Emulating Indian agroforestry-based wood value chain for improving the wood-based economy in Central Asian Countries

Central Asian Countries (CACs) namely Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are forest scarce and wood deficit countries as such they largely depend on wood imports for meeting their domestic demand. The region has mainly extracontinental climate with generally low rainfall which makes suitable conditions for forests rare. Historically, their forest resources have been subjected to significant exploitation, and the current wood production remains low. The wood value chains in CACs are in the early stage of development and the current forest development programmes for required plantation could benefit from further enhancements. India, on the other hand, is a large country and has fairly large forest area of 72.69 M ha, forest cover of 71.53 M ha (21.76%), and tree cover of 1.12 M ha (3.41%). However, most of its forests are under conservation plans and the total wood harvests from them are less than 2 M m3 against a demand of around 100 M m3. Its carefully crafted domestic wood production strategy from agroforestry based plantations and well-developed wood value chains are enabling major wood availability for the bulk of its domestic consumption and some for exports as wood products. Currently 92% of the wood production is produced from agroforestry plantations and small share from other Trees Outside Forests (TOFs). Farmers are increasingly growing trees with agriculture crops in agroforestry for sale of wood. Currently the Poplar-based agroforestry is generating around INR 0.2 M/acre/year (1US$=INR 86) and that of Eucalyptus up to INR 0.1 M/acre/year. Such initiatives of massive agroforestry plantations for wood production are missing in CACs. India and CACs have some commonalities in term of a few similar geographical locations, and tree resources; and common agriculture based economies. The paper identified some potential and successful case studies of Poplar and Willow agroforestry based wood value chains from India and suggests their emulation to increase the wood based economy in CACs.

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