Suomen ja Tansanian välinen sopimus tuesta yksityismetsähankkeelle allekirjoitettiin Tansanian finanssiministeriössä 23. toukokuuta. Minister Hautala totesi Tansanian yksityismetsätalouden kehittämisessä olevan suuria mahdollisuuksia.[:]
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The support to plantation forestry and particularly to private sector forestry has a strong de-mand in Tanzania: not only are smallholders and urban residents increasingly investing in tree planting but also the government forest agency, Tanzania Forest Service, is now instituting a person to work as Private Forestry officer.
The programme has a budget of almost 20 million EUR for the first four years and it will sup-port the participation of smallholders in the development of commercial plantation forestry, especially in the Southern Highlands area. The demand for forestry products is growing ra-pidly while the resource base is being depleted due to unsustainable charcoal burning, clear-ing for agriculture and illegal logging.
The results of the national forest inventory, NAFORMA, will be launched tomorrow: the in-ventory shows that there is a huge gap between the amount of wood that could be cut an-nually in Tanzania and the amount that is actually cut. There is need to improve the man-agement of the existing forest resources but also to establish fast growing plantations, which will provide the wood for the increasingly important Small and Medium Enterprises in Tanza-nia.
Manufacturing SMEs will be the backbone of employment opportunities for the Tanzanian youth but forestry SMEs have to have a sufficient supply of good quality timber to be able to produce good quality and competitive products, be it timber, poles, furniture or paper. At the moment the supply is not sufficient and the quality of produced timber could be much better.
The Private forestry programme intends to be inclusive and benefit different groups of rural population in the six districts where it will work in Iringa and Njombe regions. Training of men and women on their land rights, associated with forward looking land-use planning will help villages to allocate the available land for appropriate uses and increase the productivity.
The rights of the most vulnerable groups such as disabled or HIV/AIDS affected villagers have to be protected – therefore the programme will also have an extensive social monitoring component, as well as ways to monitor the protection of biodiversity that may be reduced due to plantation establishment.
We expect the programme to be transformative for the forestry sector in Tanzania, working intensively with other stakeholders including TFS, training institutions, districts, private com-panies and NGOs. The development of the emerging forestry cluster in the Southern High-lands will get a significant boost during the next four years.
