Sustainable Harvest of Non-timber Plant Resources in Tropical Moist Forest: An Ecological Primer
by Charles M. Peters
English Version
Forward: A User's Guide to the Manual
The promise of achieving conservation and development objectives through "green" forest-based enterprises has excited great enthusiasm. Mechanisms are being devised for ensuring sustainable use of forest products: The Forest Stewardship Council's new certification guidelines for sustainable harvest of timber from tropical forests is one example. Most of the world's forests, however, are harvested for both timber and non-timber forest products (NTFPs).In many areas occupied by traditional societies, management for NTFPs is part of traditional forest management, but new demands on forests are leading communities to seek more formal monitoring processes to guide the allocation and management of their shrinking biological resources. At the same time, managers of protected areas are seeking ways to accomodate the needs of traditional forest users while maintaining the integrity of the ecosystems that the protected areas were created to safeguard. To meet the widespread demand for formal guidance to determine ecological sustainable harvest levels for non-timber forest products, the Biodiversity Support Program (BSP) commissioned the production of Sustainable Harvest of Non-timber plant Resources in Tropical Moist Forest: An Ecological Primer.As is true for other guidance for ecological sustainability, this manual provides a subset of the necessary tools. The following discussion will provide the user of this manual with information about what the manual does and does not aim to accomplish.
The reader might think of this manual as a "toolbox" that provides simple and effective tools for the what and how of determining sustainable harvest levels of NTFPs in tropical moist forests. Biology is the ultimate determinant of sustainability-species and ecosystems die, survive, or flourish depending on whether their ecological requirements are met. Nature provides the grist to meet those requirements, but it is the mill of social organizations, individual decision makers, and markets-not nature-that determines whether the ecological requirements of species and ecosystems will be met. Thus, sustainability greatly depends on political, socioeconomic, and institutional factors.
To a large extent, the achievement of sustainability through the use of the biological monitoring tools in this manual will depend on who uses the tools. If the who includes local people and other forest users in the roles of decision- making planners and results analysts, then biological information developed from the toolbox will provide critical material for constructing a sustainable system for harvesting NTFPs. The tools can be applied in widely different situations. In some cases, government agencies will seek to use them to set harvest limits in state forest reserves; in other cases, community groups will use them to assess which of their forest's products offers the best option for sustainable, commercial harvests. In either case, the local forest users must cooperate in the application of the tools if sustainability is to be achieved.
It is, therefore, essential that the reader of this manual think about the who as well as about the what and how. Who will do this work, who will analyze the results, and who will benefit from sustainable harvests? Who is using the forest and for what purposes? What are their priorities? Other manuals are available to help answer these questions and to address other aspects of sustainable harvesting-for example, identifying or creating forest management committees, describing what kinds of information are essential for making decisions, or developing an appropriate process for making decisions on the basis of the information gathered.
This manual is meant to be used in an effort to plan and implement ecologically sustainable extraction of NTFPs. That effort must invoke the levels of user participation essential for (1) choosing products for increased extraction, and (2) monitoring the impact-two important steps for achieving sustainable harvests. The first decision will require an assessment of labor investment, economic and social feasibility, and other demands on the forest and its users. Users have important "indigenous knowledge" about the species, but more importantly, they are critical actors in both extraction and monitoring. They must be actively involved in the six steps outlined in the manual, not just used as a source of limited information.
For example, if this manual is being used by a project manager, the terms of reference he/she develops for analysis of ecological sustainability of a proposed project should include a Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) by the community to ascertain all the uses-present and planned-of the forest. The PRA should determine who makes decisions about forest management and who enforces those decisions. It should consider labor requirements and how they might conflict with existing or planned labor investment in other activities. User communities should rank the importance of NTFPs, both cash and non-cash benefits, as well as rank the importance of game, wood products, and the ecological services that they currently enjoy from the targeted forest. This information should be considered when choosing to increase levels of exploitation of one or more products and to evaluate the impacts of choosing one option over another. In addition, the decision-making body should consider the potential negative effects should the enterprise fail to be sustainable and decide whether the community wants to take that risk.
There is no recipe for achieving people's participation in any activity, just as there is no recipe for achieving ecological sustainability. Adding PRA to a project, for example, is not synonymous with achieving participation. Like the methods outlined in this manual, PRA is a tool. Following Borrini (1993), participation is a process by which people assess their needs and resources, recognize opportunities offered by projects, participate in planning and decision making, act and provide resources to implement projects, acquire benefits from projects, and develop partnerships with other project stakeholders. The steps that are necessary to achieve participation vary from project to project. Planning for participation is a serious part of project planning and requires investment of sign)ficant time and resources. If participation processes are fully established, the ecological monitoring processes described in this manual will provide participants with a powerful means to gain valuable information for sustainable forest-based enterprises.
BSP is also developing a Guide to Social Sustainability that will help project managers, aid agencies, and communities to identify the relevant social processes and organizations that should be engaged in and monitored for longterm ecological sustainability of conservation projects. Since this social primer is not yet complete, a short list of suggested readings is provided below. The two excellent manuals produced by the Joint Forest Management National Support Group in India (Poffenberger, et al., 1992) have combined participatory planning, monitoring, and assessment with tools for measuring biological factors at the local level. The manual from FAO/Bangkok (Borrini, 1993) provides practical guidance for incorporating participation into national level programs. The other books in the list offer specific advice for working with both local and national institutions and provide useful bibliographies.
Finally, the monitoring process described in this manual not only monitors the health of NTFP species, it also provides indicators that may function as an alarm system for telling the resource users that ecological changes are occurring. If the alarm is triggered, the changes may be caused by the NTFP harvest or some other factor. If regeneration is not occurring at the desired levels, users should examine the possibilities of excessive harvests as well as consider alternative explanations. This alarm system can be used to identify ecosystem-level problems only if those problems are causing a negative impact on the species in question. Whether negative changes at the ecosystem level will be mirrored by negative changes in the NTFP species will depend on the ecological role played by the species.
In order to maintain forests for their full range of benefits beyond NTFP production, the tools in this manual should be applied in conjunction with other tools to monitor ecosystem health, including methods developed by traditional societies and those developed by biologists. For example, monitoring the health of wildlife populations can provide an indicator of ecosystem health. The reading list below contains two methods source books for monitoring wildlife populations (Schemnitz, 1980; Caughley and Sinclair, 1994). These methods can be integrated with hunters' traditional methods for monitoring the health of game populations.
A healthy forest can provide many benefits for people. BSP hopes that this manual will help people to gain and apply new information about their forests. As always, BSP seeks feedback on this manual so that an improved second edition will include lessons learned by the manual's users. Spanish and French language editions will be available in 1995.
-Janis B. Alcorn
Biodiversity Support Program
September 1994, Washington, D.C.
Suggested readings to complement this manual:
Borrini, G. 1993. Enhancing People's Participation in the Tropical Forests Action Programme. Food and Agriculture Organization, Bangkok, Thailand.
Brown, M. and B. Wyckoff-Baird. 1992. Designing Integrated Conservation and
Development Projects. Biodiversity Support Program, World Wildlife Fund, Washington, D.C., USA (Available in English, French, and Spanish)
Caughley, G. and A.R.E. Sinclair. 1994. Wildlife Ecology and Management. Blackwell, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Cernea, M.M. 1985. Putting People First: Sociological Variables in Rural Development. Oxford University Press, New York, New York, USA.
Hope, A. and S. Timmel. 1984. Training for Transformation: A Handbook for Community Workers. Mambo Press, Gweru, Zimbabwe.
International Alliance of Indigenous-Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests. 1992. Charter of the Indigenous-Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forest. (Available from Cultural Survival, 215 First Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA, or World Rainforest Movement, 8 Chapel Row, Chadlington OX7 3NA, UK)
Korton, D.C. and R. Klauss, eds. 1984. People-Centered Development: Contributions Toward Theory and Planning Frameworks. Kumarian Press, West Hartford, Connecticut, USA.
Poffenberger, M., B. McGean, A. Khare, and J. Campbell. 1992. Field Methods Manual II. Community Forest Economy and Use Patterns. Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development, Joint Forest Management National Support Group, New Delhi, India. (Available at no cost from Ford Foundation, 55 Lodi Estate, New Delhi - 110 003, India)
Poffenberger, M., B. McGean, N.H. Ravindranath, and M. Gadgil. 1992. Field Methods Manual 1. Diagnostic Tools for Supporting Joint Forest Management Systems. Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development, Joint Forest Management National Support Group, New Delhi, India. (Available at no cost from Ford Foundation, 55 Lodi Estate, New Delhi - 110 003, India)
Schemnitz, S.D. 1980. Wildlife Management Techniques Manual. The Wildlife Society, Washington, D.C., USA
Uphoff, N. 1986. Local Institutional Development: An Analytical Sourcebook with Cases. Kumarian Press, West Hartford, Connecticut, USA.
For useful newsletters and publication series, write to:
Biological Diversity Handbook Series, Smithsonian Institution Press, Department 900, Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17294-0900, USA. (Currently the only volume available is Measuring and Monitoring Biological Diversity: Standard Methods for Amphibians)
Forest, Trees and People Program, Community Forestry Unit, Forestry and Planning Division, Forestry Department, FAO, Via delle Terme di Caracalla, I~0100 Rome, Italy. (FTP Newsletters available in French, Spanish or English; several publication series)
The Forest Stewardship Council-contact Michael Kiernan, WWF, 1250 24th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037, USA or Timothy Synnott, Executive Director of The Forest Stewardship Council, Avenida Hidalgo 502, 68000 Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico. (For information on "Principles and Criteria for Natural Forest Management")
International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), 3 Endsleigh St., London, WCIH ODD, UK (Participatory Rural Appraisal newsletters and publications)
Species Survival Commission Specialist Group on Sustainable Use of Wild Species, IUCN, Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland. (Developing guidelines for sustainable use of wildlife)
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