Logging Community-Based Forests in the Amazon: An Analysis of External Influences, Multi-Partner Governance, and Resilience
by
Ana Luiza Violato Espada 1,2,3,*
and
Mário Vasconcellos Sobrinho 3,4
Ana Luiza Violato Espada 1,2,3,* and
Mário Vasconcellos Sobrinho 3,4
1
School of Forest Resources and Conservation, Tropical Forestry, University of Florida, P.O. Box 110410, Gainesville, FL 32611-0410, USA
2
Tropical Forest Institute, Tv. São Pedro 566, Belém, PA 66023-705, Brazil
3
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Gestão de Recursos Naturais e Desenvolvimento Local na Amazônia, Núcleo de Meio Ambiente, Universidade Federal do Pará, Rua Augusto Côrrea 01, Belém, PA 66075-110, Brazil
4
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Administração, Universidade da Amazônia, Av. Alcindo Cacela 287, Umarizal, Belém, PA 66065-205, Brazil
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Forests 2019, 10(6), 461; https://doi.org/10.3390/f10060461
Received: 1 April 2019 / Revised: 17 May 2019 / Accepted: 24 May 2019 / Published: 28 May 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Redefining Forests and Communities for Sustainability: New Frameworks and Applications)
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.
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Keywords:
community forest management; protected areas; cooperation; resilience; development; human well-being; policies
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MDPI and ACS Style
Espada, A.L.V.; Vasconcellos Sobrinho, M. Logging Community-Based Forests in the Amazon: An Analysis of External Influences, Multi-Partner Governance, and Resilience. Forests 2019, 10, 461.
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