Costs of Community Forest Management in Colombia: Impacts, Lessons Learned, and Challenges

Abstract

Since 2018, the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development, the FAO, and the European Union have been supporting the implementation of eight pilots involving community natural forest management. To this effect, a characterization of the wood value chain of each forest area was performed along with the compilation of their wood harvesting costs, in order to identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement, as well as to move towards the formalization of initiatives and their sustainability. This article analyzes the costs and the harvesting and market conditions in four forest areas, and it identifies the main barriers that influence the model's sustainability. The results indicate that said barriers are specific to each area and, although there are common factors among areas, they should not be generalized for a national model. These findings suggest the need for specific actions in each cluster, which are presented as recommendations.