Community forestry and sustainability research at The New York Botanical Garden CHARLES M. PETERS Institute of Economic Botany, New York Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Blvd., Bronx, NY 10458-5126, USA; e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. Research focused on community forestry and the sustainable use of tropical forest resources has been conducted at The New York Botanical Garden for over 30 years. Five of the projects are located in the Neotropics, six are in Southeast Asia, and three are in Tropical Africa; project sites include some of the largest remaining areas of tropical forest in the world, e.g. Amazonia, Borneo, northern Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea. All of the projects have had a training component, several have incorporated both training and the collection of baseline data, and much of the recent work has included training, baseline data collection, and community-based natural resource management (CBNRM). The CBNRM initiatives at NYBG are unique because (1) they are based on quantitative inventory and growth data, (2) they are conducted in intact forests as a conservation incentive, and (3) the data collection, management planning, and monitoring activities are conducted by the villagers themselves. Although a variety of different ecological, economic, and social factors can influence the success of a community forestry project, one of the major lessons learned from the NYBG interventions is that management programs specifically tailored to a given community and forest based on a preliminary assessment of the actual supply and demand of forest resources are most effective. Key Words: community forestry, applied ethnobotany, sustainable resource use.

Much of the research focused on plant use at The New York Botanical Garden has been conducted through the Institute of Economic Botany (Balick, 2016, this issue). Some of these efforts have an applied component and involve working closely with communities to improve the sustainability of existing patterns of plant use and to promote the conservation of local forests. The present chapter provides an overview of this research, describes specific examples of training, baseline data collection, and community-based natural resource management initiatives, and summarizes the major lessons learned from over 30 years of working with people and plants in different tropical regions of the world. Applied ethnobotany and sustainable resource use The study of the relationship between people and plants can occur at several levels. The first,

and perhaps most common, level of ethnobotanical inquiry is to compile a descriptive list of the names and uses of the different plant resources collected or cultivated by indigenous communities. These types of studies are useful to document the depth or the diversity or the inherent importance of the interaction between people and plants within a particular cultural group. Ethnobotanical research can also focus on the method of preparation of a particular plant product (e.g., an herbal medicine, a dart poison, or a palm-leaf basket) how much time is allocated to the process, who does the work, and, if sold, how much money is made. These details tell us which people are involved with which plants, what is invested and what is returned, and they help transform a list of plant names and uses into an actual ethnobotanical relationship. The problem with all of these approaches, however, is that they are inherently static—and relationships inevitably change. What would be really useful to know about the relationship between a group of people and their

Brittonia, DOI 10.1007/s12228-016-9420-x ISSN: 0007-196X (print) ISSN: 1938-436X (electronic) © 2016, by The New York Botanical Garden Press, Bronx, NY 10458-5126 U.S.A.

BRITTONIA

plant resources is the long-term status of things. How much of the plant resource is available in the forest or agroforestry field, how much new resource is produced each year, and at what rate is the resource being exploited? If the existing yield of the resource is less than the current rate of harvest (i.e., more is harvested than is produced in a given time period), the resource is being overexploited and will eventually be depleted, regardless of the existing supply in the forest. And once we know the actual supply, demand, and yield characteristic of a plant resource, we can implement appropriate management interventions in collaboration with the community that exploits the resource to prevent over-exploitation. This type of analysis requires household surveys to assess the annual demand for the resource, quantitative forest inventories to document the existing supply of the plant, and yield studies to quantify how much new wood, rattan cane, fruit, or latex is produced in the forest each year. Balancing the supply and demand of the resource leads to sustainable resource use. There are several paths to sustainability, and all depend on the motivation and diligence of the collaborating community. Sometimes the community will need to reduce the annual rate of harvest of an important forest resource or temporarily substitute a lower-quality, yet higher-density, resource. Sometimes a few prescribed canopy openings are sufficient to enhance the regeneration, growth, or population size of a valuable forest product. And sometimes, in a few cases, the existing supply and yield characteristics of a plant species will suggest that current patterns of resource use fall well below of that which could be sustainably harvested (i.e., if needed, the community could actually increase harvest levels; Peters, 1994, 1996a). The important point is that the community has collected the baseline data necessary to allow them to make these decisions. Determining the name and utility of different plant species is only the first step of the applied ethnobotany research conducted at The New York Botanical Garden. This work is interdisciplinary and includes plant taxonomy, ecology, and forestry, it is done in close collaboration with local communities, it involves a lot of training and long-term monitoring, it is focused on solving problems, and, over the last 30 years, we have conducted dozen of these projects throughout the tropics. Some of them were extremely successful, most provided valuable sets of baseline data,

[VOL

training, and motivation, and a few turned out to be only temporary distractions from more critical issues that a village was facing. All of them, however, provided useful lessons about the realities of sustainable resource use in the tropics. Locations, contexts, and resource groups The locations of the applied ethnobotany projects conducted since 1984 are shown in Fig. 1, together with the names and dates of the field research. The 14 projects are distributed throughout the three main tropical regions (i.e., five projects in the Neotropics, six in Tropical Asia, and three in Tropical Africa), and they include some of the largest remaining areas of tropical forest in the world (e.g., Amazonia, Borneo, northern Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea). While the main objective of all projects was to facilitate the sustainable use of local forests by communities, the projects were tailored to meet the differing needs, capacities, and operational contexts of each place, with the result that each intervention was different. All of the projects involved some type of a training component. The work in Madagascar (14) and Uganda (4), in particular, was focused exclusively on building the capacity of the technical staff from local protected areas in the basic concepts and methodologies of sustainable resource use. In Madagascar, for example, a number of new protected areas were recently established that fall into IUCN Categories V and VI (Dudley, 2008) and contain zones where the sustainable exploitation of natural resources by local communities is permitted. Very few of the park managers charged with this task, however, have the experience or expertise to develop a program of sustainable resource use. To address this problem, a threeday training workshop was given in 2015, and participants built on what they had learned in the workshop by designing and implementing a program of community-based natural resource management in their respective protected areas. Ten such projects are currently underway in various parts of Madagascar; a follow up meeting will be held in 2016 to assess the progress of these efforts. Several projects have incorporated both training and the collection of baseline data. The data collection work in Peru (1) and West Kalimantan (2) was focused on documenting the diversity, distribution, and abundance of forest

2016]

PETERS: COMMUNITY FORESTRY AND SUSTAINABILITY

FIG. 1. Location of applied ethnobotany and community forestry projects conducted by the Institute of Economic Botany: 1 = Jenaro Herrera, Ucayali River, PERU (1984–1987); 2 = Sambas, Sanggau, and Kapuas Hulu Regencies, West Kalimantan, INDONESIA (1989–1994); 3 = Kikori River Basin, PAPUA NEW GUINEA (1999–2002); 4 = Bwindi Impenetrable Forest Reserve, UGANDA (2001); 5 = Mokoko River Forest Reserve, CAMEROON (1999); 6 = San Juan Bautista Jayacatlán, Oaxaca, MEXICO (2001–2003); 7 = Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve, Para, Brazil (2002–2005); 8 = Quintana Roo, MEXICO (2005–2007); 9 = Acateyahualco, Guerrero, MEXICO (2007–2013); 10 = Leishan County, Guizhou, CHINA (2010–2011); 11 = Quang Tri, Thua Thien Hue, and Quang Nam Provinces, VIETNAM (2011–213); 12 = Vientiane and various communities in the Khamkeud District, Bolikhamxay Province, LAOS; Phnom Penh and various communities in the Kampot District, Kampot Province, CAMBODIA (2011–2014); 13 = Kachin State and Sagaing Region, MYANMAR (2009–present); 14 = Oronjia Forest, MADAGASCAR (2015–present).

fruits, and detailed ecological studies were conducted on selected species in each region (e.g. Peters & Vasquez-Matute, 1987; Peters et al., 1989; Peters & Hammond, 1990; Peters, 1996b; Peters & Geisen, 2001; Martin et al., 2014) to better understand their yield characteristics and management potential. This type of research lays a necessary foundation for subsequent community efforts to manage the native fruit resources found in local forests. The projects in Cameroon (5) and Vietnam (11) trained teams in basic forest inventory methodologies and facilitated extensive surveys of important forest resources. The data collection activities conducted in six protected areas in the Truong Son Mountains of Vietnam in 2010 represent the largest inventory of wild rattan ever conducted. These data, coupled with the results from growth studies of several commercial species of rattan that were also initiated as part of this research (Peters & Henderson, 2014), are being used to define a sustainable harvest level for communities that collect rattan in the buffer zones of these protected areas. A two-year study in the Selva Maya of Quintana Roo, Mexico (8), trained representatives

from eight forestry communities, or ejidos, in the collection of quantitative data on tree growth using dendrometer bands (Fig. 2). These data were needed by the communities to develop sustainable harvest levels and to maintain Forest Stewardship Council certification of their timber operations. The work in Guizhou, China (10), focused on the land-use dynamics of traditional Miao people and collected baseline data on both the household use of forest resources and the abundance of useful tree species in different types of managed forests, as well as in nearby protected areas. The rest of the projects (i.e., the work with Agave [9] and Bursera [6] in Mexico and the community-based forest management in Papua New Guinea [3], Brazil [7], Laos and Cambodia [12], and Myanmar [13]), have all included training, baseline data collection, and forest management components. Some of the projects focus specifically on timber resources, while others are directed toward the management of important non-timber forest products like rattan, mescal, carving woods, bamboo, and medicinal plants. The management plans being developed in

BRITTONIA

[VOL

difficulties in the supply and demand relations of important forest resources (e.g., species that occur at low densities or are not regenerating in the forest) and to initiate a dialogue with the community about how they would like to respond to what the data were telling them. In every one of the projects, the community decided to initiate management activities to avoid any problems. In some cases, like in Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Laos, and Cambodia, the management activities were initiated in forest areas controlled by the community. In Brazil and Myanmar, in contrast, the collection of baseline data and the development of a management plan was undertaken to obtain usufruct rights to a specific piece of governmentowned forest. Examples of projects representative of both tenure types are discussed below. MANAGING TROPICAL DRY FORESTS FOR CARVING WOOD

Bursera glabrifolia (H.B.K.) Engl. is the sole source of carving wood used to produce the small, FIG. 2. Village forester in the Selva Maya of Quintana painted figurines known as alebrijes (Purata, et Roo, Mexico putting a stainless-steel dendrometer band around al., 2004), and the tree is a dominant component the trunk of a tzalam (Lysiloma latisiliquum [L.] Benth.) tree to of tropical dry forests in southwestern Mexico. measure its growth. These two characteristics have produced a critical need for the conservation and management of the Myanmar include both commercial and subsis- species. Large numbers of alebrijes are sold lotence forest resources. These community-based cally or exported, and it is estimated that the natural resource management (CBNRM) initia- annual consumption rate of B. glabrifolia wood tives are unique in that: (1) they are based on by a single carving community in Oaxaca is quantitative inventory and growth data, (2) they equivalent to felling all of the Bursera trees in are conducted in intact forests as a conservation 100 hectares of tropical dry forest (Peters et al., incentive, and (3) the data collection, manage- 2003). To make matters worse, tropical dry forests ment planning, and monitoring activities are con- are the most threatened and least-protected forest ecosystem in Mexico, and thousands of hectares ducted by the villagers themselves. are converted to agriculture or pasture each year. When this project was initiated in 2001, B. Community-based natural resource glabrifolia was completely depleted from the formanagement ests surrounding carving communities in Oaxaca, All of the CBNRM projects started out with an and the raw material needed to supply the market ethnobotanical diagnostic of what the most im- was being harvested illegally from protected areas portant plant resources were for the village. The located several hours to the north. After several days of visiting communities in household surveys used to collect these data were then followed by a series of inventory transects to the Central Valley of Oaxaca, we located an apdocument the availability of different resources in propriate study site in San Juan Bautista the forest; transects were located in forest areas Jayacatlán. This village has control over several that the community was actively exploiting. A thousand hectares of dry forest, their forests congroup meeting was held to present the results tain appreciable densities of B. glabrifolia trees, from this work, to highlight any potential and the villagers were very interested in the idea

2016]

PETERS: COMMUNITY FORESTRY AND SUSTAINABILITY

of managing the B. glabrifolia trees in several hundred hectares of dry forest and selling the wood to the communities that carve alebrijes. We provided basic inventory training and helped the villagers survey the B. glabrifolia trees in their forest. We started growth studies to estimate the annual diameter increment of the species, developed a volume table to predict how much wood could be harvested from each diameter class, set up regeneration studies to monitor to monitor the effect of harvesting on seedling establishment, and conducted a demographic study to assess the sustainability of different harvest regimes (Hernández-Apolinar et al., 2006). Finally, we used this information to develop a management plan with the community that was submitted to the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) to obtain the necessary permits for harvesting and selling Bursera wood. There was a bit of a problem trying to convince SEMARNAT that a community would actually want to manage a tract of tropical dry forest, which has no tall, straight, or desirable timber trees, rather than convert it to a pasture or a cornfield. However, after pointing out that our management plan would provide an immediate, legal, and sustainably-harvested source of carving wood for the artisan communities in the region, would enhance the value of the forest and provide an incentive for conservation, and, perhaps most importantly, would engage the community in a long-term program of sustainable forest use, we were granted the harvest permit. The permit was the first of its kind ever granted for a tropical dry forest in Mexico. MAKING FURNITURE IN THE TAPAJÓS-ARAPIUNS EXTRACTIVE RESERVE

Established in 1998, the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve is one of the first examples of a new type of extractive reserve in Brazil where resource use is not limited to rubber tapping and the collection of Brazil nuts. Communities are not allowed to sell logs or rough-sawn timber from the reserve, but if there is some value-added processing and a written management plan, a specified number of trees could be felled each year. Several of the communities within the reserve had started a small furniture initiative (Oficinas

Caboclas do Tapajós) for making stools, chairs, and tables using local tree species. They had been using dead wood from agricultural clearings to make the furniture, but knew they would need a more reliable and larger source of raw material to be able to increase production. This would require selective tree felling, a formal management plan, and a permit from the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA). We first started field operations in the community of Nuquini, and then replicated the work in Nova Vista and Surucua using the trained villagers from Nuquini as teachers. Community meetings were first held to explain the basic concepts of forest management and to compile a list of desirable timber species. We then went to the forest to conduct a preliminary survey of the tree species on the list and to provide training in the basic inventory method. The final step was to decide on the size and location of a village management area (VMA) that would be delineated in the forest and managed to produce furniture woods. After the VMAs were set up for each village, a systematic 10% inventory of the area was conducted and trees of varying diameter from the species list were fitted with dendrometer bands to measure diameter growth. Based on the inventory and growth data, merchantable wood volumes were calculated and an annual allowable harvest level was estimated for each species (McGrath et al., 2004). The results from each village VMA were mapped using GIS, harvest areas were delineated, and all of the information was packaged into a formal management plan and submitted to IBAMA. The management plans were approved by IBAMA and the small furniture initiative started to grow. Our initial collaboration with three villages soon spread, and additional communities, some located across the river in the Tapajós National Forest, also began to collect the baseline inventory and growth data necessary to manage their forests sustainably. The results from the work in the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve were especially relevant because they verified several fundamental assumptions about community forestry. Villagers can indeed be trained to collect the necessary data for sustainable forest management and they are the best teachers for disseminating these skills to other

BRITTONIA

communities. Concerted efforts by communities to manage their forests do, in fact, engender forest conservation and an enhanced sense of forest stewardship. And, finally, there is a demonstrated link between the livelihood of villagers and the continued health of the forest within which they live.

SUSTAINABLE RATTAN HARVESTS IN LAOS AND CAMBODIA

Building on the taxonomic and inventory work with rattan that was conducted in the Truong Son Mountains of Vietnam (11), a three-year collaborative project was initiated with the WWF-Greater Mekong Program in 2011 (12). The basic idea of the project was to modify the management concepts and field procedures developed for rattan in the protected areas of Vietnam and to slowly implement them in the community forests of Laos and Cambodia. The Swedish furniture company, IKEA, which sells a lot of rattan products and wanted to enhance the sustainability of the rattan supply chain in these countries, funded much of the fieldwork. If local communities could demonstrate the capability to manage and sustainably harvest the rattan resource growing in their forests, IKEA would buy the material from them. Working together with Dr. Andrew Henderson, a palm taxonomist in the Institute of Systematic Botany who was also involved in the Vietnam rattan surveys, the rattan flora of Laos and Cambodia was collected and described and project staff was taught to identify local rattan species. Several training workshops were held in participating villages to demonstrate simple inventory procedures, and growth studies of six commercial rattans were initiated (Peters et al., 2013). Once the first inventory and growth data became available, the communities were shown how to calculate a sustainable annual harvest of rattan from their forests. The CBNRM work in Laos and Cambodia produced several noteworthy results. We started with a few villages in each country, and by the end of the project over 60 villages had started managing their rattan based on quantitative inventory and growth data. The rattan forests in four villages in Bolikhamxay Province, Laos, were certified sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the first time that a community has ever received FSC certification for the management of

[VOL

a non-timber forest resource. Perhaps the most lasting contribution of the project was compiling all of the information collected on the taxonomy and management of rattans in the Greater Mekong Region into a field guide for use by local communities (Peters & Henderson, 2014). The illustrated field guide contains a dichotomous key to the 65 species of rattan that grow in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, a descriptive summary of rattan ecology, and simple, participatory protocols for managing wild rattan population on a sustainedyield basis. The book is available in English, Vietnamese, Lao, and Khmer and is provided free of charge to interested communities.

COMMUNITY FORESTRY IN NORTHERN MYANMAR

Efforts to develop community forestry have been underway in northern Myanmar (13) since 2009. Initial surveys of several villages were first conducted in the Hukaung Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in Kachin State, and fieldwork was started shortly thereafter in the village of Shinlonga. The sequence of operations followed what has now become a basic diagnostic protocol: household surveys were conducted to develop a list of useful species and estimate the annual demand, and preliminary transects were laid out in the forest to assess the actual density and regeneration status of different species. Based on the supply and demand dynamics that were recorded for the village, it was estimated that Shinlonga could produce the timber, rattan, palm thatch, bamboo, and medicinal plant resources needed each year in a 100 hectare Village Management Area. Many of the more important resource groups (e.g., timber and rattan) were depleted because commercial concessions had been granted to the same piece of forest that the village was using. The village decided to lay out a VMA, collect the requisite inventory and growth data, develop a formal management plant, and then submit it to the Ministry of Environmental Conservation and Forestry (MOECAF) and request a Community Forestry Certificate for the area. If the community had such a certificate, they would obtain formal usufruct rights to the forest and would not have to compete with commercial timber and rattan harvesters for subsistence resources. Over the next six months, the community laid out their village management area and completed

2016]

PETERS: COMMUNITY FORESTRY AND SUSTAINABILITY

a 10% inventory of fifteen timber species, four bamboo species, one rattan species, and seven species of medicinal plants that were growing in the forest. A forest typology including five habitat classes was developed from the observations recorded in each inventory plot, and standing volumes were calculated and mapped for all of the timber trees. All that was needed to put together a management plan were growth studies of the timber and rattan. Unfortunately, the political situation in this part of Kachin State started to deteriorate rapidly and the community forestry work was suspended. After a four-year hiatus, community forestry operations were re-initiated, this time in Sagaing Region and in a village representing a different land-use context. The current study village, Nam Sabi, is not located inside a protected area like Shinlonga, but adjacent to the buffer zone of the Htamanthi Wildlife Sanctuary. The subsistence resources needed by the village are harvested from forests within this buffer zone. The potential value of community forestry in a buffer zone habitat is that sustainable resource use and forest stewardship provides a strong incentive for villagers not to harvest inside the protected area itself. Additionally, after the villagers have invested the time and energy to set up, inventory, and manage a tract of forest in the buffer zone, they are much opposed to other people from other villagers passing through their area to harvest resources within the protected area. Community forestry operations are actually a very good way to secure buffer zone habitats and ensure the conservation of protected areas. In late 2014, a 100 hectare Village Management Area was laid out in the buffer zone of the Htamanthi Wildlife Sanctuary by trained field crews from Nam Sabi working together with rangers from the Nature and Wildlife Conservation Division of MOECAF and technical staff from the WCS Myanmar Program, and a 10% inventory of the area was conducted (Fig. 3). The inventory included twenty-seven timber species, two species of thatch palms, three species of bamboo, five species of rattan, and twenty-six species of medicinal plants. Dendrometer bands were also fitted to sample trees of varying diameter from twelve different timber species to measure growth. With the completion of this fieldwork, the initial community forestry work started at Shinlonga was surpassed by the efforts of the villagers from Nam Sabi.

In October of 2015, village field crews relocated the growth trees and read their growth bands, collecting, in essence, the first quantitative data on tree growth ever recorded in Myanmar. And now that these growth data are available, the next step is to put together the management plan and submit it for approval to obtain a Community Forestry Certificate for the area. The work in Myanmar has had some setbacks, but the livelihood benefits to the community, as well as the potential policy implications, are enormous. Lessons learned Successful community forestry projects can be the home run of efforts to promote forest conservation and curb carbon emissions from forest clearing. Rather than paying a community not to cut down their forest, which, it is pretty safe to assume, will only work for as long as you continue to pay them, community-based natural resource management projects can create a longterm people and plant relationship in which the subsistence or commercial benefits of not cutting down the forest outweigh those of deforestation. The forests are not cut, because they are actually worth something to the community. There is also the sense of stewardship and empowerment that is created when a community is acknowledged for their management efforts, and the livelihood security that is provided by a reliable, and predictable, source of forest resources. But, the potential benefits of community forestry are not the same for all communities, plant resources, or forest types, and we have learned a little about what works—and what does not work—in our applied ethnobotany work over the last 30 years. There are a variety of different social, economic, and ecological factors that can influence the potential success of a community forestry project in the tropics. In terms of social factors, it goes without saying that well-organized communities with strong leadership will have the best chance of success. There are a lot of pieces to the community forestry puzzle, and some villages are better than others at dividing up the work and taking the responsibility to insure that everything gets done. Identifying communities with these characteristics may take some time, but the effort pays off when all of the fieldwork gets completed and the data are carefully stored. Additionally, communities that have tenure rights over their forest (e.g., forestry ejidos in Mexico) frequently

BRITTONIA

FIG. 3. Field crew from the village of Nam Sabi laying out an inventory transect in the buffer zone of the Htamanthi Wildlife Sanctuary, Sagaing Region, Myanmar.

have a stronger sense of resource stewardship and are more motivated to collect the inventory and growth data needed for management because it enhances the value of something proprietary, and communities that have specific cultural controls or traditional laws that regulate resource use (e.g., Dayak communities in West Kalimantan) are usually more amenable to the imposition of harvest controls. From an economic standpoint, community forestry projects focused on a product with an existing market will usually require less work than one focused on a new fruit, handicraft, or herbal preparation. Unless, of course, the existing market is already saturated and competition with other producers is stiff, or the quality of the focal resource is somehow inferior to that which is already available. The difficulty and expense of obtaining the permits required to market different resources should also be taken into account early in the project development phase. Clearly, it is best to find out that the tariffs associated with a particular forest resource are prohibitively expensive before the community invests the time and energy to collect inventory and growth data and develop a management plan.

[VOL

The ecological factors associated with the forest resources under exploitation will probably have the largest influence on the ultimate sustainability of a community forestry operation (Peters, 2001, 2010). Working with species that are actively regenerating themselves in the forest and that exhibit an abundance of seedlings, saplings, and juvenile trees, greatly simplifies management operations. The harvest of plant stems (e.g., timber and rattan cane), which kills the harvest individual and requires a continual management effort to maintain densities of the desirable species, is quite different from the harvest of fruits or latex which can be conducted each year from the same individual. Both forms of exploitation can ultimately produce a program of sustainable resource use, but the former is considerably more difficult than the latter. The regeneration strategy and shade tolerance of the species under management can also simplify or complicate management operations. Shade tolerant species can be regenerated while maintaining a relatively closed canopy, and the selective felling of gap-dependent timber species is frequently sufficient to maintain adequate densities of these resources. Fast growing, early successional species, on the other hand, will require an open canopy and a lot of frequent disturbance, and the management of these resources, in most cases, is best facilitated by directed planting as part of an agroforestry system, rather than silvicultural treatment of intact forest. Perhaps the main lesson learned about the development of successful community-based natural resource managements programs is that every community and community forest and communitygenerated list of useful species is different. Blanket prescriptions about what to do and how to do it will not be equally successful in all situations. In fact, unless the community forestry program is specifically tailored to a particular community and forest based on a preliminary assessment of the existing resource supply and demand, standardized protocols blindly applied will always be less than ideal, and subject to failure. The basic premise that has guided the applied ethnobotany efforts at The New York Botanical Garden is to first get to know the people and the plants. Spend time in the community talking about plants and uses and harvest rates before anything else. Take as much time as is needed until everyone feels comfortable. And then slowly move things out into the forest. This, we have found, is the best way to develop a successful community forestry project.

2016]

PETERS: COMMUNITY FORESTRY AND SUSTAINABILITY

Acknowledgments A large number of foundations and institutions have generously supported the applied ethnobotany work conducted in the Institute of Economic Botany. In particular, we would like to thank the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for funding fieldwork in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Vietnam; the Overbrook Foundation for supporting our community forestry efforts in Mexico and Brazil; the Committee for Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society for sponsoring research in Myanmar and Vietnam; the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC) at Columbia University for supporting projects in Papua New Guinea and Myanmar: the U.S. Agency for International Development Environment Program for funding the work on native fruits in West Kalimantan, Indonesia; the Exxon Corporation for supporting the native fruits work in Peruvian Amazonia; the National Science Foundation for sponsoring conservation planning in the Indo-Burma region: IKEA for funding the sustainable use and management of rattan in Laos and Cambodia; and blue moon fund and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust for supporting the community-based natural resource management projects in Myanmar and Madagascar. Palms together in gratitude to all of these groups.

Literature cited Balick, M. J. 2016, this issue. Transforming the Study of Plants and People: A Reflection on 35 Years of the NYBG Institute of Economic Botany. Brittonia 68(3). Hernández-Apolinar, M., T. Valverde & S. Purata. 2006. Demography of Bursera glabrifolia, a tropical tree used for folk woodcrafting in Southern Mexico: An evaluation of its management plan. Forest Ecology and Management 223: 139–151. Dudley, N. 2008.Guidelines for Applying Protected Area Management Categories. International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Gland. Martin, M. P., C. M. Peters & M. S. Ashton. 2014. Revisiting camu-camu (Myrciaria dubia): Twenty-seven

years of fruit collection and flooding at an oxbow lake in Peruvian Amazonia. Economic Botany 68(2): 169–176. McGrath, D. G., C. M. Peters & A. Motes-Bentes. 2004. Community forestry for small-scale furniture production in the Brazilian Amazon, pp. 200–220 in D. Zarin, J. Alavalpati, F. Putz, and M. Schmink (eds.), Working Forests in the Neotropics. Columbia University Press. Peters, C. M. 1994. Sustainable Harvest of Non-timber Plant Resources in Tropical Moist Forests: An Ecological Primer. Biodiversity Support Program, Washington, D.C. ———. 1996a. The Ecology and Management of Non-timber Tropical Forest Resources. World Bank Technical Paper No. 322, The World Bank, Washington, D.C. ———. 1996b. Beyond nomenclature and use: A review of ecological methods for ethnobotanists. Advances in Economic Botany 10: 241–276. ———. 2001. Lessons from the plant kingdom for conservation of exploited species, pp. 242–256, in J. Reynolds, G. Mace, K. Redford, and J. Robinson (eds.), Conservation of Exploited Species. Cambridge University Press. ———. 2010. Economic botany and management potential of neotropical dry forest, pp. 239–258 in R. Dirzo, H.S. Young, H.A. Moody, and G. Ceballos (eds.), Seasonally Dry Neotropical Forests. Island Press. ——— & W. Giesen. 2001. Balancing supply and demand: A case study of rattan. Borneo Research Bulletin 31: 138– 149. ——— & E. J. Hammond. 1990. Fruits from the flooded forests of Peruvian Amazonia: Yield estimates for natural populations of three promising species. Advances in Economic Botany 8: 159–176. ——— & A. Henderson. 2014. Systematics, Ecology, and Management of Rattans in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam: The Biological Bases of Sustainable Use. Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), IKEA, and New York Botanical Garden. ——— & A. Vasquez-Matute. 1987. Estudios ecológicos de camu-camu (Myriciria dubia). I. Producción de frutos en poblaciones naturales. Acta Amazonica 16/17: 161–174. ———, A. Gentry & R. Mendelsohn. 1989. Valuation of a tropical forest on Peruvian Amazonia. Nature 339: 655– 657. ———, S. Purata, M. Chibnik, B. Brosi, A. Lopez & M. Ambrosio. 2003. The life and times of Bursera glabrifolia (H.B.K.) Engl. in Mexico: A parable for ethnobotany. Economic Botany 57: 431–441. ———, B. Thammavong, B. Mekaloun, N. Phearoom, O. Ratanak & T. Ledecq. 2013. Growth of wild rattans in Cambodia and Laos: Implications for management. Forest Ecology and Management 306: 23–30. Purata, S., C. M. Peters, M. Ambrosio, B. Brosi & A. Lopez. 2004. Los alebrijes de Oaxaca y el manejo de las selvas secas. Ciencia y Desarrollo 174: 52–60.