Evaluation of the impact of fuelwood tree planting programmes in Tanzania

The rapid growth in Tree Planting for Fuelwood (TPF) program indicates the importance of taking care of the increasing demand for fuelwood globally. TPF programs in Tanzania aim to sustainably meet the rising demand for fuelwood. We evaluate the impact of TPF programs on the number of trees planted and those planted for fuelwood. Using survey data, we employ the Heckman and Propensity Score Matching techniques to estimate whether households plant trees for fuelwood and can identify tree species that would influence them to plant trees. We find positive and significant impacts of TPF programs on the number of trees planted and those planted for fuelwood. Households who participated in TPF programs have significantly more trees than their counterparts. Furthermore, we observed a positive and significant influence of TPF programs on forest policy in terms of harvesting tree products for trade, household assets, farm size, household head’s age, tree species and income from selling fuelwood. Although the forest policy on harvesting is associated with households’ participation in TPF programs, in practice there is no freedom to harvest and transport tree products obtained from farms, and both fuelwood from farms or natural forests both face restrictive transport tariffs. The results further indicate that households plant trees mainly to sell fuelwood. These results can be used by policymakers to promote tree planting on farms to obtain an income from fuelwood, treating it as a business opportunity. This paper makes a significant contribution to the literature due to the approaches used for estimation. Our results also suggest that fuelwood which receives less attention when it comes to sustainable energy production may need a regulatory authority like petroleum, natural gas and electricity which are regulated by the energy authority in Tanzania.