ABSTRACT
Introduction As in many regions of the developing world, local communities in Amazonia depend to a higher or lesser extent on common resources for their livelihoods. For a long time, the established wisdom assumed that these resources were at risk of depletion, especially in the face of population increases or enhanced access to a market economy. In other words, local communities were considered unable to conserve their own means of livelihood. In the last few years, the outlook on community resource management has reversed, and now it is widely believed that local communities know better how to sustainably use their own resources, and that it is the unwelcome interference of outsiders that often leads to the destruction of common resources. There is substantial evidence to support this view: many local resources, including those of extractivist communities in Amazonia were threatened because of external actors, such as cattle ranchers, loggers, plantation owners, and small peasants.
