Becker, C. Dustin, and Rosario Leon. 1998. "Indigenous Forest Management in the Bolivian Amazon: Lessons from the Yuracare People." Presented at "Crossing Boundaries", the seventh annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, June 10-14.

Abstract

From the introduction:

"Societies have been making choices about their relationships with forests for many centuries. As reviewed by Perlin (1991), the dominant choice for the last 5,000 years across Asia and Europe, and more recently in the Americas, has been to cut down trees, use them for fuel and building materials, and replace them with crops or urban centers. In contrast, numerous neotropical cultures have evolved societies that sustain rather than destroy forest ecosystems (Chernela, 1989; Posey, 1992). Such ecologically oriented cultures are rapidly disappearing. Mutualistic relationships between forests and people in the tropics are changing as activities in the forest are modified by incentives structured by market forces, government forest policies, and by concomitant changes in the values of indigenous peoples. This study explores the changing relationship between the Yuracare people and the forest communities they sustain and use along the Rio Chapare in northern Bolivia. It finds that while certain external threats do affect the condition of the Yuracare's forests, a significant amount of local level management continues to exist."