Abstract
Over the last few years, forest-based communities have faced two different but related phenomena. On the one hand, they have become more integrated with global economies, accessing regional and international markets. On the other, they have been pressured by economic groups into becoming part of the ecologically unequal exchange that exports natural resources and generates social and environmental problems at a local level. However, within new approaches to managing common-pool resources in common properties such as sustainable-use protected areas, communities are finding their own ways to be resilient and to face the two phenomena that are part of the same global economic system. Communities have built a multi-partner governance system for forest management and community development that involves agents from the civil society, state and market. Accordingly, multi-partner governance has proven to be a strategy to protect community-based forests against increasing timber market pressure. The question that then emerges is, to what extent has multi-partner governance been effective in supporting forest-based communities to be resilient and to face pressures from the global timber market in forests under community use? The aim of this paper is to analyze forest-based community resilience to the global economic system in situations where common properties are under governance of multiple stakeholders. The research is based on a singular case study in the Tapajós National Forest, Brazilian Amazon, which is a sustainable-use protected area with 24 communities involved in a multi-partner governance system. The article shows that forest-based communities under pressure have been resilient, and facing the global economic system have created a community-based cooperative for managing timber and engaging all partners in the process to improve their collective action. The cooperative provides timber sales revenue that supports community development both through diversification of agroforestry production and building of infrastructure as collective benefits.
Highlights
Community forest management (CFM) has been presented as a strategy to protect forests against increasing forest degradation and as an alternative from timber sales to generate revenue for Forests 2019, 10, 461; doi:10.3390/f10060461 www.mdpi.com/journal/forestsForests 2019, 10, 461 communities
The ongoing community forest management in the Tapajós National Forest (TNF) is a result of collective action involving multi-partner governance with agents from government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), local university, local timber industry, social movements, forest-based communities, and a community-based cooperative (Coomflona)
Forest-based pressure toglobal exporteconomic high value forest products suchtime as tropical timber are findingcommunities alternatives tounder be included in the system, while at the same timber are finding alternatives to be included the global economic while to at adverse the same time preserving their social norms and traditions as in a form of resilience
Summary
Community forest management (CFM) has been presented as a strategy to protect forests against increasing forest degradation and as an alternative from timber sales to generate revenue for Forests 2019, 10, 461; doi:10.3390/f10060461 www.mdpi.com/journal/forestsForests 2019, 10, 461 communities. Community forest management (CFM) has been presented as a strategy to protect forests against increasing forest degradation and as an alternative from timber sales to generate revenue for Forests 2019, 10, 461; doi:10.3390/f10060461 www.mdpi.com/journal/forests. CFM has proven to be a new approach through which local communities enter into the global timber market while still maintaining its awareness of local issues to assure local livelihood improvements. Within new approaches for managing common-pool resources in common properties such as sustainable-use protected areas, forest-based communities are finding ways to be resilient in a global economic system based on extensive natural resource use, local environmental degradation, and social conflicts. Resilience in a complex social-ecological system (SES) is a dynamic concept going beyond sustainability and disturbance in ecosystem services; it includes social capacity for change at different levels (local to global) [4,5]
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