In the forest-livelihoods literature, forests are widely perceived to provide both common safety nets to shocks and resources for seasonal gap-filling. We use a large global-comparative dataset to test these responses. We find households rank forest-extraction responses to shocks lower than most common alternatives. For seasonal gap-filling, forest extraction also has limited importance. The minority of households using forests for coping is asset-poor and lives in villages specialized on forests, in particular timber extraction. Overall, forest resources may be less important as a buffer between agricultural harvests and in times of unforeseen hardship than has been found in many case studies
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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.03.005Altmetric score:
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Publication year
2014
Authors
Wunder, S.; Börner, J.; Shively, G.; Wyman, M.
Language
English
Keywords
livelihoods, risk, income, diversification, household income
