Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) play an important role in rural livelihoods worldwide and recent efforts to certify NTFPs raise questions about the impact of this market based tool on local producers and communities. Drawing from case studies in Latin America, we find that there are many impediments to the successful implementation of NTFP certification. These impediments range from unorganized and powerless laborers to basic difficulties in commercializing NTFPs to undeveloped demand for certified products among businesses and consumers. However, the process of creating NTFP certification standards may create positive ripple effects among producers, traders, companies and policy makers by planting the seeds for a vision of more socially and environmentally responsible management of NTFP resources. We conclude that the ability of certification to indirectly leverage wider social change may prove to be of greater lasting impact to rural livelihoods and NTFP management than mere labeling and marketing.
The potential ecological costs and cobenefits of REDD: a critical review and case study from the Amazon region
The potential ecological costs and cobenefits of REDD: a critical review and case study from the Amazon region
Analysis of possible REDD program interventions in a large-scale Amazon landscape indicates that even modest flows of forest carbon funding can provide substantial cobenefits for aquatic ecosystems, but that the functional integrity of the landscape’s myriad small watersheds would be best protected under a more even spatial distribution of forests. Because of its focus on an ecosystem service with global benefits, REDD could access a large pool of global stakeholders willing to pay to maintain carbon in forests, thereby providing a potential cascade of ecosystem services to local stakeholders who would otherwise be unable to afford them.