Forest for people in the Peruvian Amazon: Livelihood contributions, conservation and restoration

Forests make fundamental contributions to the global environment and human societies, strengthening livelihoods, providing goods and services, conserving biodiversity and mitigating the effects of climate change. Nonetheless, the threat of deforestation, resulting from land use change decisions at different levels, continues to grow, affecting the subsistence of millions of people worldwide. Despite these challenges, a good understanding of the complex relationships between forests and people is still missing, partly due to the underestimated provision of subsistence goods by forests, such as non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Understanding this “subsistence-function” of forests is crucial, given that these contributions are critical in supporting the livelihoods of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups. Failing to include these forest contributions hampers the design of effective policies. Given that many of the changes in forest landscapes result from farm-level decisions and can affect the livelihoods of populations living in and around forests, a better understanding of human behavior improves our knowledge regarding forest conservation and restoration. The present dissertation investigates the understudied contributions of forests to rural livelihoods with the Peruvian Amazon as case study area. Furthermore, this study assesses small-scale farmers’ preferences for forest conservation and the restoration of degraded and deforested forestlands.

Chapter 1 provides a general introduction to the relationship between forests and rural livelihoods, contextualizing the issues of deforestation, conservation, restoration and the role of farmers in land use decisions.

Chapter 2 assesses the contributions of forests to rural livelihoods by analyzing not only the cash income from forests, by also considering the subsistence income derived from a wide set of forest products. In addition, this chapter provides insights on the link between forests and food security and sheds light on forests’ role as coping strategies during periods of food scarcity. The contributions of forests are particularly important for food insecure households, as they provide forest products, including forest foods, used for subsistence. Chapter 3 investigates the contribution of forest products to rural livelihoods under different tenure regimes, common and individual property, and levels of remoteness.  We used the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) index of poverty and the Gini coefficient to assess rural poverty and income inequality. The contribution of forest resources to total income and (in)equality is compared across different tenure regimes and different levels of remoteness. We provide evidence that forests are an important income source for the poorest households and this contribution is more pronounced among households living in villages under communal tenure regimes and remote areas. Forest income is significantly and negatively correlated with inequality under communal tenure regimes, but such a trend is not found in regions under private tenure. Game meat and NTFPs are the most important subsistence income sources for households living in remote villages and villages under common property regimes. This study illustrates that forests under common tenure are not only important from a conservation point of view, but also from a livelihood point of view, and this should be considered in both poverty policies and forest conservation and utilization policies. Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 use a discrete choice experiment to elicit small-scale farmers’ preferences for forest conservation and restoration of degraded forest lands. In Chapter 4, we find that, in general, farmers show significant preferences to participate in conservation schemes that allow sustainable harvesting of forest products rather than strict protection. Farmers also prefer to receive monetary incentives, technical assistance and assigning a fraction of their forestland for the implementation of the conservation scheme. Chapter 5 assesses smalls-scale farmers’ preferences to adopt tree-based restoration systems on degraded forestlands. We find a general willingness among small-scale farmers to enroll in restoration schemes. They generally prefer a restoration scheme that provides higher subsidies and technical assistance. They are in favor of tree-based restoration systems that allow to extract crops, timber and NTFPs over tree plantations, and prefer to implement the system on a fraction of their degraded forestland. Chapter 6 concludes with an overview of the main findings and contributions to the literature, acknowledging limitations, suggesting avenues for further research, and discussing policy implications.

Overall, this dissertation shows that forests play a key role for the livelihood of poor and food insecure people, indigenous populations, and households located in remote settings. Forests also act as coping strategies when households face periods of food scarcity. This role of forests is underpinned by the (auto) consumption of a wide variety of forest products such as wild forest foods, construction materials and medicinal plants. This study also provides policy insights regarding forest conservation through schemes that allow sustainable utilization and extraction of forest products, and regarding forest restoration through tree-based systems that provide crops, timber and NTFPs.