Non-timber Forest Products in Peruvian Amazonia: Changing Patterns of Economic Exploitation by James W Penn Jr. Photographs by author Non-timber forest products (NFTPs) lands were first explored and mapped in wealth of non-timber forest resources and are important for societies all over the world what is now the Amazon basin of Ecuador their many products. Padre Acuña seemed and consist of foods, fuel, fibers, thatch, and Peru. They had heard that cinnamon to enjoy describing them, and he used many construction materials, latex, resin, gums, could be found in these unexplored lands superlatives: “the most perfect medicines, dyes, hallucinogens, and a and were very interested, because Spain sarsaparilla,” “the most useful and plethora of other plant materials that come was hoping to counter the Orient's valuable abundant gums and resins…,” “…wild from forest ecosystems. That people living cinnamon and cassia trees with a product of honey (a medicine and a food), oils…,” and near these resources may be dependent on its own from the new world. Gonzalo “….a thousand species of other trees and them is not surprising. What makes these Pizarro, who led the famous 1541 herbs of particular uses…” (Acuña 1994, products unique is that people living in or expedition into the Amazon Basin, dreamed p.87). near the forests are holders of the main body of finding the land of canela (cinnamon) NTFPs were often referred to as 1 of knowledge concerning their use trees that the natives had described to them. “drogas do sertão,” or “drogas,” because (Nuemann and Hirsch 2000). Non-timber Upon finding the cinnamon trees, he and his many of them were plant materials that forest resources from Amazonia have men were disappointed, as the trees did not were used as medicine. However, they also provided economic benefits to people grow in high densities but widely consisted of many different products not across the globe for centuries; we need look dispersed. The main reason for the used as medicines, such as fibers, resins, no further than the chocolate and rubber Spaniards' frustration was that while the dyes, spices, edible roots, nuts, fruits, and industries to recognize this. These flower buds and leaves tasted like construction materials. Still, it was the resources continue to be important today, cinnamon, the trees were of course not true medicinal use of these plant products that especially to residents of Amazonian cinnamon, rather the genus Nectandra immediately caught the eye of the countries. (Medina 1934). Francisco Orellana and a Europeans. Wild honey was both a food The terms “non-timber forest small group of men left the large, Pizarro and a drug; guaraná was used as a products” (NTFPs) and “non-timber forest expedition party and went further painkiller, stimulant, and controlled resources” (NTFRs) are often mistakenly downriver to “discover” the Amazon River. hunger; and andiroba and copaiba were oils interchanged. While researchers have By the 17th century, several explorers were for healing and used in soaps. These pointed out that thousands of NTFPs are traveling the Amazon and its tributaries. products from the wild were important to used by people all over the world, we must The Jesuits and other Catholic the growing economy around Marajó remember that these products are denominations were important sources of Island in the 1600s, and Pará (Belém) was environmental services, and part of the written information as they took their considered a small city by 1660 (Betendorf natural resource base. For that reason, it is religion to this huge region. Friar Gaspar de 1910). best to look at these extracted products as Carvajal served as the scribe on Orellana's Sarsaparilla, another plant growing in wild and living forest resources. In the case trip down the Amazon, and it was often the Amazon, quickly entered international of cacao, the seeds from the fruit are an representatives of the church that described trade and became popular in Europe. example of a product from a non-timber the natural resources encountered on these “Sarsa,” referred to the root of small trees forest resource, the tree. Except where journeys. The Spaniard Padre Cristobal and vines. Dried sarsaparilla roots were noted, this article will consider non-timber Acuña wrote of the downriver expedition of forest resources (NTFRs) to be plant species. the Portuguese Pedro Teixeira. In 1639, 1 When Europeans arrived in South Acuña was commissioned to describe the The sertão formally refers to the backlands of northeastern Brazil, separating the Atlantic coast America, they immediately noticed that the land, native peoples (who were called from the Brazilian highlands. Early settlers natives were using a multitude of plants “Indians” by the Europeans), and natural preferred the coast to this forbidding from the forests (Denevan 1992). The resources for Spain. He was impressed that environment, and tended to refer to any part of Spaniards had expected to find gold, the forests held so much quality timber for the tropical Brazilian interior as the sertão, cinnamon, and other riches when the new ships, but he was equally amazed at the including Amazonia. 18 FOCUS on Geography Volume 51, Number 2 shipped to Europe to make medicinal teas, though production moved into the Bahia minimal cost increases. Sheer distance and elixirs, and a number of medicines. The root region in Brazil and over to Africa during the logistics of forest economies in the was also a favorite with colonists and the 19th century (Clarence-Smith 2000). Amazon were extremely challenging to the sailors. Brazil nuts were becoming popular By 1850, the Amazon forests had entrepreneur, and they still are today. in Europe and North America, and cacao undergone over 300 years of exploitation for Rubber and cacao are just two examples of was extracted from the forest in increasing domestic and international trade, even NTFPs entering international trade; where quantities. These early accounts show that before the rubber boom which brought so they were subsequently domesticated and barely a century after Pizarro's and much attention to the Amazon. Then, as grown as farmed crops. Synthetic, Francisco Orellana's expedition to the now, the Amazon was viewed as a great petroleum-based products have replaced “Land of Cinnamon,” non-timber forest medicine cabinet. Naturalists exploring the natural rubber in many applications further products of the region had become region such as Henry Walter Bates and eroding the market value of natural rubber desirable to Europeans. By the 17th century, Richard Spruce, were commissioned to from the forests of Amazonia. To some NTFPs from the Amazon supported research plant medicines and poisons. experts, this economic decline is considered important economies, and were seen as Their work allowed them to learn about a inevitable after a NTFP enters international having the most economic potential for the huge variety of forest products, and they markets because of the domestication and region, even in comaprison to cultivated seemed especially impressed by the many cultivation of the product or the crops, such as cotton and sugar cane materials available from palm trees, whose development of industrial substitutes for it. (Bettendorf 1910). They were a source of fruits, thatch, and use in drinks quickly Homma (1992) states that either one or both local development and a key reason for the attracted their interest (Bates 1962, Spruce of these factors will cause the end of an establishment of the first towns of the 1970). However, they also noticed the extractive economy. This process is not Amazon. Demand for the wild product decline in abundance of these forest only common but can be dramatic and cacao would grow quickly during the next products as well as some wildlife. Bates rapid, hence the reference to “boom and decades. (1962) observed that this decline was bust” in relation to the extractive industries The NTFPs were extracted from especially common in the lower Amazon, in Amazonia. isolated locations in the Amazon Basin and where most settlers were located, near the Today, the economic potential of supplied distant overseas markets. towns of Santarém and Belém. NTFPs from the Amazon remains Consequently, it usually took months to get European scientists were also very enormous and underappreciated as we are them from the forest to a ship bound for the interested in rubber, and they had been only beginning to determine their economic Atlantic. Not surprisingly, harvesting these learning about its curious properties since worth (Smith 1999). The subsistence value resources from the forest relied on the the early 1700s. Using a rubber coating on alone of these products to residents of knowledge and skill of native labor. materials such as shoes were common in the Amazonian countries is enormous, perhaps While it is difficult to ascertain the Amazon and rubber was exported incalculable. Their economic value is often economic value of the multitude of NTFPs elsewhere long before anyone had thought overlooked, because the attention of (except for cacao) to the Amazonian of pneumatic tires. It became a raw material development practitioners tends to focus economy during the 18th century, they were for industry by 1850 and came almost on the export of timber and agricultural no doubt of immense importance because entirely from the forest. Rubber trees, products from this vast region. they were so sought after in Brazil and however, were highly dispersed in the Government agencies view fields of maize coveted by Europeans. It wasn't until the forests, and the rubber-tapping, processing, or cattle as “development” and tend to view 20th century that timber became a major and transport was time-consuming and NTFRs as resources of the past with industry in the Amazon, although its risky, thus making rubber from the Amazon importance only to native societies.