The Rational Use Of Forest Resources In Central African Republic And Its Impact On Economic Growth

Protection and rational utilization of natural resources become more and more important in order to meet the increasing demand for wood raw material,Tourism and Non-Timber Forest Products.Among the natural resources,forests are important not only as a source of wood but as the means of protecting the hills thereby regulating stream flow,water shed protection,and reducing the of soil erosion,for tourism,NTFPs provision,wildlife protection among many others.In this term forests are considered as the pillar of the protection of all natural resources as we can see from forests services.The problems of rational use and the sustainable management of forests were raised after a stream of declarations during different conferences of United Nation.The economic development of African countries especially CAR cannot be conceived without the exploitation of their natural resources nerveless their forests which are one of their major wealth.The challenge is therefore to reconcile economic development with the preservation of the goods and services provided by forests by ensuring their sustainable management.Therefore,this work is aimed to analyze the accurate effect of forest exploitation on the CAR's economy using quantitative tools considering the way in which forest resources are managed.Our research focuses on the forest exploitation in CAR,located mostly in the closed forest of the south-west part of Central African Republic which forms the northern farthest point of the Congo Basin forest(Atlas 2010).Out of the total surface area of 623,000 km2 in Central African Republic territory,283,136 km2(45.6%)are forested,with a predominance of the open forest.The closed forest covers about 92,500 km2,or 15% of the national territory.The study uses the long run and short run analysis through ECM model and Engel-Granger cointegration.Structural change analysis is also one of the key innovation points in this work in order to conduct a policy analysis through reforms that occurred in the forestry sector of CAR in terms of rationality which is very important for forest management.The analysis is made about time-series data from in the range of 1970-2015 from secondary sources.The results of this work show us that in the long run analysis,the Granger-Engel co-integration test shows that all the independent variables have the long run relationship with the dependent variable.In fact,in a long run model there likely exist an error correction term which is the residual of the model.And after testing the stationarity of this error correction term we confirm the relevance of the long run relationship since the ECT does not have unit root.The long run model shows that agriculture sector which is an important sector to the CAR's has a positive and significant effect on the GDP growth.Agriculture was included to the model because it is the main threat factor to the forest.Literature review shows that this agriculture will experience a future development with regards to its potential(essentially large,suitable and available and open access water)and this will be to the expense of forests.Forest rent and roundwood have a negative and significant effect on the economy of the country and we suppose the reason for forest rent is the weakness of the economy performance in the sub-region(Central African region).In fact the economy of CAR is the most fragile in the sub-region because of the long period of military conflict(more than two decades)between different groups.This makes the country importing almost everything from abroad that leading its balance of payment always to be deficit so that any international index in the country is probably negative.Regarding roundwood,although the result is relevant with a priori expectation(hypothesis)but we suppose also there is a data problem.Logs production which the main exportable wood product in CAR also has a positive and significant effect on the economy but we noticed that the affectation percentage is to low(0.08% change to GDP).This is due to the lack of control or traceability of the product and the luck of strong institutions(corruption)in the forestry sector.Finally woodfuel which is the main energy source for household in CAR has also a positive and significant effect on the economy with a high percentage(1.25%).In the sort run all the independent variables(agriculture value added,forest rent,roundwood,sawn and veneer logs and wood fuel)have a short run relationship with the dependent variable(GDP)and behave in the same way as in the long run.The model also shows that error correction term(ECT(-1))has the expected sign and significance at 5 percent level and therefore,attests that for any disequilibrium from long run path in short run 46 percent of disequilibrium from the long run path is corrected each year due to the existence of the error correction term and its statistical significance.The analysis of the rational use of forests through the structural change resulting from the Chow breaking point test shows the existence of break point in the wood production trend.The validity of this test also attests the existence of a structural change in the way forest resources are managed and lead to a change in the effect of wood products on GDP positively and significant.This is the one percent change in SVLOGS will lead to 0.04 percent change in GDP.The change came from the application of some reforms in the forest department with regards to some policies undertaken by the government of Central African Republic in terms of rational use of forests.We found out also the year 1989 was an important break point in the management of forest in CAR.After this year,the government gave more power to the forest ministry by creating more departments in order to improve its role as actor in the resources management towards a rational use.This work suggests that:1-Since the agriculture is the factor that contributes positively to the economy of Central African Republic and plays an important role but at the same time it is the main factor that can probably threat forests,the government should implement some policy to regulate the use of land so that forest land should not be used for agriculture.In CAR there is not a regulation up to date that can regulate land use;the Land Code is still under project.The government can also promote some measures such as special zone for agriculture even in the forest zone.2-Although the results show that the implementation of rational use policy has a significant importance in the contribution of forest products to the economy of Central African Republic but the government still has work to do because these contributions is below the expectation.When we look at the trend of the production of logs that we used as proxy to forest products in the structure change model,from 1990 to 2000 the slope is upwards but from 2000 up to now the slope is downwards.This means there is lost both in terms of production and economic gain.So the government has to make more effort in terms of production control but also fiscal reform because compared to other countries in the subregion CAR has the highest forest tax rate.3-Because of the low production of transformed products(plywood,sawnwood,paper,etc.)which are products with high productivity and unemployment reduction.The government should make more pressor on forest companies to reach the transformation percentage required by the Forest Code in power.4-The government should deal with the corruption in the sector because all these recommendations will not be possible if a strong institution does not exist.5-The government should promote the PVA-FLEGT agreement to which it affiliated since 2011 in order to enhance the safe governance in its forestry sector.6-Forest companies should be loyal to all regulations and low in power in terms of rational use in order to improve the contributions of the sector to the economy.