- Title
- Urban fuelwood demand and markets in a small town in South Africa: Livelihood vulnerability and alien plant control
- Creator
- Shackleton, Charlie M, McConnachie, Matthew M, Chauke, Maphambe I, Mentz, J, Sutherland, F, Gambiza, James, Jones, R
- Subject
- To be catalogued
- Date
- 2006
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/181224
- Identifier
- vital:43710
- Identifier
- xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13504500609469697"
- Description
- Fuelwood is the primary energy for most households throughout the developing world. With increasing urbanization and declining local availability of fuelwood, a growing proportion of households obtain their fuelwood by purchasing it. These fuelwood markets are the key nexus in supply and demand scenarios and can be potentially significant points for intervention to address energy security amongst the urban poor. This paper reports on the fuelwood demand and marketing in a small town in South Africa. Despite the availability of more modern fuels and state subsidization of electricity, fuelwood was still used by half the households. Annual demand was 1.2 t per household. Over half of the households bought their fuelwood requirements because local stocks were limited. Those households that did collect their own fuelwood were significantly poorer than households that purchased fuelwood, as well as households that did not use fuelwood at all. Fuelwood markets operated through 45-60 vendors who transported fuelwood from further afield. Income from the fuelwood trade was low, but was strongly linked to hours worked. Thus, vendors working a full week did earn a meaningful income, especially in the context of high unemployment in the area. Fuelwood vendors also provided casual employment opportunities for unskilled labour. Most vendors harvested fuelwood from commonage lands, with most of the wood being from alien species. Local stocks of wood are declining in the face of constant transformation of commonage to residential areas, and a national water and biodiversity conservation programme to eradicate alien plants. This decline poses a threat to the financial viability of fuelwood markets. Yet, an opportunity exists to incorporate the vendors into the alien plant clearing programme, since they already perform such a function.
- Format
- computer, online resource, application/pdf, 1 online resource (12 pages), pdf
- Publisher
- Taylor and Francis Online
- Language
- English
- Relation
- International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, Shackleton, C.M., McConnachie, M., Chauke, M.I., Mentz, J., Sutherland, F., Gambiza, J. and Jones, R., 2006. Urban fuelwood demand and markets in a small town in South Africa: Livelihood vulnerability and alien plant control. International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, 13(6), pp.481-491, International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology volume 13 number 6 p. 481 2006 1745-2627
- Rights
- Publisher
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor and Francis Online Terms and Conditions Statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/terms-and-conditions)
- Rights
- Open Access
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Collections
RU Department of Environmental Science
Gambiza, James (Prof)
Shackleton, Charles Michael (Distinguished Prof)
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Urban fuelwood demand and markets in a small town in South Africa Livelihood vulnerability and alien plant control.pdf | 339 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |