Balancing development and conservation? an assessment of livelihood and environmental outcomes of non-timber forest product trade in Asia, Africa and Latin America

This article evaluates the extent to which Non Timber Forest Product (NTFP) trade leads to both livelihood improvement and forest conservation. The analysis is based on a standardised expert-judgment assessment of the livelihood and environmental outcomes of 55 cases of NTFP trade from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The authors suggest that higher livelihood outcomes are associated with lower environmental outcomes and conclude that NTFP trade is not likely to reconcile development and conservation of natural forest. This is an important lesson for both governments and development and conservation organisations in order to formulate realistic objectives and consider the potentially negative effects of their interventions.

Key findings include:

• Looking at livelihood outcomes, the authors observe that NTFP trade benefits several components of peoples' livelihoods, but may increase inequality between households. Only some households gain from trade, while others may even lose access to the resources. Involvement of women in the production-to-consumption system (PCS) tends to have a positive impact on intra-household equity. 
• Environmental outcomes show that over 40% of the cases experienced resource depletion from NTFP trade. In most cases, the NTFP ecosystem is considered to perform environmental functions better than the most likely alternative land use, usually intensive agriculture, but worse than a hypothetical natural forest alternative. 
• As a general trend, the development scores are high when households specialise, whereas conservation scores are high when the product is collected from the wild.
• In 80% of the cases, the commercial production of NTFPs does not enable people to make financial investments to increase quality and quantity of production, limiting the potential for development.
• Commercial extraction from the wild, without further management, tends to lead to resource depletion. NTFP production systems are generally considered to have lower environmental values than natural forest, but do contribute positively to the environmental values in the landscape.
• Cases that are characterised by key variables such as secure tenure and market access are associated with high livelihood outcomes. Those that are less developed, probably because they lack the necessary conditions to facilitate development, have higher environmental outcomes because of decreased human intervention.