Amazon Forestry Tranformed: Integrating Knowledge for Smallholder Timber Managemet in Eastern Brazil

Abstract

Recent discussions of local knowledge emphasize its dynamic nature invoking local peoples' ability to effectively integrate traditional or local with science-based or "modern" knowledges. The smallholder timber industry of the Amazon's estuarine floodplain provides an outstanding example of local patterns of resource management and economic activities transformed from within by smallholder farmers who participated in the industrial timber boom of the 1970s and 1980s. These farmers of eastern Amazonia have developed a vertically integrated local industry based on expertise reflecting profound locally developed knowledge of specific forests and management of ecological processes, individual observation and experimentation, as well as concepts and practices derived from temporary employment by large-scale industrial timber firms. At each stage of the smallholder forestry process-from managing natural regeneration to running small sawmills and marketing lumber-local managers apply an innovative set of practices reflecting their diverse experiences. This combination of technical, market, and ecological knowledge results in forests, timber markets, and economic patterns that do not correspond to many of the widely-held generalizations concerning either local or industrial tropical timber exploitation. This article uses data from 7 years of research in the Amazon floodplain.

Population dynamics and management of Amazon tidal floodplain forests: Links to the past, present and future

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Trends, drivers and impacts of changes in swidden cultivation in tropical forest-agriculture frontiers: A global assessment

“…Water quality is also threatened by the growing use of fertilizers and pesticides in areas where commercial agriculture and monoculture tree crops have replaced swiddening and water extraction for irrigation of paddy rice and annual crops increasingly results in stream desiccation (Dressler and Puhlin, 2010;Ziegler et al, 2009b). In contrast, less intensive and more diversified land uses, such as managed fallows and mixed fruit trees, generally increased household income and food security, at the same time maintaining forest cover, biodiversity, and soil fertility (Chowdhury and Turner, 2006;Messerli, 2004;Padoch et al, 2008;Porro, 2005;Sears et al, 2007;Xu et al, 2009).…”

From eco-catastrophe to zero deforestation? Interdisciplinarities, politics, environmentalisms and reduced clearing in Amazonia

“…The focus was rooted in long-term studies of agroecology, successional and landscape ecology and traditional production systems (Fleishman et al 2002;Perfecto et al 2007Perfecto et al , 2009Hanski 2009). These emphasized complex anthropogenic landscapes of modern indigenous groups like the Kayapó, Huaroni, Ka'apor and Kuikuru, and thoroughly documented how historical ecologies and modern farmer/extractor landscapes throughout Amazonia structure the matrix in species-diverse complex ways (Posey & Balée 1989;Padoch et al 1999;Pinedo-Vasquez et al 2001;Rival 2002;Bray et al 2004;Balée & Erickson 2006;Erickson 2006;Sears et al 2007;Heckenberger et al 2008;Hecht 2009). In Amazonia, the calibre of these domesticated landscapes was such that biological reserves, analysed by remote sensing and rapid biodiversity appraisals, were often placed in territories that had been managed by native peoples, or traditional forest dwellers, like quilombos or former slave refuges, for hundreds of years (see for example Acevedo Marin & Castro 1997).…”