Can Concessions Be Justified?A Multidisciplinary Perspective from Africa and Beyond

Journal of Sustainable Forestry, Vol. 27(3) 2008Available online at http://www.haworthpress.com© 2008 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.

224 doi:10.1080/10549810802256205

WJSF1054-98111540-756XJournal of Sustainable Forestry, Vol. 27, No. 3, Sep 2008: pp. 0–0Journal of Sustainable Forestry

Can Concessions Be Justified?A Multidisciplinary Perspective

from Africa and BeyondBenjamin Singer and Alain KarsentyJournal of Sustainable Forestry Benjamin Singer

Alain Karsenty

ABSTRACT. Forest concessions are currently in a state of flux. Despitemitigated results in some regions, they are still hailed as the path to sustain-able forest management on other continents. Using geographical, economic,and political viewpoints, this article offers a multidisciplinary perspectiveto account for this apparent contradiction. The authors conclude thatalthough political actors continue to support or criticize them by using arange of historical, contextual, and ideological associations, large-scaleforest concessions can be theoretically justified from an economic and geo-graphical viewpoint.

KEYWORDS. Brazil, Central Africa, Indonesia, forest concessions,sustainable forest management

Benjamin Singer graduated in anthropology and political science at CambridgeUniversity and the Institute of Political Studies in Paris (Sciences Po) respec-tively. He is now studying for a PhD at Sciences Po and CIRAD (Centre decoopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement)under the supervision of Alain Karsenty. Alain Karsenty is Economist, CIRAD,Département “Environnements et Sociétés,” UPR 36, TA C-36/D, Campus deBaillarguet, 34398 Montpellier Cedex 5, France. He completed his PhD at Paris IUniversity, and is currently an economist at CIRAD, specialist of public policiesand economic instruments for tropical forests (E-mail: [email protected]).

Benjamin Singer and Alain Karsenty 225

At the turn of the 21st century, forest concessions are in a state of flux.In Central Africa, observers argue that concessions have failed to reducepoverty (see Counsell, Long, & Wilson, 2007); and in Indonesia, the HPHsystem (Hak Pengusahaan Hutan; Right to Utilize the Forest), which in theeyes of many underpinned the recently-fallen Suharto regime, is in sham-bles. Yet at the same time, in Russia and Brazil, debates have appeared onwhether or not to adopt a similar system for sustainable forest management.

By using examples in Africa, and to a lesser extent in Indonesia, thisarticle delves into the theory and practice of forest concessions by offering amultidisciplinary perspective to answer two main questions regardingconcessions. The first two parts adopt a geographical and economic view-point, respectively, to explain and justify the existence of large-scale forestconcessions in the tropics. The third part explores the political dimensionof concessions in an attempt to explain why, despite the mitigated recordthat this instrument has displayed in certain parts of the world, it is stillhailed as the path to success on other continents.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL DIMENSION: WHY ARE CONCESSIONS SO LARGE?

One of the most striking features of the concessions is their size. Largeconcessions are considered by many “hardliner” observers as a reminis-cence of colonial era, when the central government relinquished itsauthority and companies behaved as “states within the state” on huge ter-ritorial areas. The critics claim that alternative land-use and businessmodels should be implemented, such as small-scale enterprises and com-munity forests, to substitute large concessions judged as running against“pro-poor” policies (Hobley, 2007). Africa, a continent of “weak states,”provides good material to discuss the relevance of this criticism.

In Central Africa, vast concessions can be found especially in theDemocratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Gabon, and Congo. TheLichtenstein-based Holding company of the Nordsudtimber (NST) Groupis said to control the two large concession holders in the DRC, the SODE-FOR group and the SOFORMA-FORABOLA-CFT group, which are ledby two Portuguese brothers. Altogether, the two groups control over 5million ha in DRC. The other major player is Société industrielle etforestière du Congo (SIFORCO), subsidiary of the Danzer Group, whichcontrolled up to 3 million hectares before the 2004’s fiscal reform and theintroduction of an area tax.

226 JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY

In Congo-Brazzaville, in the Northern part of the country, large com-panies are also operating. The largest is Congolaise Industrielle des Bois(CIB), which is a subsidiary of the former German-Swiss Tropical Timber(TT timber group), taken over by the Danish DLH-Nordisk in early 2006.With almost 1.3 million ha (1 million productive), and a large concessionForest Stewardship Council (FSC)-Certified (UFA Kabo), CIB is politi-cally influent and is known also for the importance of the local socialactions it is committed to. Another company with almost the same con-cession area (1.1 million ha, with 0.9 million ha productive) is IndustrielleForestière de Ouesso (IFO), a subsidiary of the German Danzer group. Inthe southern part of the country, the Malaysian company Taman, incharge of a 280,000-ha concession, controls directly or indirectly over 1million ha (Bravi, 2006).

In Gabon, several large international groups have subsidiaries listedbelow:

• Rougier Ocean Gabon (ROG) controls 571,000 ha, but sold itssubsidiary Ciplac (261,000 ha) in 2006.

• CEB, a subsidiary of the French family enterprise, Thanry International,controls 617,000 ha.

• The Malaysian Rimbunan Hijau (RH) and its two subsidiaries con-trol 626,469 ha, when adding the concession area of its subsidiariesBordamur and DFIK to the RH concession itself.

• The Chinese China International Forestry Group Corporation (HuaJia) owns a 400,000-ha concession.

• The Portuguese SONAE has taken over the company Leroy-Gabon,which owns a 578,910-ha concession.

In the Central African Republic, Chinese Vicwood group controlsmore than 700,000 ha. In Equatorial Guinea, the Malaysian RimbunanHijau carries out most of the logging in the country, where concessionscurrently cover 1.5 million ha, although it officially has only a concessionof 470,545 ha. In Liberia all concessions contracts have been cancelled in2006, but some large concessions were operating before and during thecivil conflict.

However, in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, the average size of conces-sions is significantly smaller. This is especially the case in Ghana, whichhas few concessions bigger than 100,000–150,000 ha. In the Ivory Coast,only a couple of companies have concessions of more than 500,000 ha,but the forest is often partly degraded.


Cameroon is in an intermediate position. The company Vicwood-Thanry, controlled by Chinese interests, is the largest group with its sixsubsidiaries; and controls a minimum of 643,000 ha. But with the excep-tion of the French group Rougier, which controls more than 500,000 ha,other groups control areas generally ranging from 150,000 to 350,000 ha“only”

Different Demographic and Historical Contexts Shape Different Concessions Patterns

The size of the concessions, the demographic patterns, and the historyof land allocation are closely related. West African countries are moredensely populated than those of the Congo Basin. They were developedearlier and at a larger scale, especially Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Thesetwo countries have a specific “cocoa development story” associated withnonregulated and profitable logging that led to fragmentation and furtherdeforestation in these coastal countries. Liberia and Equatorial Guinea,less populated countries facing the Atlantic (see Table 1), have beendevoid of such cash-crop stories and have faced the “resource curse”linked to diamonds, as is the case of Liberia; and oil, as is the case ofEquatorial Guinea. Such “development” patterns have favored large-scaleforestry and the design of large timber concessions.

Gabon and Cameroon pose interesting cases since they show the twofaces of this phenomenon. In Gabon, the coastal zone with abundant and

TABLE 1. Forest management plan progresses in Central Africa (adapted from Nasi, Cassagne, & Billand, 2006)

In thousands of hectares

Cameroon Gabon Congo DRC CAR Eq. Guinea

Total

Production forests 10,500 19,000 12,000 87,000 3,300 1,250 133,050Area earmarked for

logging as of 02/20066,000 12,000 10,000 22,000 3,000 1,250 55,250

Area under forest management process

4,348 6,368 7,115 9,680 2,994 55 30,560

Preparatory phase 79 1,907 1,724 2,978 277 0 6,956Development of the

management plan728 1,539 3,088 6,702 1,462 0 13,519

Management plan submitted

339 118 2,302 0 708 55 3,521

Management plan agreed 3,202 2,805 0 0 547 0 6,554


regenerating Okoume stands was heavily exploited early in the 20th cen-tury, when the huge and low-populated hinterland was suitable for thedesign of very large concessions. This occurred in places where govern-ment investments were very limited because large concessions were seenas an opportunity to develop the hinterland without investing publicmoney.

As Coquery-Vidrovitch (2001) points out in her detailed description ofconcessions in colonial Africa, it was the French and German colonialauthorities who originally introduced concessions to this part of theworld, granting private companies a monopoly of a range of productsover vast tracts of land. It is believed that this system was an adaptation ofchartered companies which France, England, and Holland had used exten-sively to expand their empires in the 17th and 18th centuries in Asia andthe Americas. However, in Cameroon concession sizes never came closeto those of the Northern Congo, Gabon, and the DRC, even in the far-flung eastern and southern parts of the country.

For land-locked and low-populated countries such as the Central Afri-can Republic (CAR), Northern Congo, and most part of the DRC, therationale for large-scale concession was clear. In the DRC, with 50 to 55million inhabitants unequally spread out in a country of the size of West-ern Europe, one must add the historical pattern of “development” initiatedby Leopold II, who took over ownership and distributed huge concessionsto commercial companies for royalties.

Table 2 shows a certain correlation between the population and thepopulation density, on one hand, and the average size of the concessions,on the other.

THE ECONOMIC DIMENSION: JUSTIFYING LARGE SIZE AND VERTICAL INTEGRATION

The economic contribution of industrial forest concessions in West andCentral Africa is also a subject of debates between pro and cons of con-cessions. No precise figures quantifying the contribution of the forestindustry (logging and processing) are available due to the weakness of thenational accounting systems. A compilation of numbers picked up inreports and documents suggests a figure of around 135,000 permanentworkers in the six countries in Central Africa and three in West Africa.Table 2 suggests that countries with larger-sized concessions are alsothose with less employment. They are also countries where small-scale

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enterprises have less weight, a feature that might provide a robust expla-nation for this lower employment.

Are Small-Scale Forest Enterprises an Alternative to Concessions for Fostering a Propoor Policy?

A recent discussion paper by the International Institution for Environ-ment and Development (IIED) which focuses on Guyana’s forest sectorsuggests promoting small and medium enterprises alongside the use of“portable technology” as an alternative to large-scale concessions and an“industry . . . concentrated on high volumes, low revenue primary prod-ucts such as logs or large sawn balks” (Mendes & Macqueen, 2006). Theyadvocate less vertical integration and more specialization that can bringgreater added value to the timber production. One knows that small-scalelogging and processing generates much more work than large industriesconcerned by productivity gains. But could such a “small-scale strategy”work for West and Central Africa, where vertical integration and large-scale concessions are going hand in hand?

Currently, portable technology is used by chainsaw loggers to makewood boards sold mainly in the local market but sometimes exported.Such activity has three characteristics explained below.

First, production is more high-graded than that of large concessionaires.As underscored by economic studies in Cameroon, DRC, and Congo,small-scale loggers concentrate on higher value species, since they aremobile and can look for a handful of species without the spatial constraintsentailed by a forest management plan (Centre de Coopération Internationaleen Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD)/Institutionset Développement, 2000; Djire, 2004; JMN Consultants, 2005; Karsentyet al., 2002; Karsenty, Roda, Fochivé, Milol, & Kuetche, 2006; Plouvier,Eba’a Atyi, Fouda, Oyono, & Djoukam, 2002). This is contradictory withthe efforts aiming to reduce pressure on generally over-exploited highestvalue species and shift toward lesser used species. Several industrialistsattempted to undertake this scheme because of constraints such as reducedannual allowable cut (AAC) entailed by the implementation of the forestmanagement plans, and even accentuated by the certification requirements.

Second, recovery rates are low, since the main difference from theindustrial wood processing is that boards are made in forests with a chain-saw (with a very low recovery rate) or a mobile saw (such as LucasMills). In the latter case, the recovery rate on the main product (the stan-dard sized FAS [First and Seconds] boards) can be compared with the


industrial one, but there is no valorization of by-products (made from the“wastes”), which makes all the difference between the common recoveryrate of 30–35% and a 50–60% corresponding to the combination of main-standard size board and by-products such as nonstandard board, molding,pieces for flooring, etc. One might add that the peeling industry needs logtransport and is not compatible with portable technology. In countriessuch as Cameroon, the CAR, Congo, and the DRC, more investments inpeeling industry would help to diversify the range of harvested species, inresponse to the reduced AAC on managed forest.

Third, small-scale logging in West and Central Africa is illegal andthus, in general, synonymous with informal activities. This means thatsmall-scale loggers escape many of the formal taxes—even though theyare pressured by nonofficial taxation by the authority agents—and are outof the salary system. Such a situation could be reversed, but it would needa radical change in public policies and substantial decrease of corruptionwhich plagues the administrative system from top to bottom.

Since most of the concession-based forest sector in West and CentralAfrica is export-oriented, with the bulk of the production (in value) goingto Europe (except Equatorial Guinea), the issue of environmental norms,which include legality requirements, should not be underestimated.Small-scale logging and processing is, currently, unable to meet theseescalating requirements. Admittedly, these current handicaps can be over-come in the future thanks to proactive training and technical support poli-cies combined with a complete reorganization of the credit system and aradical change in law and administration practices. There are certainlyvaluable policy actions that ought to be undertaken without delay,although this is further complicated in Africa due to questions of willing-ness for reform.

It is also necessary to add that promoting small-scale entrepreneurship isbest carried out by entrepreneurs themselves. In this regard, the situation ofcountries is contrasted. In Ghana, the Ivory Coast, most of Cameroon, andin some parts of Congo, such a potential exists. But in Northern Congo, theCAR, Gabon, and in many parts of the DRC, the density of social and eco-nomic activity and capital is low. Small-scale enterprises are not welladapted to a landlocked, low population density, remote markets, and hightransportation costs, and it is difficult to imagine that Governments wouldgive up benefits such as taxes and induced development effects broughtabout by large concessions. Therefore, a realistic agenda would focus moreon helping small-scale sectors be decriminalized and complementing thelarge scale industry more efficiently (especially in supplying domestic


markets) than to believe that they could be an alternative in the short term,or even to longer term in certain areas.

Are Large Scale and Vertical Integration Justifiable from an Economic Perspective?

It is often emphasized by the timber private sector’s representativesthat large concessions are necessary in a context of increasing competi-tion on the timber export markets, especially to allow the industry to gainfrom the scale economy. This argument is only partially true. It is true thatsome cost functions are diminished when spread out across large conces-sions and the cost per hectare is reduced. Depending on the average har-vesting rate, a minimum size is needed to spread a certain amount of fixedcosts. However, there is no need for the wood processing industry to ownlogging concessions. Such provisions have been set by the forest adminis-trations that have favored vertical integration of the sector. A wood pro-cessing unit entails high fixed costs, and the need for large concessionsremains rational under such a production pattern.

On the other hand, some industrialists have shown that the “decoupledmodel” is also very viable, with industrial clusters established in harbor areasor at other strategic locations, such as Gabon and Cameroon. In such cases,the timber supply can be provided by concessions of various dimensions,without a negative impact on the efficiency of the sector. Such a pattern is, inparticular, pushed by Italian industrialists, who have brought valuable inno-vations in wood processing and marketing to Central and West Africa. Yet,since in Central Africa vertical integration is favored by governments, thetheory that large concessions equals competitiveness turns out to be more orless true, even if the rationale for its verification is not usually recognized.

THE POLITICAL DIMENSION: CONCESSION CONSTRUCTIONS

Forest concessions are often compared to a hammer: if you use itright, the nail goes in, but if you misuse it you injure your fingers. In thisview, concessions in Africa and Southeast Asia were probably used insuch a way that did not meet its official objectives of sustainable forestmanagement.

To some extent, the hammer metaphor holds true—any concession sys-tem is a complex array of rules and regulations officially established to


ensure that forest management runs in accordance with sustainabilityprinciples. However, what makes a concession system successful is notonly the matter of rules and whether the system works or not; it is alsoabout how much it is supported and which actors rally with, criticizes, oreven reject the system. Building on the hammer metaphor, if a number ofactors claim that the hammer cannot drive a nail in, then nobody will pickup the hammer in the first place.

Two fundamental remarks may be made from such an observation: (a)Concessions, as public policy instruments, not only come with a complextechnical baggage, but also have an essential yet often overlooked socio-political dimension; (b) this additional dimension generally consists ofperceptions by different actors of the instrument itself. Subsequent mobi-lization of these actors for or against concessions is crucial to whether aconcession system is deemed to work or not (regardless of whether itworks or not “in reality”).

The sociopolitical dimension of forest concessions can be broken downinto two main elements. First, by laying out what is expected of public,private, and in some cases nongovernmental actors, concession agree-ments in and of themselves describe and prescribe the expected behaviorof a number of actors involved in forest management. Second, the politi-cal, cultural, and historical context within which concessions are embed-ded inevitably affects how the instrument is perceived, especially inregions with a long history of concession-based forest management. Bothof these elements are discussed in turn.

An Intrinsic “Vision of the World”

As French policy scientists Lascoumes and Le Galès (2004) suggested,public policy instruments—such as concessions in the present case—differfrom technical tools in that they invariably come with a social and politicalbaggage, or what they call a “vision of the world.” Policy instrumentsare generally put forward as a potential solution to an identified collectiveproblem; they therefore carry with them both an analytical and a normativeperception of what the problem is, and how it should be solved. In otherwords, independently of their context, instruments prescribe specificbehavior of certain actors as a solution to a political problem.

Karsenty (2007) provides us with two authoritative definitions ofconcessions. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s Land TenureThesaurus defines a concession as a bilateral or unilateral legal act bywhich an authority grants a private or public person a right of use or a


privilege (FAO, 2003, p.8). Despite having preceded FAO by at least halfa century, French law provided a very similar definition back in 1916,whereby a concession is a “contract that requests an individual or a com-pany to carry out public works or fulfil public services, at his ownexpense, with or without help, and who may remunerate itself through thecommercial use of the work or service, with the right to levy fees from theusers” (Conseil d’État, 1991, p. 125, authors’ translation).

In terms of the behavior of actors that concessions prescribe, what maybe retained from these definitions and others is that concessions carry a“vision of the world” with the following series of components: (a) The twomain actors put forward are public authorities and the private sector; as aconsequence, no roles, responsibilities or power may necessarily be givento other potential actors involved, particularly local populations and NGOs(although this may be corrected); (b) public authorities delegate power and/or rights and responsibilities to the private sector; and (c) the private sectorhas to carry out public works or services and thus act in public or generalinterest (whether this coincides or not with its own private interests).

Each of these components might appear technical, yet they are allhighly politically charged and their fit with political views and objectivesof actors determines whether concession-based systems can ultimatelywin support or not. Each of these three components has greatly weighedin how concessions have been perceived in recent debates.

Public and Private Actors. First, the emphasis on public and privateactors, often at the expense of local populations and the growing nongov-ernmental sector, has been a strong target of criticism. Critics have notonly pointed to the theory of concessions but have relied on a wealth ofhistorical evidence to support their views. Indeed, examples abound wherelocal populations were marginalized and/or abused within concession-based systems, such as in Coquery-Vidrovitch’s (2001) account of conces-sions in French colonial Africa in the early 20th century, and numerousunofficial reports during Indonesia’s Suharto regime (1966–1998).

Concern for the well-being and interests of local populations only cameto the forefront of discussions on forest management since the late 1980s,with the growing popularity of community-based (rather than state-led)development ideas. At the same time, the nongovernmental sector grewexponentially in size, leading to the staggering array of environmental,social, and advocacy NGOs that color the political landscape of forestrytoday. These NGOs not only defended the interests of communities, butalso argued for an official role for themselves in forest management.


Since then, actors who argue that concession systems marginalize non-public and nonprivate actors fell into two distinct categories. On the onehand, “softliners” argue in favor of modifications in the concession con-tracts that accommodate both NGOs and local populations into the arena.As a result of such concern, not only did clauses appear in concessioncontracts in the 1990s that bind companies to fulfill obligations in favor oflocal communities (employment and the provision of public goods); butmore recently still, NGOs are often granted a specific role as watchdogsor “Independent Observers,” as in the case of Cameroon. Beside its eco-nomic aspects, one of the most significant contributions of the competi-tive bidding system in Cameroon has indeed been the increasedtransparency in the allocation process, replacing the discretionary systembased on trading favors that was previously in force. The use of an Inde-pendent Observer who both monitors the allocation process and helps thegovernment improve rules and criteria over the bidding rounds, has beenextremely useful and has contributed to changing the image of Cameroonin terms of governance in the environmental sector. Moreover, Cameroonhas followed the precedent of Cambodia by requesting (in 2000) the NGOGlobal Witness to monitor forest exploitation in and around the conces-sions, in close connection with the administrative control body.

Even if corruption and illegal logging have not disappeared with inde-pendent monitoring, the situation in terms of transparency and publiclyaccessible information has undeniably improved. Independent observers,through the UK-based NGO Resources Extraction Monitoring, are nowalso acting also in Congo-Brazzaville (since 2006).

On the other hand, a small number of actors called “hardliners,” suchas some Indonesian NGOs—notably WALHI (Wahana LingkunganHidup Indonesia or The Vehicle for the Environment in Indonesia)—continue to reject outright the very concept of concessions on the groundthat benefits to local communities remain vastly insufficient. This is thereason why WALHI is one of the rare NGOs not supporting any of theIndonesian forest certification schemes (either FSC-Indonesia or LEI)which primarily work with concession holders.

Power Delegation. Concession-based systems are often picked up ontheir second component that rights and responsibilities are delegated fromthe public to the private sector. This is where the large size of concessionsdiscussed above comes into play: although justifiable from an economicviewpoint, this aspect is often used to put forward the image of conces-sions as a relic of colonialism from a historical perspective.


Central Africa provides an excellent example in this respect. In thisregion, concessions come with responsibilities in forest management andits wildlife. In most countries of the region, concessionaires have to pre-pare a management plan (including an inventory) according to regulationsestablished by the relevant public authority. Legislation often alsorequires a cahier des charges (a list of the company’s obligations forsocial responsibility) either imposed or negotiated, e.g., building schoolsand health centres, maintaining roads and bridges, building transforma-tion units to provide jobs locally, creating facilities for farming for bush-meat. (More ambitious programs aimed at fighting bushmeat trade areoften added to this list when certification processes are involved.) Boththese documents thus engrave both the concessionaires’ roles and respon-sibilities; but at the same time, such tasks are delegated from the State tothe company.

According to information provided by the companies themselves, thesecahiers des charges can represent up to an additional US$1.5 million on a5-year period in Congo-Brazzaville. The companies are also requested toprovide for a significant part of the forest service equipment and function-ing means, and even travel premiums of control bodies (includingCustoms administration) are often paid by the companies (Karsenty et al.,2002). Political ties of largest concessionaires with national elites areoften criticized in many committed papers and the concessionaires’ influ-ence on policy has also been denounced (Labrousse & Verschave, 2002).

Thus, large forest concessions has been often portrayed, with some rel-evance, as “States within the State,” even though in many countries, suchas Congo-Brazzaville, they have not been able to avoid the increase of theforest taxation decided in 2003 by the Government, after a similar uptrendin Cameroon, the CAR, and Gabon some years ago. In Congo-Brazzaville,the average fiscal pressure calculated upon 1 cubic meter of exported loghas increased by a factor of 2.5. In Cameroon, compared to the prevailingsituation in the 1990s, the increase factor is two for exported logs and upto six for sawnwood (authors’ computations), which led the private sectorto complain against these new regulations (Interafrican Forest IndustryAssociation [IFIA], 2002). Actually, the influencing power of the largeforest concessionaires in Central African countries is certainly less strongthan that of oil companies, but it has specificity due to its territorial andsocial dimension: Forest concessions, often shared with mining compa-nies, are prominent in remote, land-locked and often low-populated areas,where the central government can hardly reach, and the local govern-ments (local councils, provincial authorities, etc.) are weak and unable to


provide basic public goods to the local populations. Thus, large conces-sionaires substitute for the central and the local governments in provid-ing some of these public goods (health care, building schools, localdevelopment actions such as small cattle farm, etc.) to populations nearconcessions. In Pokola, Northern Congo, the combination of a largeconcession with a wood processing unit created thousands of employ-ments, leading to a situation where the company, CIB, has to providesufficient goods and services for a village that had been turned into atown of 13,000.

This dimension of the role of forest concessions in the Congo Basin hasbeen highly debated. On one hand, they alleviate poverty by providingthese public goods —a feature of the corporate and social responsibilityand also an asset for FSC certification (for example, the CIB companyoperating in Congo became FSC certified in 2006 for one of its three con-cessions [Kabo] and its social achievements have been acknowledged byseveral NGOs and scientists, the latest one being an article in Nature forexemplary work with Pygmy populations [Hopkin, 2007]). Yet on theother hand, such a substitution impedes the emergence of genuine localgovernments accountable for citizens and may perpetuate or even extendthe networks of “patronage.” A common request of the concessionairesespecially in Congo-Brazzaville, is granted tax cuts corresponding to theexpenditures made as a “government substitute.” Actually, such anarrangement has existed for several years regarding road building: Thegovernment contracts forest companies to maintain or create certain roadsof provincial/national interest and compensate them with export tax cred-its. But the risk is that companies find getting tax cuts for social transfersmore advantageous than having governments (national and local) doingtheir job of providing local public goods.

This demission of the governments from their basic responsibilities(providing public goods) with more than a hint of colonialism not onlyrisks having unfair deals for the country (social transfers can be consider-ably overvalued and verifications is very difficult) with almost no moretax collected from the forest sector, but also is a step backward in theconstruction of a modern state. Such a pattern goes well beyond the “del-egation” principle, which is part of modern management systems. By con-trast, in Cameroon 40% of the annual area fee (set up through competitiveauctioning, and often around US$6–7 per hectare) is set aside for localcouncil funding and 10% for villages around the concession. Despitewidespread corruption and an evident lack of accountability at local level(local councils and communities), the relationship between local governments


and the concessionaires regarding social responsibilities is less confusedthan in Congo-Brazzaville.

Finally, regarding local communities and logging, community-basedresources management is difficult when the population is sparse and whenmarket access is difficult and costly. A study by Ezzine de Blas and Ruiz-Pérez (2006) on a sample of community forest in Cameroon shows astrong correlation between self-management and proximity to the market:In community forests more distant from the market, villagers usually con-tract logging and all subsequent operations to a concessionaire (exceptwhen a NGO supports the community forest financially and technically).However, such a rationale for concessions in these specific areas must notobscure the fact that large concessions often hinder the emergence oflocal governments detached from the “old fashioned” patronage networksto promote collective responsibility, accountability, and citizenship in therural African areas.

There remains a wide debate as to whether delegation of power in itselffrom the state to the private sector should be supported or not. Manyactors support this component of forest concessions as a measure of effi-ciency, especially in countries where the state lacks the human, technical,and financial resources to carry out forest management on their own. Thiswould at least partly explain why International Financial Institutions andnotably the World Bank openly favor concession-based systems in forestmanagement, although recent documents and initiatives tend to indicatethat the World Bank is also looking actively toward alternatives to timberconcessions as in the DRC (Debroux, Hart, Kaimowitz, Karsenty, &Topa, 2007). Yet others, most notably among “antiglobalization” move-ments, reject concessions as yet another means of strengthening multina-tional companies at the expense of national governments (althoughinterestingly, many of these organisations also support community-basedforest management, despite the fact that this also entails a “weakening” ofthe state through delegation of roles and responsibilities to communities).Such is the case of Bolivia, where left-leaning President Evo Morales hasswept aside any idea of introducing a concession-based system of forestmanagement in his country, thus attempting to fit the debate on conces-sion systems into the left-right cleavage of politics. In a speech he madeon May 8, 2004, he stated that “We the condemned people, threatened ofextermination, we the Indigenous people, have decided to take our landback, which means that (a) we shall not allow privatization or concessionof natural resources, whether they be forests or mines; (bi) we shall notallow basic public services to become privates businesses. As soon as


basic services become privatized, human rights are violated” (Morales,2004; translation by the authors).

General Interest and Sustainable Forest Management. One of thegreatest debates in recent years, however, focuses on the third componentof the definition of forest concessions, namely general interest. In theory,private concessionaires must not only reap benefit from their own forestmanagement activities, but they also need to maintain the economic,social, and ecological functions of the forest at a level deemed satisfac-tory for “the greater good”— i.e., they have to practice “sustainable forestmanagement.”

The question whether concessions can be considered “sustainable” ornot has indeed been a hotly debated topic in recent decades and theanswers have tended to follow predominant lines of thought on how for-ests should be managed. Back in the 1980s, when environmental con-sciousness and conservation movements were growing in size andpopularity in developed countries, so was the traditional “productivist”line of forest management challenged.

Conservation movements tried to portray timber production activities asthe cause of deforestation; and in the early 1990s’ atmosphere of tropicaltimber boycotts, the concession system, as one of the legal frameworks forlogging, was vilified along with much of the industry. Even throughout thelate 1990s and early 2000s, organizations such as Greenpeace attempted tolimit the division of forests into concessions, notably in Central Africa.Moreover, they recorded all the law infringements of various concession-aires. Although it did not go so far as to question the entire concession sys-tem, the image of concessionaires was inevitably tarnished, in spite of thein-depth reforms that countries such as Cameroon underwent.

By the mid-2000s, however, perceptions and arguments regarding thesustainability of concessions had changed. Since the early 1990s, andagainst all odds, the French Overseas Development Agency (Agencefrançaise de développement) defended its financial support to concession-aires in Central Africa by claiming that aménagement—a forest manage-ment system elaborated by the French school of forestry which may beloosely translated as “sustainable forest management,” although theemphasis remains on timber production—was the only viable means ofprotecting forests, as it provided tangible economic value. At first, theargument fell on deaf ears; but as FSC gradually made its way duringthe same decade, many actors began accepting the idea that logging couldbe sustainable after all, especially with the growing recognition that land


conversion to nonforest uses was the main threat to the tropical forests.Since it also emerged that unregulated logging is often the first step forsubsequent conversion of the remaining degraded forests, the idea thatsustainable logging can limit deforestation also become more accepted.

In countries such as Brazil, it was actually NGOs such as IMAZONand Amigos da Terra which promoted the idea of concessions as a meansof sustainable forest management in the early 2000s, at a time when log-ging was still considered a culprit of deforestation in the Amazon andwhen mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) was added to Appendix II ofthe CITES Convention in 2003. However, the arguments that selectivelogging and the mere presence of companies in public forests prevent landclearance and the current situation of lawlessness were paramount in tip-ping the balance in favor of concessions, and explain also why Green-peace supported concessions (interestingly, this same NGO launched avery active campaign against the concessions system in the DRC, withouthaving explained the differences in its position between these two coun-tries). Despite some remaining opposition and scepticism, it was withoverwhelming support from the public, private, and nongovernmentalsectors that the plan to introduce a concession system in public forests ofthe Amazon was approved in February 2006, mainly on the ground that itwould ensure sustainable forest management.

The concession system, as a concept for forest management, thus carriesthree intrinsic components—emphasis on public and private sectors, dele-gation of tasks from the former to the latter, and the importance given togeneral interest. It is the way actors—consciously or subconsciously—associate these components with predominant ideologies (community-based development, neoliberalism versus antiglobalization, and the role ofthe timber industry in sustainable forest management) which determineswhether the concession system is ultimately portrayed favorably or not.

Contextual Importance

When looking into the perceptions of forest-related actors on conces-sions, it is a mistake to focus on the theory of concession systems out oftheir context. Just like communism is inseparable from the Soviet experience,it is impossible in the study of concessions to clearly separate the theoryfrom the context; for in the views of actors, concessions are inevitablyembedded in specific historical, social, cultural, and above all, political con-texts. Thus extrinsic factors are at least as important as the concept’s intrin-sic components in justifying support for, or opposition to, concessions.


Nowhere in the world where the system has a long history, do conces-sions come with a “clean slate.” On the contrary, the word “concession”comes with a complex political baggage, as in the following examples: inCentral Africa, where colonial powers introduced them at the turn of the20th century; and in Indonesia, where the Suharto regime built on a sys-tem introduced by the Dutch.

Central Africa. In Africa, back when concessions were first introducedin the late 19th and early 20th centuries, colonial authorities expected thatin return for the benefits that concession companies would make fromtrading goods ranging from rubber to timber, they would contribute tobuilding and maintaining public infrastructure within their concession.However, they turned out to be more famous for their abuse of local popu-lations than the success of their mission civilisatrice (the “civilizing mis-sion” officially championed by France). As a result, by the 1910s, Frenchcolonial authorities had grown wary of such companies, especially becausetheir financial contribution to the colonies remained low.

Reforms were thus carried out in the following decades restricting thepower of these companies over their concessions, which were consider-ably reduced in geographical size. Moreover, trade monopoly was limitedto one particular product—mainly timber in the case of French EquatorialAfrica, as it was by far the most abundant product (other natural forestproducts such as rubber had been exhausted by then). The concession sys-tem was refined in the decades following independence, and contractsexpanded to include more explicit rights and responsibilities of conces-sionaires. In the 1980s and 1990s, as a consequence of the rise of the envi-ronmental movement, the legal framework was further developed to keepup with the emerging principles of sustainable forest management, alongwith transparency and accountability, as epitomized by the sweepingWorld Bank-driven reforms in Cameroon in 1994 in the forestry sector.

Yet in spite of all these changes, many continue to claim that theconcession system of forest management in Central Africa is a coloniallegacy (Counsell et al., 2007). The large size of concessions and theextended roles that companies play in these areas—the “State within theState” image described above—have only provided more fuel to thisargument. This is further exacerbated by the fact the concession sector isstill dominated by European companies, although the share of Asian com-panies is currently increasing (Karsenty, 2007). Concessionaires may bedoing their best to shake off this old-fashioned, colonial image whichmany local actors have attached to them, yet some NGOs and locally


based organizations continue to use this image of concessions as a colo-nial relic to question the legitimacy of such a system in a postcolonial age.

Indonesia. In an altogether different setting but with many parallelaspects, the concession system in Indonesia is equally perceived, or atleast described, as the heritage of a past age. Both the Dutch colonialpower and, after 1949, the Sukarno regime, focused on teak forests inJava as the colony/country’s main source of timber. Beginning in 1967,however, Suharto picked up on small-scale logging experiments hispredecessors had carried out outside Java and developed them into alarge-scale timber production system embodied in the concept of HPH(Hak Pengusahaan Hutan), or “Right to Utilize the Forest,” coveringunprecedentedly vast areas of the archipelago. The turning point wasactually the approval of the Basic Forestry Law (Undang-undang Pokok-pokok Kehutanan) in May 1967 which designated three quarters of thenation’s land area as “Forest Estate” (Kawasan Hutan). Much ofKawasan Hutan was divided into HPHs which remained under theauthority of the Forestry Department (Government Regulation 21/1970;Barr et al., 2006, p. 23).

HPHs, which fit the definition of concessions mentioned above, soonbecame the legal backbone of an extremely fast-growing timber industrythat quickly came to rank second in the country’s nonoil exports. How-ever, HPHs also played a crucial political role, for it is now widelyaccepted that the allocation of concessions favoring a specific politicaland economic elite supported the Suharto regime (Barr, 1999). Despitethe introduction of strict management regulations known as TPI (TebangPilih Indonesia; Indonesian Selective Logging System) and then TPTI(Tebang Pilih Tanam Indonesia; Indonesian Selective Logging andReplanting System), the focus was on high levels of production, whicheventually turned out to be detrimental to forests and timber stocks.

Although the number of HPHs had already begun waning in the early1990s, the system was severely affected by the fall of the Suharto regime,which only further emphasized the close association between the politicalregime and the forest management system. As Jakarta (i.e., centralizednational power) grew weak in the eyes of the inhabitants of the outerislands, and as the military failed to defend the concession system againstdisgruntled local people, many HPHs soon became ungovernable. More-over, private companies were no longer vying for a large number of con-cessions as they had already been logged over and regeneration had beeninsufficient to maintain stocks of commercially viable timber.


In an effort to revive the concession regime (also as a means of preventingconversion to plantations), thorough reforms were carried out in the late1990s and early 2000s. Also, in order to cut off the long-standing associationwith the Suharto regime, as well as to show that concession contracts focusedon production, HPHs were renamed IUPHHK (Izin Usaha PemanfaatanHasil Hutan Kayu; right to utilize and benefit from forest timber products),only to be renamed once again with the new law PP6 in January 2007.

However, as in the case of Central Africa, it remains unlikely that theconcession system—which to this day is still commonly referred to asHPH—will be able to shake off the close association with the Suhartoregime. This association has been used extensively by NGOs such asWALHI, which continue to portray Indonesian concessions as theepitome of the political oppression of local and indigenous populationsduring the Suharto era. (However, such an association does not alwaysbring a negative connotation to concessions; although they might not beforthright in their opinion, many in the forestry sector, notably forestryofficials, nostalgically spoke of the days when the HPH system main-tained “law and order” over the forests during in-depth interviews.)

In contrast to Central Africa and Indonesia, the concession system inBrazil was introduced only in 2006, and in this sense it benefits from alack of historical associations used to tarnish the image of concessions onother continents. This might well explain why critics of concessions onthe new continent remain few and far between.

When evaluating the success of concessions, therefore, one needs to lookwell beyond technical details and delve into the complex sociopoliticaldimension that concessions carry as a public policy tool. Whether driven byideologies or as a means to promote their interests, forest policy actors havealways used intrinsic and extrinsic associations to argue in favor of oragainst concessions. However, despite such long-standing associations withideologies or politics—such as the perception of concessions in CentralAfrica as a colonial legacy—these are not engraved in stone. The exampleof the shift of concession systems from the cause of deforestation to itssolution is a good reminder that perceptions are fickle and that in any timeconcessions may once again become the “flavor of the month.”

CONCLUSION

Forest concessions are more than a mere legacy of the colonial system. Inplaces such as the Congo Basin, they can also be seen as a public–private


partnership based on the delegation of corporate, social, and environmentalresponsibility. In response to the question, “is there, today, a rationale for forestconcessions,?” our answer is positive in the context of low population density,remote areas lacking infrastructure, and weak local and central governments,inasmuch as alternatives are limited in the absence of easy access to markets.

Both geographical explanations and economic justifications thus supportthe rationale for large-scale forest concessions in many parts of the world.Yet as the analysis of the political dimension of concessions shows, theseelements alone do not explain why concessions are vilified by some actorswhile being hailed as a success by others. It is only by delving into the polit-ical construction of the concept that one can understand why forest conces-sions now stand at the crossroads as an instrument of neocolonialism, assome might claim, and as the key to sustainable development.

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Documents

Can Concessions Be Justified?A Multidisciplinary Perspective from Africa and Beyond