Sustainability is a tricky word. Although there appears to be a general consensus that the exploitation of tropical forests should embody this concept, there is a considerable degree of confusion about what the word actually means. Within the present context, sustainability will be defined in a restricted ecological sense. From an operational or management perspective, a sustainable system for exploiting non-timber forest resources is one is which fruits, nuts, latexes, and other products can be harvested indefinitely from a limited area of forest with neglible impact on the structure and dynamics of the plant populations being exploited.

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