In Southeast Asia, smallholder tree-farmers make a substantial contribution to supplies of commercial wood. It is likely this will continue, largely because in these crowded rural landscapes there is limited potential for establishing large contiguous commercial plantations. There is a critical need to promote and increase the productivity of smallholder tree growing to ensure long-term sustainability, and improve household livelihoods and resource security. Improving smallholder productivity is constrained by limited access to land and resources, and numerous types of risks, and we suggest ways in which these constraints could be addressed. This paper briefly reviews the roles and contributions of smallholder tree-farmers in and across regional supply chains, and the regulatory compliance, voluntary verification and market access environments in which they operate. Smallholders are subject to a suite of regulatory controls and private market mechanisms that are often promoted by third parties outside local supply and value chains. National regulations and administrative procedures for smallholder tree value chains are frequently onerous and complicated, and severely hinder smallholder efficiency productivity; these should be minimised and simplified. Imposition of additional compliance and verification systems, such as forest certification, upon smallholders is inappropriate given that risk profile assessments demonstrate that their operations are inherently low risk when appropriately managed and when assessments incorporating scale and intensity criteria are applied. We suggest alternative compliance and verification approaches that are more appropriate for smallholders, and more likely to support their successful participation in wood value chains.
