Industrial Plantation Forestry

This paper critically examines the local community benefits associated with intensively managed industrial roundwood plantations (IMPIRs). It is based on a review of existing literature. I focus on three issues: natural resource access and control, job creation, and the effects of creating forest reserves as a corollary of establishing industrial roundwood plantations. The cases reviewed here indicate that IMPIRs often bring about land ownership concentration, loss of customary rights of resource access, rural displacement, and socioeconomic decline in neighboring communities. Beneficiaries include large rural landowners who sell or lease their land to forestry companies, and people who are able to find jobs in the forestry sector. IMPIRs do not appear to provide enough quality jobs to stimulate community development, and rarely benefit people who are already politically and economically marginalized. The paper concludes by suggesting ways in which plantation forestry can become more integrated with surrounding communities to increase local benefits.