ABSTRACT
The commercial exploitation of nontimber forest products (NTFPs) was proposed in the 1990s as a strategy to reconcile conservation and development aims in tropical forests. Recognized as an activity that has a minimal impact on the forest (Peters et al. 1989) and that plays an important role for the rural poor as gap filler and source of income in situations where alternative livelihood activities are scarce (Sunderlin et al. 2005), it was thought to be able to reconcile concerns about dwindling forest resources and poverty among forest-dwelling people. Recent literature stresses that local governance plays an important role in materializing these aims (Brown et al. 2002; Mayers and Vermeulen 2002a). In line with the objectives of this book outlined in Chapter 1, this chapter addresses the question of how forest governance can respond to the needs and priorities of poor people who depend on NTFPs for their livelihoods, how it can help them to manage their resources sustainably, and to do so at interlocking levels of scale. To this end, we first briefly review the role of NTFPs in rural livelihoods in section 6.1. Next, in section 6.2 we introduce the notion of forest governance and make it explicit for NTFP governance. We then zoom in on challenges related to tenure rights, the propoor rule of law, enabling market opportunities and working in partnerships in section 6.3. After a discussion of the vulnerability of NTFP users, we synthesize our review in a discussion of the key conditions for propoor and sustainable NTFP governance in section 6.4, and finally conclude in section 6.5.
