With an annual value of US$35 million, northern Bolivia’s non-timber forest product (NTFP) industry revolves chiefly around the extraction, processing and trade of Brazil nuts and palm hearts. Whereas most NTFP research focuses on rural populations and forests where the products grow, Stoain’s work in the Bolivian Amazon examines the urban dimension of the NTFP economy, which includes extraction, transport, processing and sale.

The study took place on the peripheries of the region’s economic center, Riberalta, and analyzed the role of NTFPs in the livelihood strategies of three different social groups of origin: long-established Riberalto dwellers (Riberalteños), ex-forest dwellers recently arrived to the urban environment, and extra-regional migrants. Semi-structured interviews yielded data reveling that 58% of all sampled households featured NTFP-related work as part of their livelihood strategies, and 37% of the households derived over half of their total income from such work. The job of extraction or gathering entailed temporary migration and a rural stay during the seasonal harvests. This work was complementary to working in more urban-based processing plants. The ex-forest dwellers were the most reliant upon extraction work, with 1/3 of their income stemming from rural areas. Riberalteños, receiving 1/5 of their income from rural areas, had jobs from the top end (plantation owners) to the bottom end (gathering and processing) of the income spectrum. For the extra-regional migrants, rural income proved to be of generally low importance. Migration patterns, social group of origin, level of neighborhood development, gender and education were seen to be key factors in levels and types of involvement in the industry.

It was found that work in extraction is a fairly lucrative endeavor and that it is not just a last resort livelihood for its urban participants, in contrast to other researchers’ assertions about NTFPs. Additionally, the author points out that rural-urban migration affords the children of NTFP workers opportunities to attend secondary and tertiary school, thereby increasing chances for poverty alleviation. This industry is deemed to be essential to the livelihood security and household resilience of the study’s urban-based participants. A rural-urban continuum concept for understanding urban ethnobotany is supported by this study. “Rather than a rural-urban divide, it is the rural-urban nexus underlying these strategies that explains their flexibility, adaptability, and viability” (p. 1485). The author urges that researchers pay more attention to all the links along NTFP chains of production, and adopt an analytical scope that recognizes the rural-urban continuum fundamental to many modern livelihood strategies.

Prepared by Megan Glore