EXTRACTIVISM, AGROFORESTRY OR PLANTATIONS ?

OBJECTIVES

The main objectives are defined as follows:

• To understand the conditions of existence of extractivism, agroforestry and specialized plantations as three alternative models for the management of forest resources, and to estimate their potential and limitations in the context of sustainable development of forest lands.
• To understand the dynamic forces and evolutionary trends of current forest resource management for the production of non-timber products throughout the region and to translate them into dynamic typologies, theories and models.
• To transfer the results of this project into policies and action-guiding instruments adapted to the regional scale in order to contribute to the improvement of current forest resource management strategies and technics.
• To determine and formulate the mechanisms of an integrated market information system on non-timber forest products and propose original marketing strategies as well as more efficient networking between industrial users, specially in Europe, and local producers

ACTIVITIES

The key activities involve:

• Field studies on existing forest resource management systems in Indonesia and the Philippines, ranging from pure extractive strategies, to various degrees of forest resource domestication through either agroforestry or conventional plantation models. The study will emphasize comparison of situations. It will focus on an evolutionary perspective, giving due attention to the determinants, past and future directions of change in management systems.
• Studies of policies and markets affecting forest management. This study will be conducted simultaneously at the field level and at regional or international scales. It will emphasize the comparison between the objectives and the actual effects of policies and markets on the evolution of forest management systems.
• Development of models of the different forest resource management strategies. These models include a synthesis of ecosystem evolution and plant population modelling, and a synthesis of socio-cultural dynamics and economic modelling, and a modelling of market organization and market mechanisms for selected non-timber forest products. A dynamic modelling will describe the evolution of forest resources and socio-cultural aspects over time in relation to natural and socio-economic factors. Different evolutive scenario will be defined from this modelling.

EXPECTED OUTCOME

This project should provide recommendations for the development of acceptable models for managing forest resources constituting alternatives to deforestation and resource degradation. It should define appropriate strategies and specific technologies for implementing the extractive reserve and buffer zone concepts through the development of non-timber forest resources management for local income generation. It should also help devising technical and policy recommendations to promote complex agroforestry models that achieve full integration of forest and agricultural production, able to challenge the conventional model of specialized plantation commonly developed for the cultivation of forest products.