Cash income from community-based forest management: lessons from two case studies in the Brazilian Amazon

Community based forest management (CBFM) is seen as an alternative way of protecting forests while also generating income for small land-holders. Since the mid-1990s, the number of CBFM projects has increased in the Brazilian Amazon. However, most of them face a number of difficulties despite significant public support. Two CBFM projects, located in the State of Para (Eastern Amazon), were analyzed between 2008 and 2010 to highlight the main obstacles to their long-term financial viability and to assess the cash income that the communities eventually received from logging activities. The first important hurdle in successful CBFM implementation is the complex legal framework: it currently takes at least 2 years to get a plan approved. Moreover, developing and implementing a management plan is a costly process. None of the CBFM plans could have been successfully implemented without external national and international financial support, as well as technical assistance. Otherwise, in the current Amazonian market context, timber. harvesting only represents a limited cash income for small farmers, even if forest covers 80% of their landholding. Market access is very uncertain and smallholder communities do not easily succeed in selling their timber at remunerative prices. Public guarantees ensuring a minimum remunerative price for harvested timber from community forest management plans are certainly necessary to make them an effective source of income for smallholders in the Amazon.