This study is a contribution to the Norway Partnership Programme (NPP) “Forests for Sustainable Livelihoods (FNOP/INT/004/NOR) carried out under the FAO’s Programme “Promotion and Development of Non-Wood Forest Products (NWFP)”. This program aims at improving the sustainable extraction of NWFP in order to contribute to the wise management of the world's forests, to conserve their biodiversity, and to improve income-generation and food security.
Though many authors see the potential of NWFP extraction to fulfil this mutual goal of poverty alleviation and sustainable forest management, some case studies tend to describe NWFPs not to be appropriate tools for poverty alleviation. An example is given by the conclusion drawn by Neumann and Hirsch (2000 in Marshall et al, 2003), who do find NWFPs to provide a basic level of income for the poorest forest dependent communities, but conclude they do not offer a structural socio-economic advancement for these people.
This document intends to look at i) whether or not NWFPs contribute to poverty reduction and SFM in Bolivia at this moment, ii) whether they have the potential to reach these combined goals in the future, iii) in what way trade related instruments can influence the NWFP chain of custody and iv) whether these trade related instruments can contribute to the realisation of these goals. In this way, the NPP component 3 “Trade in NWFP – Options for Poverty Alleviation” intends to explain i) the impact of trade in NWFP on local livelihoods and on the state of the forests from which they are extracted and ii) the applicability of relevant trade-related instruments as adequate policy tools to promote and develop sustainable NWFP extraction and assuring the commercialisation results in the equal distribution of the benefits amongst the stakeholders involved.
This component has different phases in a four year period, beginning with an overall analysis -of which this document forms part- of how trade, poverty and the state of forests are related. The analysis includes a local assessment and global analysis of trade-related instruments and will as a result provide policy recommendations for the sound application of trade-related instruments aiming at NWFP.
In this paper, two NWFP were selected as case studies, namely Brazil nuts (Bertholletia excelsa) and Jacaré or Caiman (Caiman yacare) to whom the above mentioned analyses are applied. These two very different products are thought to give a good overview of how trade-related instruments influence trade, rural livelihoods and SFM.
The first case study concerns Brazil Nuts, the most important NWFP in Bolivia in terms of contribution to the economy, which is already being exported for over 15 years. The second case study concerns caimans, a rather new export product since its exploitation used to be prohibited until recently. This case study gives an interesting example of a change in the Bolivian Government policy regarding the use of natural resources. The government’s approval of the exploitation of the species at sustainable levels forms part of its strategy in the fight against poverty.
