Cultivating (in) Tropical Forests? The evolution and sustainability of systems of management between extractivism and plantations

The idea of a organizing a symposium on “Intermediate systems” arose from two distinct but inter-related research projects: • FORRESASIA - “Alternative strategies for forest resource development: extractivism, agroforestry or plantations” - a project funded by the INCO programme of the IV th framework programme of the European Union (IC18- CT96-0077 – DG 12 MUYS). The main focus of this project was to compare the benefits, constraints and evolutionary trajectories of existing models of forest resource management, namely extraction of plant products from the wild, production in various forms of agroforest ry systems, and intensive production in specialized systems. The research was c onducted in Indonesia and the Philippines between January 1997 and December 2000. It involved eight research institutions and NGOs in these two countries, in addition to France, Norway and Spain. • An international comparative analysis of cases of NTFP commercialization, led by CIFOR. This project investigated the characteristics of products and their production, processing and trade to understand the role of NTFP commercialization in achieving conservation and livelihoods improvement. It included a total of 61 cases from 27 countr ies in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

---

• View source