Extractive Reserves Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Extractive reserves are a form of conservation that originated in the Brazilian Amazon in the 1980s. Unlike national parks or other protected areas that often result in the exclusion of local populations for the benefit of national and international conservation goals, extractive reserves are attractive because they include concerns for locals that are directly impacted by natural resource management. Extractive reserves are one example of a larger shift toward community conservation that considers the needs and input of local residents about natural resources. Community conservation involves a number of initiatives, including community-based conservation, community wildlife management, collaborative management, communitybased natural resource management, and integrated conservation and development programs (ICDPs).

Brazilian Amazon

The Brazilian Amazon has been a hotly contested region for centuries, with multiple actors competing to access rainforest territory and the various resources within it. Additionally, conservation and development organizations concerned with biological diversity have pressured the Brazilian government to protect the rainforest from continued modification. Estimates from satellite imagery and other sources suggest that roughly 20,000 square kilometers-or 2 million hectares-of territory is deforested each year, which results in often violent competition to gain control over the remaining land. These conflicts involve various stakeholders including cattle ranchers, logging companies, agriculturalists, indigenous Indians, and rubber tappers.

In response to these factors, a coalition of actors organized to put pressure upon the national government to protect traditional rights. The rubber tapper movement, consisting of the rural workers’ union of Acre, and later the National Council of Rubber Tappers, organized from the 1970s to prevent expulsion and deforestation within the region. In the early 1970s, the Xapuri Union was founded and developed the empate, which was a nonviolent tactic aimed at resisting competing claims upon their territory.

In the 1980s, a coalition of rubber tappers, Amazon Indians and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) proposed the extractive reserve conservation model. Extractive reserves were first discussed as a land use option at the meeting of the National Council of Rubber Tappers and Rural Worker’s Union in 1985. The Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IB-AMA) defines extractive reserves as areas set aside for the sustainable use and conservation of natural resources by traditional populations. Most extractive reserves involve tracts of rainforest territory that have been set aside by the Brazilian government for protection.

The state assumes ownership and offers the land to traditional residents for use according to a sustainable management plan. Extractive reserves avoid the subdivision of land into private units that normally accompany colonization projects, favoring instead communal property based on traditional resource collection. Marine extractive reserves also exist, and are increasingly popular as a means of protecting both aquatic resources and their traditional harvesters. Extractive reserves were officially instituted as part of Brazilian environmental policy in 1990, and by 2005 there were 43 that covered an estimated 80,000 square kilometers or 8 million hectares.

Extractive reserves are a form of conservation with use, meaning that residents are permitted to live within the reserves and utilize the resources that they depend upon for their survival. Traditional methods of resource collection, particularly of natural rubber and Brazil nuts, are allowed to occur within the reserve. Extractive reserves are a promising attempt to balance the development needs of local Brazilians with conservation, however, they are far from ideal. As a number of scholars have noted, traditional extraction of rubber and Brazil nuts does not generate significant profit and leaves residents in a challenging financial position. Competing land use strategies, such as cattle ranching or logging, are more lucrative by comparison. Natural rubber has remained subsidized by the Brazilian government and the development of markets for these products has resulted in more efficient forms of production. Rubber plantations, for example, have been established in Brazil and southeast Asia as a way of generating profits from these commodities.

The wave of interest in extractive reserves in the 1980s was punctuated by the assassination of the rubber tapper movement’s leader, Chico Mendes, in December 1988 by two cattle ranchers. The intention of his assassination was to deflate the movement; however, Mendes’s death galvanized international attention to the land use problems and accompanying tension in the Brazilian Amazon, specifically in the state of Acre, which remains one of the primary locations of rubber tapper activism. Though his death was tragic, it served as a catalyst for extractive reserves and propelled them to new heights of interest.

Bibliography:

Mary Helena Allegretti, “Extractive Reserves: An Alternative for Reconciling Development and Conservation in Amazonia,” in Anthony B. Anderson (ed.), Alternatives to Deforestation: Steps Toward Sustainable Use of the Amazon Rain Forest (Columbia University Press, 1990);
Philip M. Fearnside, “Extractive Reserves in Brazilian Amazonia: An Opportunity to Maintain Tropical Rain Forest Under Sustainable Use,” BioScience (v.39, 1989);
Chico Mendes, Fight for the Forest: Chico Mendes in His Own Words (Latin American Bureau, 1989).