Ilana Araujo-Santos, Karen A Kainer, Fernando Grenno, Alexandre Schiavetti
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: Traditional harvest of non-timber forest products (NTFP) offers an economic alternative to local communities by providing income without significantly altering current land use while reinforcing deeply rooted local knowledge. Analyzing NTFP value chains helps understand the actors, relationships, stages, and sustainability of these products. This study focuses on the piassava palm (Attalea funifera Martius), examining its value chain structure, social and economic indicators, and sustainability challenges.
Methods: Our study focused on communities in the Environmental Protection Areas of Pratigi and Tinharé-Boipeba in Bahia, Brazil. We examined five local communities involved in piassava harvesting, using semi-structured interviews and participant observation to gather data on actor roles, socioeconomic aspects, and sustainability issues, like economic vulnerabilities, social challenges, and environmental threats. Using a mixed-methods approach-combining semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and quantitative descriptive analysis-we investigated the roles of key actors, relationships, and threats within the piassava value chain. Findings were analyzed using content analysis and basic statistical measures to understand the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of sustainability.
Results: We observed diverse stages, actor roles, and final products in the piassava value chain, identifying three primary raw materials: fibers, leaves, and fruits. Four main stages were noted: harvest, transportation, fiber separation, and product sales, with ecotourism emerging as a potential stage in the value chain analyzed here. The piassava value chain's structure varies based on the materials and products involved, with key actors being harvest workers, partitioners, roofing artisans, and handicraft artisans. Respondents identified 20 threats to the piassava value chain, categorized into economic, social, and environmental issues, with the most cited being the scarcity of harvest workers, lack of interest among young people, and deforestation, respectively.
Conclusions: Our results suggest policy recommendations for reconciling social, economic, and ecological aspects. These include promoting community-based tourism as a complementary income source. Recognizing and disseminating piassava value chain outcomes as sociobiodiversity products, for example, strengthening legal and commercial frameworks to certify piassava products, or encouraging investment in local processing infrastructure to enhance value addition and market access. Finally, the results analyzed here underscore the importance of including local perspectives in discussions and highlight the need for further research to evaluate strategies for sustainable community forest management.
期刊介绍:
Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine publishes original research focusing on cultural perceptions of nature and of human and animal health. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine invites research articles, reviews and commentaries concerning the investigations of the inextricable links between human societies and nature, food, and health. Specifically, the journal covers the following topics: ethnobotany, ethnomycology, ethnozoology, ethnoecology (including ethnopedology), ethnogastronomy, ethnomedicine, ethnoveterinary, as well as all related areas in environmental, nutritional, and medical anthropology.
Research focusing on the implications that the inclusion of humanistic, cultural, and social dimensions have in understanding the biological word is also welcome, as well as its potential projections in public health-centred, nutritional, and environmental policies.