68% of the round logs consumed in 1994 in China were burnt as
wood fuel [21]. Therefore, wood fuel, as a major contributor to
national wood consumption, is an important factor contributing to
deforestation [18].
Stimulated by the devastating floods in 1998, China started in
1999–2000 a nationwide program to protect natural forests. With
the implementation of this program, logging has been strictly
banned in most natural forests and harvesting of fuelwood has
become the major threat to the maintenance of natural and artificial
forests. Since the natural forests are found only in the remote
areas, supply of sufficient wood fuel from other sources instead of
natural forests may determine whether the natural forests can be
adequately protected. Development of fuelwood plots has been one
of the options promoted, but its development has been low, and has
not met the demand of rural communities for wood fuel. Exploration
of other alternative ways of wood fuel production is necessary.
On the other hand, increase in temperature due to emissions of
greenhouse gases (GHG) from burning fossil fuels has also required
actions that help reduce GHG from the atmosphere [22]. For this
reason, conversion of conventional cropland to short rotation of
woody bioenergy crops (SRWC) or short rotation coppice (SRC) and
reforestation have been promoted in many developed and developing
countries [23–26]. Scenarios, however, are very different in
China from those in other countries. The fact that the per capita
cultivated land is less than 0.1 ha per capita in China [27] makes it
difficult or even impossible to convert conventional cropland to
SRWC or SRC like in many other countries [24,26,28]. In addition,
among biomass energy, wood is the most preferred and already
most widely used in rural areas of China. Local people do not use
herbaceous plants as fuel unless wood fuels are not available.
Development of perennial herbaceous energy crops as household
fuels may be difficult. Therefore, wood fuel should be developed
not at the expense of food production. Using marginal lands to
grow wood fuel in China, while challenging, has great potential to
help solve the trade-off between environmental protection and
livelihood improvement.
We present in this article a case study demonstrating that wood
fuel requirements are fully met through a marginal land-based
mulberry (Morus alba Linn.) planting, planted basically for sericulture
development. The planting of mulberry on marginal lands
and development of sericulture has become one of the mainstays of
the local economy in Ningnan, a typical mountainous county in
China’s southwestern Sichuan Province. Mulberry trees are planted
in great numbers to support sericulture development. Apart from
providing fresh leaf biomass for rearing silkworms, mulberry trees
are also an excellent energy crop because they grow very well after
coppicing and can produce large amounts of wood fuel every year.
The large amount of wood fuel produced in this system can not only
solve the problem of wood fuel shortage that many rural areas are
faced with but may also provide additional income generating
options due to wood fuel in excess of local requirements. Extensive
mulberry planting on marginal lands can also help mitigate climate
change caused by increasing CO2 in the atmosphere