Non-timber forest product trade: a trade-off between conservation and development.

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In the late 1980s the idea gained ground that stimulating trade in non-timber forest products (NTFPs) would benefit both conservation and rural development objectives. Since then many researchers have studied the production and trade of NTFPs, but they have tended to use different methodologies and definitions and understanding of the potential of NTFP trade beyond the case study level remained limited.

The overall research question I aimed to answer in this dissertation was, ‘To what extent, and under which conditions does commercial NTFP production contribute to conservation and development objectives?’ I used two highly differentiated but complementary methods to explore this question. First, being a member of aresearch team at the Center for International Forestry research (CIFOR), I conducted a meta-analysis of the effects of NTFP trade on livelihoods and the environment in a wide range of cases – known as the global outcomes assessment. Second, building on the results of the global outcomes assessment, I zoomed in onone particularly successful case to explore conditions and opportunities of commercial NTFP production in greater depth. With regard to conservation, I found that stimulating trade of NTFPs that are extracted from natural forest is not likely to provide an incentive for natural forest conservation. Although cultivated NTFP systems provide fewer environmental functions than natural forest, they tend to provide more environmental functions than their land-use alternatives. Hence, although NTFP trade may not provide an incentive to conserve natural forest, it may provide an incentive to establish or maintain tree-based systems which deliver environmental services in agricultural landscapes.

With regard to development I found that, while NTFP extraction from natural forest is important to prevent people from falling deeper into poverty, it has limited potential to lift people out of poverty. NTFP cultivation, on the other hand, may actually contribute to rural development, but is only attractive under certain conditions, i.e., when markets are accessible and secure, and people have control over their lands. Hence, the potential of NTFP trade to contribute to rural development depends to a large extent on these context variables.

The support of agroforestry practices seems particularly promising as regards delivering balanced trade-offs between livelihood and environmental benefits. Whether agroforest systems are maintained over time depends on a combination of risk-spreading motives, local traditions, tenure security and economic profitability compared to available land-use alternatives. Agroforests have onsite and offsite environmental benefits compared to other agricultural systems, but the development of such ‘environmentally friendly’ agricultural systems may be at the cost of natural forest.