Forest income and dependency in lowland Bolivia |
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Authors: | Patricia Uberhuaga Carsten Smith-Hall Finn Helles |
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Institution: | (1) Centre for Forest, Landscape and Planning, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Rolighedsvej 23, 1958 Frederiksberg C, Denmark; |
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Abstract: | Forests contribute to livelihoods of rural people throughout the tropics. This paper adds to the emerging body of quantitative
knowledge on absolute and relative economic importance, through both cash and subsistence income, of moist forests to households.
Qualitative contextual information was collected in six villages in lowland Bolivia, followed by a structured survey of randomly
selected households (n = 118) that included four quarterly income surveys. We employed a novel data collection approach that allows detailed estimation
of total household accounts, including sources of forest income. We estimated the average forest income share of total annual
household income (forest dependency) at 20%, ranging from 18 to 24%. Adding environmental income increased the average to
26%, being fairly constant across income quartiles at 24–28%. Absolute levels of forest income increased with total household
income, while forest dependency was the highest in the best-off income quartile—the primary harvesters of forest products
are better-off households. The pattern of high forest dependency among better-off households has also been reported from other
countries, indicating that this pattern may be more common than advocated by conventional wisdom. Using ordinary least squares
(OLS) regressions, we found significant determinants of absolute forest income to be household size, sex of household head
and area of cultivated land; the significant determinants for forest dependency were level of education, whether household
head was born in village and whether household was food self-sufficient. Better-off households were able to realise cash income
from forests, while poorer households—in particular if headed by women—were more reliant on subsistence forest income. We
argue that the differential patterns of forest income across income quartiles should be considered in future development interventions
and that findings indicate a potential for forests to contribute to moving households out of poverty. |
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