Non-Timber Forest Products: Small Matters, Big Significance, and the Complexity of Reaching a Workable Definition for Sustainability

This paper addresses a broad reading of the literature on Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) in order to highlight key issues of NTFP management, their importance for rural livelihoods, and the implications for forest policy. It demonstrates the complexity of formulating an integrated framework for the understanding of NTFP management, especially as they affect forest policies. The scope is global, but with emphasis on Latin America. Human populations have depended on and used NTFPs for millennia. For a great number of rural (and also urban) inhabitants, particularly the poorest sectors, their use represents an important source of subsistence and income-generation. It has been suggested that the use of NTFPs can generate greater incomes than other productive land use options, such as timber extraction or cattle keeping. Some studies estimate that around 25% of the income of about one billion people around the world comes from NTFPs, although that implies that, by themselves, NTFPs do not represent a sufficient source of household income. Rather, they should be considered as part of a wider spectrum of rural livelihood strategies which include their importance as income safety nets and as reservoirs of cultural values and traditional knowledge. Furthermore, NTFPs have many ecological and social values related to forest ecosystems, well-being and conservation. This diversity of potential benefits has represented an obstacle for the creation of management and conservation policies. The intention of this paper is to tackle some of the most important issues raised in the literature on NTFPs, forest conservation and development, with an entry point in the alternative understandings and definitions of NTFP. The paper highlights some approaches intended to overcome perceived barriers for sustainable management of NTFPs and the well-being of their human users.