Valuation of fuelwood from agroforestry systems: a methodological perspective

This article presents a methodology for the valuation of agroforestry with respect to fuelwood supply for cooking and its opportunity cost. The share of fuelwood consumption declined gradually from 78 to 67% and 30 to 14% for cooking in rural and urban India, during 1993–94 to 2011–12, respectively. However, the total consumption of fuelwood increased significantly from 106 to 130 million tonnes (Mt) in the corresponding period due to population growth. Fuelwood and chips are in the process of substitution with Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) gradually and many LPG-adopter households continued to use fuelwood as well. The results verified that the maximum quantity of fuelwood for cooking was obtained from agroforestry systems (64%), followed by forests (24%), and from common property resources (12%) during 2011–12. The annual total calorific energy generated from agroforestry through fuelwood, was estimated at 1297.4 PJ, valued at US$ 4053 million. Around 103 Mt of dry dung cake needs to be burnt to generate the same amount of energy. It is estimated that by replacing dung cake by fuelwood derived from agroforestry systems, could save US$ 1116.6 million annually, sparing the dung cake for use as farmyard manure. In another scenario, if entire energy derived from fuelwood obtained from the agroforestry system is to be replaced by LPG, it would require over 196.4 million additional domestic LPG connections that would incur an expenditure of about US$ 36,487.5 million at the country level for the year 2011–12.