Present problems and futurity of fuelwood users around marginal tea plantations in Matara & Badulla districts, Sri Lanka

抄録

Palihakkara I.R¹,², A.J.Mohommad², INOUE Makoto²
Fuelwood plays an important role as an energy source for Sri Lanka’s key industries such as tea factories, small to medium scale industries. By collecting data from these fuelwood users, this study explores fuelwood supply chains to users and identifies problems faced and futurity of fuelwood users around 20 km radios distance from Marginal tea plantations (MTP) in Matara and Badulla Districts. The result showed Tea factories are major user of fuelwood while main supply are from private sector. Major problems identified are price inflation of fuelwood, scarcity of preferred species in MTP, small quantity and fragmented supply from MTP, inaccessibility of local fuelwood sources for users as well as middle men and collection of legally prohibited species. Due to these problems, industries are either totally or partially being replaced by other energy sources such as electricity or to fossil fuel in future.