The precious, fragrant resin is the scent of the festive season and rising in popularity in the wellness industry – but its natural source is being decimated.
Salaban Salad Muse has built his whole life around frankincense.
Living the small town of Dayaha in the Sanaag region of Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia, he works as a seasoned harvester of the famously aromatic resin, obtained only from the Boswellia tree.
Every year, Salad Muse camps for three to six months in a cave near the site he owns with these trees on it. Each day he heads out the land, owned and tended by his family for generations. He moves from tree to tree, inspecting the bark for pests, scraping back sand and tending to seedlings he planted earlier in the season.
But the fate of these groves, and the entire livelihood of frankincense harvesters, is hanging in the balance. As groves fail, the local and global industries built up around frankincense are being forced to reconsider how this precious substance is produced, traced and sold around the world.
Stephen Johnson Frankincense is a resin produced by various species of Boswellia tree, such as these B. sacra trees in Somaliland which are classified as near threatened (Credit: Stephen Johnson)Stephen Johnson
Frankincense is a resin produced by various species of Boswellia tree, such as these B. sacra trees in Somaliland which are classified as near threatened (Credit: Stephen Johnson)
Frankincense is famously associated with the biblical sacred offering gifted to the baby Jesus alongside gold and myrrh from the three magi. It has also been used for millennia in Indian and Chinese medicines, it is of the oldest commodities traded globally. Today it has become a staple of the $5.6tn (£4.2tn) wellness industry, used to produce a fragrant cloud of smoke used for meditation and medicinal healing, as well as the rituals woven into centuries of Catholic worship.
For Salad Muse, however, it has far more earthly associations. He and many other harvesters in Somaliland and surrounding countries rely on frankincense for their income.
It can take 10 years or more for a tree to recover from damage inflicted by excessive harvesting
The Horn of Africa is one of the main areas of production globally, including Somaliland, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan. Today, though, local tensions, meagre payments to farmers, uncertain regulation and a rising global demand are putting pressure on some harvesters in these countries to tap trees to unsustainable levels.
A world away from the jubilant festive story, the sought-after commodity begins with several subspecies of the Boswellia tree, a hardy desert tree with papery bark and sparse leaves, often found clinging to cliffs in Somaliland’s dry highlands. Harvesters in Somaliland scrape resin from the bark of wild Boswellia trees, often working long hours for pay based on resin output, under a system of volatile prices and informal supply chains. They can also be left vulnerable to middlemen who capitalise on conflict in the area and a lack of government oversight, experts say.
Like birch water and maple syrup, frankincense is harvested through a process known as tapping, where incisions made in the bark of the tree allow the resin to seep out. The sap hardens into “tears” over several weeks, which harvesters then scrape off the tree.
Alamy A fragrant and aromatic resin with a woody, spicy scent, frankincense has been used for thousands of years for incense and traditional remedies (Credit: Alamy)Alamy
A fragrant and aromatic resin with a woody, spicy scent, frankincense has been used for thousands of years for incense and traditional remedies (Credit: Alamy)
Traditional resin tapping is done sparingly, with careful incisions. But today, Boswellia trees are often tapped far more than they can cope with, causing long-term damage to the valued tree. According to a 2022 report, it can take 10 years or more for a tree to recover from damage inflicted by excessive harvesting.
Many other factors are also affecting the trees. Climate change is already impacting some areas. Outbreaks of a wood boring beetle has also been devastating. Populations of B. papyrifera, the main source of frankincense found in Ethiopia and Sudan, are now collapsing throughout their geographic range, according to a 2019 Nature study. Over 75% of populations studied lack young trees, it found, and natural regeneration has “been absent for decades”, due to a combination of “cattle grazing, frequent burns and reckless tapping”.
The study noted that other Boswellia species facing similar threats (the frankincense trade remains overwhelmingly dependent on wild trees rather than cultivation). Within 20 years, the study projected, frankincense production will drop by half.
Researchers have, however, noted the difficulty of assessing trees in Somaliland due to the local tensions.
Frankincense is “surely threatened”, although there is only good and available data for a few species, says Anjanette DeCarlo, founder of the Save The Frankincense project and co-author of the 2022 report about damage to Boswellia trees from excess harvesting. For several species, however, there are many individual trees left, she says. “It all depends on the main threats within each location such as grazing by camels, extensive tapping, extreme weather (flash floods for example) and mining.”
Planting frankincense at a larger scale, from West Africa to Ethiopia, could also help the situation, she adds. “It could be a good boost. It would increase the probability of survival of the species and of frankincense in the long term tremendously.”
However, others have noted that a rise in cultivation could also carry risks, such as stimulating conflicts over land or water.
Getty Images A farmer in Bosaso, Somalia, harvests frankincense ‘tears’ from a Boswellia tree (Credit: Getty Images)Getty Images
A farmer in Bosaso, Somalia, harvests frankincense ‘tears’ from a Boswellia tree (Credit: Getty Images)
Political upheaval in Somalia and Somaliland can leave harvesters exposed to spot contracts – a buy-now, pay-now trade involving multiple steps of middlemen, says Andy Thornton, a market expert on frankincense and managing partner at Silvan Ingredient Ecosystem, a resilient supply chain consultancy.
By the time the resin reaches Western incense suppliers, it can sell for up to $60-100 (£45-75) per kg, he adds, but harvesters in Somaliland typically receive only $2-5 (£1.50-3.70) per kg, a mere 3% of the final value.
“The people who are doing the exporting price are those who have enough money to be able to aggregate the supply chains and then take the risk on the transfer of it,” says Thornton.
The global frankincense market was estimated at $363m (£271m) in 2023, trading some 6,000-7,000 tonnes each year, and is projected to almost double in value to over $700m (£520m) by 2032. Of the 24 species of Boswellia tree spanning the globe, Somaliland’s two key native species have particularly prized properties and aroma. The demand for Boswellia frereana, native to northern Somalia and Somaliland, is so strong that international buyers have coined it “the king of frankincense”. It’s made Somaliland’s frankincense trade one of the largest globally, with estimated exports of at least 1,000 tonnes each year.
Over-harvesting of Boswellia trees usually comes as a result of economic pressure, says Thornton, but he also points to environmental strains. “The more climate and water stress, the less viable pastoralism becomes,” he says. “So, when prices depress but frankincense is the last income, harvesters have little choice but to cut more trees.”
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Stephen Johnson is director of FairSource Botanicals, a US-based ethical sourcing consultancy, and Dayaxa Frankincense Export Company (DFEC), a Somaliland-based frankincense exporter. He says the problem stems from the market having little oversight and there being no recognised global frankincense certification.
“What’s missing is the business incentive to say, well, if the market cares about traceability and sustainability, we want to do these programmes to be able to more effectively engage with the market,” he says. “Then you [would] have a lot more money per unit that you could apply to traceability programmes.”
Johnson is now trying to build this. Since 2023, his team at DFEC has used simple mobile data collection tools in Somalia and Oman to build supply chain maps, linking each batch of resin to GPS-stamped photos and ecological data.
Stephen Johnson DFEC’s app aims to help farmers show they are tapping Boswellia trees sustainably, increasing the value of their frankincense on the market (Credit: Stephen Johnson)Stephen Johnson
DFEC’s app aims to help farmers show they are tapping Boswellia trees sustainably, increasing the value of their frankincense on the market (Credit: Stephen Johnson)
The DFEC services contain three main features: a traceability app, a tree health app and a capacity building feature. Harvesters register with DFEC through the traceability app, then bring the resin to its collection centre. The company records when and where the resin is harvested, inspect the quality and log its movement from village to warehouse, to shipment and finally to the end buyer.
“Even the most remote harvesters can be paid via Zad,” says Johnson, referring to a mobile wallet system used widely in the region.
A separate app is also offered to trace and monitor tree health. Agents from DFEC conduct site visits to take images of the trees as well as measurements such as age, height and number of incisions. They log this data onto the tree health app, where trees can be geotagged, and monitor the trees via check-ups every six months.
Those trees matter and the people that are doing that work, the women who are breaking their backs, sitting for 12 hours a day sorting these resins, they all matter – Anjanette DeCarlo
Results from the initial pilot schemes of the app, conducted from January 2023 to June 2024, showed over 8,000 harvesters had been reached. DFEC also says it supported some 1,400 harvesters to adapt to climate change through workshops and trainings to help them care for the trees. Seven tonnes of resin have so far been purchased from local communities through the app, with over 3,000 individual frankincense trees registered across dozens of farms.
DeCarlo, who has been involved with the scheme, says such verifiable, data driven traceability is critical to de-risk supply chains and create more ethical partnerships. “[It] empowers the very people who directly manage the trees,” she says. “Furthermore, it gives buyers an opportunity to invest sustainability.”
The app’s track system “seems to be working very well and makes close following, combined with credibility, possible,” says Frans Bongers, a professor of forest ecology at Wageningen University in The Netherlands who has worked on frankincense for decades but is not involved with the app. It is also comforting for resin users to know that the product is so closely watched and followed, he says, with long term monitoring of tree health becoming a possibility. “Of course this comes at a cost,” he adds.
Despite the potential of apps, some researchers argue more work still needs to be done to encourage demand for more sustainable frankincense among those purchasing the incense.
In particular, DeCarlo says the Catholic Church could use its outsized soft power to influence the market positively. While the Church accounts for just 5% of the global frankincense trade, she argues that few institutions wield its symbolic and moral influence.
“It almost makes me a little emotional imagining the pope making a statement or initiative because of how much of an impact that could have,” she says. “It would have ripple effects.
“Those trees matter and the people that are doing that work, the women who are breaking their backs, sitting for 12 hours a day sorting these resins, they all matter.”
BBC