Extractive reserves

The form of Amazon land use which least impacts natural biogeochemical cycles is extractive reserves. In chapter 8, Foster Brown, Karen Kainer, and Eufran do Amaral describe how a typical extractivist household stores more than 50,000 Mg of carbon in their managed forest. A large portion of this carbon would have otherwise been released to the atmosphere as CO2 if the forest had... 

Extractive Reserves and Participatory Research as Factors in the Biogeochemistry of the Amazon Basin... 

The word Amazonia conjures up diverse images, ranging from an exotic jungle to resources for development to a vast web of ecosystems that interact with global element cycles-the focus of this book. This chapter examines the biogeochemical role of extractive reserves, a relatively new land use type within Amazonia in which nontimber forest extraction is the defining human activity. The chapter also provides examples of how participatory research with local communities can enhance the quality of the results and improve their transmission to society. 

The purpose of this chapter is twofold first, to analyze the role of extractive reserves as a potential factor in Amazonian biogeochemistry, using changes in forest cover and land use as drivers, and the carbon cycle as the example and second, to discuss a participatory model for scientific... 

Extractive reserves provide a new concept for Amazonia. Most implemented models for Amazonian development and conservation are based on a preservationist/developmen-talist dichotomy (Foresta 1991). In this dichotomy, forests and their ecosystem components are to be preserved in parks and biological reserves. Areas designated for development are exploited at varying degrees of intensity that usually involve the complete elimination of forest cover (pasture and annual crops) or partial extraction and degradation (selective logging). This... 

Table 8.1 Distribution of extractive reserves and settlements in Brazilian Amazonia.

Extractive reserves are not the panacea for forest conservation of all of Amazonia the appropriate conditions for such reserves exist at maximum for 25 percent of Brazilian Amazonia (Meneses 1994). Nevertheless, such an area would exceed that of France. At present, extractive reserves administered by IBAMA, the Brazilian Institute for Environment and Natural Renewable Resources, and extractive settlements administered by INCRA, the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, cover about three million hectares, representing about one percent of the closed canopy forest in Brazilian Amazonia (see Table 8.1). From a carbon perspective, these reserves and setdements store about 6 x 10 Mg (tons) C (400 Mg/ha x 0.5 Mg C/Mg biomass X 3 X 10 ha). This is equivalent to about 10 percent of the global annual flux of carbon to the atmosphere from fossil fuel sources. 

Currently, the state of Acre in western Brazilian Amazonia has nearly half the area of extractive reserves and setdements in Amazonia (Table 1). Of the 1.7 million ha in reserves and settlements within the state, Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve is the largest, covering 970,000 ha. It is located in the Brazil nut-rich southeastern portion of Acre and it is this extractive region that is the focus of our subsequent discussions. 

The enormous value Acre s extractivists place on the forest is exemplified in the well-documented and highly publicized rubber tapper resistance movement. During the wholesale conversion of forest to pasture during the 1970s and 1980s, many extractivist families in Acre risked their lives when threatened with expulsion from their forested lands (Allegretti 1990, Hecht and Cockburn 1989). Indeed, it was this movement that eventually led to the creation of the first extractive reserves in Acre. Simply stated, deforestation eliminates the resource base from which the extractivist livelihood depends. 

For the purpose of this chapter, we will first examine how human activities affect these fluxes, estimating the relative importance of the various anthropogenic fluxes of equation (2) for Brazilian Amazonia the landscape unit for our estimates is therefore the entire original forested region (Table 8.2). Then, we will demonstrate how extractive reserves and extractivist activities are related to these broader anthropogenical-ly induced fluxes. 

In addition to environmental and socioeconomic drivers operating at various spatial and time scales, extractivists are faced with changing political and conceptual challenges. For example, the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve joined over forty seringals into one... 

Fig. 8.2. Landsat TM image of the central portion of the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve in eastern Acre, Brazil. The white line outlines the boundary of the reserve. North is to the top of the image, which covers about 90 km x 90 km. Xapuri is the local urban center. The light areas are deforested lands, principally large cattle ranches. The national highway BR-317 threads through the center of the deforested lands along the eastern side of the image. Data is from August 1989, TM bands 3, 4, and 5.

Table 83 Some factors affecting the viability of extractive reserves as functions of temporal and spatial scales.

Carry out the research on-site in order to insure that research treatments, results, and recommendations better respond to the socioeconomic realities of the extractive reserves. Selection of the specific landholdings for seedling establishment took place in a general community meeting wherein the research proposal was introduced and feedback solicited. 

Table 8.4 Working guidelines for participatory research in extractive reserves.

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