models to different versions of government funding for conservation purposes.
The researchers picked the koa tree (Acacia koa) as the tree of choice: once the region's natural forest builder, the hard wood of this acacia relative has been highly sought after for years and fetches better prices than the faster-growing one Eucalyptus or other species that can grow into veritable pests or whose usefulness in forestry is still very little known. A desirable candidate from both a conservation and economic point of view.
And lo and behold: If the hypothetical landowners used state subsidies to bridge the high investment costs at the beginning of the switch to forestry, they could earn up to nine times the income per hectare from the timber harvest compared to conventional cattle breeding. Even without support programs, the yields from the start of logging were significantly higher than with grazing cattle - but then the landowners had to accept serious losses, especially in the first few years. If they alleviated this by driving cattle back into the young forests five years after planting the seedlings, the wood yield later turned out to be poorer due to browsing damage. However, the profit margin was still higher than with pure grazing.
Only one concept failed completely: emissions trading. The scientists had set a price of $15 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent - a third more than what is currently being paid in European emissions trading and almost four times the value quoted by the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), an American equivalent is the order of the day. When Goldstein and his colleagues doubled the proceeds to $30 per tonne of CO2 equivalent, they got just plus-zero.
In order for afforestation for emissions trading purposes to pay off for landowners, the price would have to increase significantly further. A rather unlikely event after the massive slump a few weeks ago.
The development of the wood market turned out to be the greatest uncertainty factor with regard to the forecasts: It accounted for over ninety percent of the variability, with the wood price in particular having the greatest influence. The investments, on the other hand, hardly shook the bottom line. However, since these initial costs and the delayed income are the biggest hurdles for the switch, the state subsidies are still of central importance.
It is important to the researchers that their analysis is not a regional phenomenon, but should be applicable to many tropical regions. After all, corresponding native hardwoods were also cut elsewhere and have also been the focus of interest in projects for nature-friendly use for years.
The alternative may not seem worthwhile at first glance, but at second glance it can – with a sensible addition – very well be. Even far more rewarding than forest-destroying ranching.
