Woodfuel Integrated Supply/Demand Overview Mapping - WISDOM: a geographical representation of woodfuel priority areas.

Abstract

Rudi Drigo is a consultant in the Wood Energy Planning and Policy Development Component, FAO-EC Partnership Programme, Rome. Omar R. Masera is Professor of Energy and the Environment in the Institute of Ecology at the National University of Mexico (UNAM). Miguel A. Trossero is a Senior Forestry Officer in the Forest Products Division, FAO Forestry Department, Rome. The patterns of woodfuel production and consumption and the associated social, economic and environmental impacts are complex and site specific. Broad generalizations about woodfuel use and availability at the regional, national and even subnational levels still commonly lead to biased assumptions and consequently to poor planning and ineffective action. Thorough local studies of woodfuel flows have sometimes been implemented, but they are expensive and time consuming, and they fail to provide the national perspective needed for the design of effective national policies. There is therefore a need for methodologies and tools that provide country-wide synoptic views of local wood energy supply and demand patterns based on the consistent integration of data and information. Thus FAO, in cooperation with the Institute of Ecology of the National University of Mexico (UNAM), is currently developing Woodfuel Integrated Supply/Demand Overview Mapping (WISDOM), a spatially explicit method for visualizing woodfuel priority areas or “hot spots”. Although it is still largely in the formulation phase, WISDOM has been applied in a case study in Mexico and will soon be tested in other countries. It is based on geographic information system (GIS) technology, which offers new possibilities for combining, or integrating, statistical and spatial information about the production (supply side) and consumption (demand side) of woodfuels (fuelwood, charcoal and other biofuels). This accessible, user-friendly technology makes it possible to display the results of spatial analysis in easily understandable ways to public officials and private citizens as well as to the scientific community (Marble, 1998). Multi-scale analyses make it possible to show local situations throughout an entire country or region. WISDOM is intended as a strategic planning tool, rather than an operational one. Its purpose is to integrate existing, currently dispersed information to obviate the need for costly collection of new data. WISDOM must adapt case by case to the available information, whether it be direct (woodfuel consumption and trends; sustainable woodfuel productivity) or indirect (proxy variables related to woodfuels demand and supply).