Caracterização da exploração florestal e restrições ao manejo florestal em Angola: o caso de Cabinda.

Abstract

To leam about the process of forest exploitation m Angola and the restrictions to management at the present was the great challenge proposed for this study. Thus, a case study was developed in the Enclave of Cabinda, in the year 2001 to obtain inputs for use in subsequent research and to inform the formulation of public policies. The methodology consisted of application of interviews, bibhographical revision, documentary and descriptive observation, carried out in the logging areas (Necuto - Buco Zau and Luali - Belize), at the companies that work with the forest exploitation and searches in reports of govemment institutions. With the observations obtained it can be concluded that; access to the forest resource is done by licensing through the Institute of Forest Development - IDF; the commercial use of the forest simply seeks the extraction of the wood; the communities in the extraction places use the forest in survival leveis, tliree groups of actors were identifíed as involved in the forest exploration in Cabinda, to wit, the commumty, the entrepreneurs with units of transformation and the entrepreneurs without units of transfonnation. Extraction is dependent on the externai market, which dictated the species to be extracted. In the period of 1996-2000 alone the externai market consumed 84,9% of the extracted wood, most of it in logs. However lhe extraction techniques are radimentaiy, without management plarming and programming. Four restrictive factors to the forest handling were identifíed; ecological, economical, social and institutional. The ecological factors link to the ignorance of the ecological behaviour of the species and of the forest, to the ignorance of the volumetric potential and of the average increment of the Angolan forest, due to lack of forest inventories; The economical factors were identifíed with under-valorisation of the forest and waste in the logging process with no use being made of the non-timber and lesser known species, lack of financial viability due to the low taxes collected by the govemment allied the instability of the markets; The social factors are consequences of the lack of specialised human resources, lack of safety at work and low wages that do not attract youths nor people with higher education to the forest sector, hindering the application of more appropriate technologies; the institutional íactors were identifíed as absence of research and of an updated forest legislation that substitutes the legislation in effect from the colonial period, ordinance n.° 44531/62 ofAugust 21, 1962.