Charcoal production and use is demonised for driving deforestation, generating greenhouse gas emissions, and damaging human health. While all this cannot be denied, charcoal also plays highly important social functions as a livelihood coping strategy, and its pervasiveness is driven by a complex set of supply and demand side factors. In this post I discuss the production and of charcoal in Zambia, before exploring the roles it plays in local economies and communities. Finally, I will outline some suggested ways to address charcoal and mitigate its negative environment footprint and promote shifts to cleaner alternative energy sources.
Charcoal in Zambia
The charcoal sector in Zambia is estimated to contribute to forest degradation on 190,000 hectares annually. The charcoal sector contributes 3% to national GDP and informally employ half a million rural producers. A study in rural Copperbelt Province found that 50% of households are involved in the charcoal trade.
Around 8 tonnes of wood are required for every 1.3 tonnes of charcoal produced. Some tree species are preferred for charcoal production, and these species will be removed first leading to forest thinning and degradation. Once those preferred species have been fully depleted, cutters are forced to remove other tree species, including those playing vital roles in local livelihoods and ecosystem services. Without sustainable management, off-take can exceed the capacity of the forest to regenerate leading to full forest clearance with negative implications for non-charcoal based livelihoods, biodiversity, and ecosystem services like water filtration, soil structure integrity, and carbon sequestration.
Charcoal in Zambia is predominantly produced using earth kilns. These kilns have a very low rate of conversion efficiency: it has been recorded at in some cases only 10% of wood biomass is converted into charcoal. Charcoal value chains therefore contribute to climate change through removal of trees, burning in kilns, and then burning again by the end user.
There are different types of charcoal value chains. On one hand, there are small-scale producers engaging in charcoal production to meet basic livelihood needs of income and fuel for cooking. They may engage in charcoal production year-round, seasonally, or when fallen on hard times. Often these producers engage in vertically integrated value chains remaining within the family or local community, although they may also sell to aggregators where necessary.
On the other hand, there is a still largely informal but more organised trade. This tends to be bulk trade for commercial sale, involving more frontier charcoal production areas, and often driven by stakeholders who are steps removed from forest-based livelihoods. These types of charcoal value chain may potentially involve the same people, financers, and transport routes as other illegal trades such as the illegal wildlife trade and informal mining.
Linking these two value chains together are aggregators who buy charcoal in rural areas and sell with large profit margins in urban centres and to institutional buyers. These aggregators often have a high degree of influence and control, for example around price setting. Prices for charcoal usually rise in the rainy season due to accessibility issues, producers returning to the agriculture sector, and damp kilns leading to lower supply.
New and old areas of charcoal production often exhibit different drivers and characteristics. Older charcoal producing areas tend to have more agriculture-based livelihoods with vertically integrated charcoal production for domestic use or as an income generating activity in the context of low productivity agriculture and limited alternatives of safety nets.
The degree to which charcoal production and trade is formally regulated through licensing seems to vary, with formal due process often not being evenly applied. A 2021 study showed that if all due formal fees were applied the charcoal value chain would not be economically viable. This suggests that regulations are not properly enforced and informal deals with officials may enable trade to continue at a profit. Across the value chain, it tends to be the traders and transporters who are most visible and come under scrutiny for licensing rather than producers.
Charcoal as a social safety net
Charcoal value chains are characterised by strong social capital and ‘shadow’ rules of the game, for example surrounding credit systems, price setting, bribery of officials, and social safety nets. There is an unwritten but largely accepted social settlement that charcoal operates as an informal social safety net and coping mechanism. It is an income generating activity to fall back on in the absence of other options or when fallen on hard times, for example ex-livestock owners moving away from increasingly drier southern parts of Zambia. Farmers may also engage in the charcoal trade seasonally, for example in the dry season where there is little agricultural work. The income from charcoal production may then be invested into the purchasing of agricultural inputs for the new planting season. More research is needed to understand whether provision of targeted social cash transfers and cash+ alternative livelihood support can displace need for engagement in charcoal production as a social safety net.
In a 2021 study, almost two thirds of respondents had entered the trade in the last five to six years, most likely linked to economic slowdown in other sectors. This corresponds to an upswing in rates of deforestation and forest degradation. Although there is insufficient data to draw firm conclusions, it is likely that due to Covid there are many more newly unemployed and landless people likely to have entered the charcoal value chain and other informal sectors like artisanal mining.
More ‘frontier’ charcoal production, for example though encroachment into forest reserves by those displaced from other areas or livelihoods, is likely to involve less stable value chains involving higher volumes of production sold to bulk traders. These incomers are less likely to be bound by existing social norms, and a ‘grab it quick’ mentality has been noted in these new charcoal producing areas with evidence of a rental chainsaw market developing to support production. Working with chiefs and strengthening community forest management groups to better incentivise and support forest protection and reduce encroachment is a strategy employed with some success by civil society groups in Zambia.
Addressing charcoal demand
Charcoal is the fuel of choice or necessity for a variety of different groups, each requiring a different set of solutions to reduce demand.
A major market for charcoal – and potentially a low hanging fruit in reducing demand – is the large-scale commercial market. Charcoal is used in large quantities in the mining sector, particularly cobalt, manganese, and some copper production. These are all minerals needed for a transition to a global green economy, for example in electric vehicle production, and use of charcoal threatens the integrity of this future green economy. Another major institutional use of charcoal is to heat chicken houses. While alternatives do exist, including using agricultural by-products for biogas generation, these are not readily available or affordable in Zambia. Charcoal traders supplying these large-scale institutional markets tend to operate in cartel-like structures that exclude small and medium traders.
Zambian charcoal is also produced for export to neighbouring countries. This is likely due to preferential prices in neighbouring countries, especially Malawi, which itself has suffered from high rates of deforestation. However, much less is known about this export trade, for example who is providing the finance and how it is contributing to deforestation.
Charcoal is the most widely known and widely used fuel across all income groups. In rural areas there are usually few alternatives to charcoal given low grid connectivity of around 4%. In a 2021 study, 75% of all urban households saw charcoal as first choice for domestic cooking, and 60% of high-income households reported using charcoal every day. This shows that charcoal use is not just linked to poverty, but it is also used as part of fuel stacking in the absence of reliable on grid connections or alternative energy sources. Charcoal can be bought in bags of varying sizes and prices, meaning it is widely accessible to people across the socio-economic spectrum. There are also key cultural drivers behind its use, and regardless of access to alternatives charcoal remains the fuel of choice for cooking certain meals or for specific occasions (as in other cultures for BBQs or braais). According to users, charcoal’s key attributes are its affordability, accessibility, and cooking attributes. Electricity use is seen as aspirational but cost and access barriers are high.
Actions to address the charcoal problem
With regular load shedding of up to 8 hours per day, poor on-grid connectivity, limited clean off-grid alternatives, limited alternative income generating activities, and the continuing need for social safety nets, charcoal is unlikely to disappear. Some organisations are looking into how charcoal value chains can be repurposed to retain the benefits for local livelihoods, but with an improved environmental footprint.
Sustainable eco-charcoal production through planned off-take and improved kilns can be a way of repurposing existing charcoal value chains. this may also involve the establishment of of charcoal producer groups for awareness raising on the risks of unsustainable charcoal production and for sourcing preferential buyers for the eco-charcoal. The promotion of Assisted Natural Regeneration can be an effective (albeit time consuming) way to restore and renew wood resources to enable off-take for charcoal without exceeding capacity of the miombo woodland to regenerate. A market is growing in Zambia for branded, sustainably produced and legal charcoal for domestic use and in large supermarkets and hotels. For producers, sustainable charcoal can offer higher prices through these higher end markets, without the risk of criminalisation. However, sustainable charcoal is expected to be more expensive to produce and purchase than charcoal produced informally outside of official licensing. This may make it uncompetitive in a country where cheap charcoal is readily available.
I suggest approaches to addressing deforestation for charcoal production should consider:
- Supporting innovation, sensitisation, and scaling of viable alternatives to charcoal as domestic fuel of choice;
- Supporting existing charcoal value chains to become more environmentally sustainable through managed off-take, improved kilns, and improved cookstoves, with the eventual aim of transitioning to cleaner alternatives;
- Viable alternatives for large-scale commercial uses, for example in chicken production, and incentivising shifts in production;
- Charcoal plays a role as a livelihood social safety net for large numbers of people, and alternatives social support systems are needed to fill this gap;
- Strengthening of the Forestry Department’s formal charcoal regulatory system to make more sustainably produced eco-charcoal a viable option.
- Land tenure and forest governance systems will need strengthening to make forests valuable to people and enable more sustainable community management, for example to avoid forest encroachment by incomers into an area.
If charcoal is seen only as an environmental problem without recognising the important roles it plays in the local community and economy, and the differentiated value chains that it travels through, charcoal will persist as a driver of deforestation and climate change.
NW Impact Consulting 