Between scattered extraction and specialized production : which alternatives for the development of non-timber forest resources?

Management systems for NTFPs are far from being homogenous. They globally range from scattered collection in natural forests foe occasional consumption to intensive specialized production for international markets, going through various types of "integrated management" and "occasional cultivation" or " per-domestication". These various systems have obviously different features in terms of either ecological, economic or social sustainability, of short term or long term productivity, or of cultural validity. Among others, they may have totally diverging impacts on either forest ecosystems and biodiversity conservation, on forest populations development and welfare, or even on the respect of indigenous people rights. This paper will first attempt to give a dynamic overview of this diversity of current management practices for NTFPs, highlighting past and present evolutionary trends and insisting on those currently less investigated models that are intermediary between "extraction from natural stocks" and "true domestication for cultivation", with a special focus on the Southeast region. Starting from these current situations, it will elaborate on the available "existing models" for NTFPs management, giving attention to matters such as scale and scope of management, levels of inputs and knowledge, economic and social logics, institutional and social bases. It will launch important bases for a comparative assessment of the global sustainability of these models, examining ecological, economic, cultural and social efficiency and gaps. It will finaly try to derive "alternative models" for future scenarios of forest management, giving a special attention to unexplored ways for demestication of forest resources.

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