Extractive Reserves in the Brazilian Amazon: Prospects for the FutureThe Brazilian Extractive Reserves are collective long-term land-use rights given by the government to whole communities of forest-based people. They were proposed by the Conselho Nacional de Seringueiros (Rubber Tappers National Council or CNS) in 1985 as a way to defend their rights against logging and cattle-ranching pressures. This approach to combining land reform with conservation gained international momentum after the murder of Chico Mendes, leader of the CNS. The first extractive reserve created in Brazil was Alto Jurua (REAJ), in the west of the State of Acre. With half a million hectares and around 5,500 inhabitants, REAJ has been a pioneer in social organisation, design and implementation of forest management. At the end of 1995, CIFOR began support of a long-term research effort led by Professor Mauro Almeida of Campinas University, where fifteen years of detailed information had accumulated. With CIFOR's support, Professor Almeida's team is preparing a database that will be used to better understand the dynamic processes and their causal relationships, and to develop models to explore possible future scenarios. The provisional findings of the team already reveal the great resilience of the rubber tapper communities which have stayed on in Alto Jurua despite a four-fold decline between 1982 and 1992 in the price paid for their rubber. This resilience is reinforced by large movements of people inside the Reserve, who are abandoning the headwaters (which are rich in rubber trees) to settle near the main rivers. They have achieved survival by changing their mix of activities and drastically reducing the production of rubber in response to low prices. Rubber is thus becoming more marginal in the economy of the REAJ. It has been overtaken by small-scale agriculture, and by income from salaries earned as teachers, health assistants or state administrators or from pensions. Rubber tappers and farmers now tend to accumulate a few head of cattle. These new trends in the REAJ are affecting its conservation status, with pressure now concentrated on the river banks. The population density of some heavily hunted species is also increasing in the hinterlands as fewer people go there for rubber-tapping. The deforestation rate is still very low, estimated at 3 per cent for the whole REAJ, which is well below the upper limit of 5 per cent foreseen in the management plan. This process of change will probably lead to re-evaluation and re-formulation of the role and potential of extractive reserves in Brazil. CIFOR expects to help decision makers reconcile development and conservation objectives by contributing to the better understanding of these changes and modelling the likely results. Manuel Ruiz Pérez & Mauro Almeida |