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This paper outlines the importance of the small-scale extractive sector to extremely impoverished households in rural areas of tropical Brazil. Extractive activities are important as inputs to household reproduction, and are critical as a source of cash income. In the case study we analyze, small-scale extraction was roughly equivalent to wage labor and to agriculture in its contribution to household income. We suggest that in rural development analysis, a significant source of both use and exchange values has been overlooked. This issue is of particular concern for three main reasons. First, the importance of small-scale extraction is more pronounced among the more impoverished. Second, extraction is a major source of cash for women, who are often denied access to alternative means of acquiring income in rural areas. Finally, current rural development programs are actively undermining access to the resources and often imply their destruction. Through a detailed social and ecological analysis of the babas...

Agrarian reform settlements have recently been identified as a major contributor to ongoing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Collective forest reserves were established in some settlements to thwart forest loss, but settlers usually do not recognize forest commons, opting instead for continued private accumulation through forest clearing, or a "non-commons" tragedy. Pathways toward ensuring the viability of common-pool management in settlements remain unclear. Our case study focused on two similarly sized settlements in neighboring municipalities in Northwest Mato Grosso, Brazil, each with formally designated collective forest areas. In one, deforestation shifted into the collective reserve and intensified; in the other, deforestation stabilized and the collective reserve was protected. In the latter, settlers understood their collective forest reserve as a commonly held asset, with two commercially viable settlement cooperatives involved in Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa) extractivism and added value processing. We analyze differences between the two settlements using Elinor Ostrom's framework for analysis of socio-ecological systems, and identify the locally applied policy mix ensuring the viability of a forest commons. The study concludes that "top-down" efforts to institutionalize collective governance over remaining forests will likely fail in most settlements, without a focus on alternative livelihood opportunities synergetic with forest tenure. RESUMO Os assentamentos da reforma agrária foram recentemente identificados como um dos principais contribuintes ao contínuo desmatamento na Amazônia brasileira. Reservas florestais coletivas foram estabelecidas em alguns assentamentos para impedir a supressão de florestas, mas os assentados geralmente não reconhecem os bosques coletivos, optando pelo contínuo acúmulo privado de bens e capital através do desmatamento: uma tragédia dos recursos naturais "não-comuns" ou não-coletivos. Caminhos para garantir a viabilidade da gestão de recursos coletivosnos assentamentos permanecem obscuros. Nosso estudo de caso focalizou dois assentamentos de tamanho semelhante, em municípios vizinhos no Noroeste do Mato Grosso, Brasil, ambos contando com áreas de floresta coletiva formalmente designadas. Em um dos assentamentos, o desmatamento se deslocou para a reserva coletiva e se intensificou. No outro, em contraposição, o desmatamento se estabilizou e a reserva coletiva foi protegida. Neste último, os assentados percebiam sua reserva florestal coletiva como um ativo comunitário, com duas cooperativas formadas por assentados comercialmente viáveis, envolvidas no extrativismo de castanha-do-Brasil (Bertholletia excelsa) e no processamento da mesma para alcançar maior valor agregado. Analisamos as diferenças entre os dois assentamentos, aplicando a estrutura de critérios de Elinor Ostrom para comparar os sistemas sócio-ecológicos e identificamos o mix de políticas públicas aplicadas localmente, que viabilizaram os benefícios gerados pela floresta. O estudo conclui que os esforços para institucionalizar a governança coletiva sobre as florestas remanescentes iniciados "de cima para baixo" provavelmente irão fracassar na maioria dos assentamentos, se não houver um foco em oportunidades alternativas de subsistência complementares aos direitos de propriedade sobre as florestas.

Multi-taxon surveys were conducted in species-rich, lowland palaeotropical and neotropical forested landscapes in Sumatra, Indonesia and Mato Grosso, Brazil. Gradient-directed transects (gradsects) were sampled across a range of forested land use mosaics, using a uniform protocol to simultaneously record vegetation (vascular plant species, plant functional types (PFTs) and vegetation structure), vertebrates (birds, mammals) and invertebrates (termites), in addition to measuring site and soil properties, including carbon stocks. At both sites similar correlations were detected between major components of structure (mean canopy height, woody basal area and litter depth) and the diversities of plant species and PFTs. A plant species to PFT ratio [spp.:PFTs] was the best overall predictor of animal diversity, especially termite species richness in Sumatra. To a notable extent vegetation structure also correlated with animal diversity. These surrogates demonstrate generic links between habitat structural elements, carbon stocks and biodiversity. They may also offer practical low-cost indicators for rapid assessment in tropical forest landscapes.

Contains fulltext : 90003.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) This article provides an alternative and novel theoretical approach to the conceptualization and analysis of payments for environmental services (PES). We devote special emphasis to institutional and political economy issues, which have been somewhat neglected in the literature on PES. We argue that the Coasean and pure market approach dominating the conceptualization of PES in the literature cannot be easily generalized and implemented in practice. By contrast, taking into account complexities related to uncertainty, distributional issues, social embeddedness, and power relations permits acknowledging the variety of contexts and institutional settings in which PES operate. The alternative approach presented in this introductory article to the special section may be more appealing to PES practitioners, since while avoiding restrictive and prescriptive standpoints, it allows some key sources of complexities they usually deal with on the ground to be more easily understood.

Babassu palms (Orbignya spp.) cover nearly 200,000 km 2 in Brazil, providing cash income, fuel, fibre, edible oil and food to a large number of tenant farm households. Babassu is closely integrated within pastoral and shifting cultivation systems of Mid-North Brazil. In pastures, babassu provides shade for cattle, aids soil moisture retention, produces organic matter, generates supplementary farm income at little cost, and offers year-round employment. On the other hand, the persistence of juvenile palms reduces pasture grass productivity due to plant competition, and therefore there is a trend to eradicate babassu through clearcutting and understorey suppression. At moderate densities of less than 100 individuals per ha, mature babassu palms in cropland do not appear to harm crop productivity. In such cases, palms are thinned and leaves of the remaining ones are cut back, supplying fuel for the burn and nutrients to the soil. However, reduced fallow cycles due to pasture conversion threaten babassu as well as crop productivity.