Brooms for a Sustainable Future:

Saving the Forest in Mushuk Llacta de Chipaota

By providing villagers with an alternative source of income drawn from the forest itself, a Texas nonprofit helps save 3,600 ha of virgin Amazon rainforest.  The key was to involve villagers every step of the way.

Austin, Texas is an unlikely location for an NGO that saves tropical rainforests, but then Austin is an unlikely place.  The state capital and site of the University of Texas, Austin has a long history of concern for water and air quality.  Its watershed and climate protection programs are models for U.S. cities.  But, aside from contributions to Conservation International or the World Wildlife Fund, Austinites have focused their attention on the environment of central Texas.  The Texas Hill Country is right next door, but the Amazon is far, far away.  Believing the time was ripe for a broader effort, in December 2007, several Austinites started Rainforest Partnership, an NGO aimed at saving tropical rainforests in South America.  Now they were looking for their first project – a rainforest to save, and a partner rainforest community to help them save it.

The critical issue, they believed, was economics.  Rainforests are cut and burned because it makes good sense for the people who live there to do so.  Every hectare deforested could provide pasture for a cow or some cacao trees, providing (in a few years) a subsistence income.  But, when multiplied over millions of hectares, rainforest cutting and burning spews more greenhouse gases into the air than all the world’s cars, trucks, boats, trains, and planes combined.  Cows produce methane, a particularly harmful greenhouse gas.  And the Amazon pasture, drawing on thin, acidic soils, is only able to sustain cattle, cacao, or other cash crops for a few years before it is spent, requiring the cycle to begin again.  Thus saving the forest required making the forest more economically valuable to the Amazon people than the cattle or cocoa that would supplant it.  But the Amazon rainforest is remarkably varied, and the best product probably depends on local conditions.  And, of course, it would need a community looking to consider an alternative.

Searching for a partner

The group’s search, using a methodical approach, took them to Peru among other countries, where executive director Niyanta Spelman spent two months in spring 2008.  Her contacts with multinational NGOs, Peruvian NGOs, local environmental advocates, and members of Peru’s birdwatching community took Ms Spelman, her board chair, Hazel Barbour, and their then Peruvian intern Lucia Eslava, on a whirlwind tour of some vulnerable areas of the Peruvian Amazon.  In each community they talked with local residents about their livelihoods and their relationship to the forest in which they lived.  How did they make money?  Did they see alternatives to cash crops and cattle?  Would they consider these alternatives? Most communities, they found, did not want to cut their trees.  They asked how do we make this work?  Tell us what we should do and how do we do it given our need for money to send our children to school and to the health clinic?

Remarkably, not one community asked for a handout; they simply asked for help in figuring out what they could do, supporting the premise on which Rainforest Partnership was founded: using a bottom-up approach, work with communities in finding and supporting alternative ways of making an income that match the local rainforest, customs, skills and options.

A few communities had an easier time of it.  Some villages near the tourist town of Puerto Maldonado earned money by providing guides to nearby eco-lodges.  This was an effective local solution, but the eco-tourism market is limited.  One community in central Peru was concerned about the effects of deforestation on downstream flooding and water quality.  Another, adjacent to northern Peru’s Cordillera Azul National Park, saw the problem differently.  For years, the community of Mushuk Llacta de Chipaota (Chipaota) had subsisted on piazaba palm extraction.  The fibers of the piazaba palm were the preferred substance for making brooms in Ecuador and Peru.  The villagers’ usual methods for fiber harvesting were destructive, often involving cutting down or mortally wounding the palm trees.  The nearby piazabas had been destroyed, and now the nearest palms were four to six hours walk away.  And, because the community’s forest had recently been declared a protected area, palm fibers could not be legally extracted for commercial sale unless a management plan had been approved by the Peruvian government.  Enforcement was sporadic, but as the population of easily obtained piazaba palms dwindled, the villagers were looking at other means of support.

Chipaota consists of 163 families and about 1,300 people spread over an area of about 5,000 ha of community-owned, titled land. (see Figure 1).  Chipaota is located in the upper Amazon basin adjoining the northwestern border of Cordillera Azul National Park in Northern Peru. The indigenous, Kechwa-speaking community has a primary school with three teachers and a health center, but lacks electricity, potable water, or a sewer system.

In Chipaota, Rainforest Partnership had found a community that already had developed an alternative to deforestation.  Palm fiber extraction was economically viable, and already a part of the local culture.  But this alternative was not sustainable as practiced.  Could it be made so?  The critical question was one of population size:  If the piazaba palms were properly managed, were there enough of them in the forest to support sustainable production? Once the RP board determined that Chipaota would be their first project, the team on the ground got going.

RP’s technical team consisted of two forestry engineers, Lucia Eslava and Jaso Daniel Angulo.  Ms. Eslava and Mr. Angulo recognized that formal authorities could veto even the best plan, and began by discussing the project with INRENA (the Peruvian National Institute of Natural Resources, a federal agency) and CIMA (Centro de Conservación, Investigación y Manejo de Áreas Naturales, a Peruvian NGO that works in Cordillera Azul National Park and its buffer zone) and with provincial and local government officials.  In addition to obtaining the authority, and encouragement to move forward, they also obtained valuable information.  INRENA provided satellite images of the forest, and CIMA provided maps and help with the technical details for the forest.

Both Ms. Eslava, now RP’s Peruvian program coordinator, and Mr. Angulo had previously worked with the local community.  Building on the trust they had both gained from working and staying in the community collecting technical data for CIMA, they were able to successfully begin work with the community.  In a series of meetings throughout November and December 2008, Lucia and Jaso identified informal community leaders and potential association members.  They verified the importance of the piazaba palm to the village economy.  The RP team also emphasized what many villagers already knew:  Until the government had accepted a plan for managing the palms, fiber extraction would remain illegal.  This long “sounding out” period proved helpful in getting the villagers used to the idea of a management plan.  The team did not ask too much from the villagers too soon.

On December 10, 2008, in a general assembly in the Chipaota community center, the community voted to work with Rainforest Partnership and each side signed an agreement to proceed.  During a long meeting on December 22, 2008, the villagers chose six members as a provisional board of directors for a piazaba palm producers association.  On the advice of local government officials, the RP team had decided to work with the community in starting up an association to manage the plan and to provide technical assistance to fiber users and broom makers.  These were among the most capable and well-respected persons in the community, best able to spread the word and maintain support for the idea.  The villagers explained that they obtained palm fibers from four areas of the local forest, and the RP team decided to inventory these areas first.  This would help them get the bugs out of their data collection system; these were also probably the most important areas to manage, since they were currently threatened with overharvesting.  More important, focusing on these areas was helpful in gaining commitment among the villagers.  Since these were areas they knew well, they could help in data collection as part of their routine activities.  The Apu, or village chief, promised to discuss the project with other community members during the communal channel-cleaning days, early in January.

Conducting the inventory

There are two ways to inventory a forest.  When the US-based MacArthur Foundation conducted its comprehensive inventory of species in the Cordillera Azul, it dropped 18-person scientific teams from helicopters.  Such an approach was completely beyond the funding capacity of a small NGO like Rainforest Partnership.  Instead, RP technicians would need to survey the forest on foot, and that meant local involvement.  Although more time-consuming, this approach had an important side benefit.  Any plan for managing the piazaba palm would have to be implemented by the villagers, and that would require commitment to the plan’s objectives and methods.  Involving the villagers in data collection would help to create that commitment.

The method of conducting the field work set the pattern for all subsequent data collection.  The villagers split into four groups, each consisting of two guides familiar with the area to be inventoried, a woman from the village to do the cooking, and an RP team technician to conduct the inventory.  The first inventory trek, in early January, demonstrated the difficulties of conducting biological research in the rainforest.  It rained heavily for two days, making trails muddy and rivers difficult to ford.  The technician (Ms. Eslava, as it happened) was only able to complete the inventory after the weather broke.  Though inconvenient, the bad weather was an important part of the bonding experience.  It showed the villagers that the technical team was willing to work in difficult conditions, and demonstrated the value of the guides’ assistance.  As they traveled, each group invited the people they met to the association meeting to be held on 15 January in the community center.

Contrary to expectations, this initial inventory showed that piazaba palms were located throughout the forest, though in varying concentrations.  This increased the likelihood that a sustainable number of palms would be found, but it also dramatically increased the data collection difficulties.  Now an inventory would have to be conducted for the entire 3,600 ha primary forest.  In January, the team worked with an INRENA assessor to develop a practical scheme for conducting a forest-wide inventory.

The result, shown in Figure 2, called for 28 “lines” of 10 m ´ 500 m each – a total of 14 ha.  Five groups of villagers would participate, working with technicians to count and evaluate the condition of all piazaba palms in each line.  Each group would be responsible for five or six lines, and would go out in “waves” of several days each.  The 28 lines only accounted for 14 ha, about 0.4% of the entire forest.  Because they were randomly distributed throughout the forest, however, the sample results would be representative of the entire forest.  The additional work also had a useful side effect:  More guides would need to be recruited, and they would have to do some of the work on the palm inventory themselves.  This broadened participation and increased potential commitment to the project.  Because Lucia and Jaso had already laid the groundwork, this did not prove difficult.

Despite bad weather and occasional sickness (at one point, Jaso had to return to Tarapoto for medical assistance), the inventory proceeded according to plan through late January and February.  When not in the field, Lucia and Jaso developed ways to formalize the palm fiber association, help create a communal business entity (allowed by Peruvian law and appropriate for such an endeavor) and began work on the management plan.

A plan for sustainability

The villagers’ inventory showed that there were a surprising number of piazaba palms – about 65,000 of them, distributed throughout the 3,600 ha of the primary forest.  If the trees were cut down to obtain fibers – the current method used by most villagers – it would take about 30 years for the forest to regenerate.  At this rate, the palms would soon be gone.  But a nondestructive method was also available.  As some villagers knew, fibers could be taken off the trunk, between the leaves.  This would provide fewer fibers per tree but reduce damage to a minimum, allowing each tree to regenerate over time.  While working for CIMA, Lucia and Jaso had worked with and known of a doctoral dissertation written by a Duke University forestry student, Wayne Mayer, which put the villagers’ knowledge to an experimental test.  As it happened, the maximum sustainable yield could be obtained by employing the villagers’ technique on healthy, mature trees, at least 10 m in height and 10 cm in diameter.  Five years after fiber extraction, such a tree would heal itself and produce just as many fibers as before.

This provided the basic outline for the management plan.  The 3,600 ha were divided into five zones, each with about 13,000 trees.   Since each tree could safely yield about 8 kg of fiber, this meant about 100,000 kg of fiber per year, with a potential market value of over USD 50,000.  This is far more than the villagers have ever earned before.  But, so long as each zone was only used once every five years and the villagers practice nondestructive extraction techniques, this yield could continue indefinitely.  The plan also describes the roads and camps, training and monitoring techniques, and governance procedures needed to support the new approach.  If faithfully implemented, the plan will accomplish its objective:  Make it better economically for the people of Chipaota to keep the forest standing than to cut it down.

Conclusions

RP’s goal for the project is long-term sustainability – both ecologically and economically.  The economic sustainability is further ensured by the creation of a communal business for the harvest and sale of piazaba palm fiber.  The RP team helped create this communal business entity, allowed under Peruvian law, with 84 members of the community.

RP is aware that faithful implementation of the plan will not be easy.  But, with INRENA’s approval of the first such management plan, and the support of the regional government of San Martin and the local government of Chazuta, the Chipaota residents will have institutional support.  With the majority of Chipaota residents as active participants in the palm fiber association, there is great enthusiasm about the plan; they must now get used to working cooperatively and abiding by strict rules.

Again, the community is not on it own.  Rainforest Partnership continues to provide technical assistance, and CIMA and local government officials are determined to make the project a success.  Although INRENA has the authority to enforce the management plan, the Chipaota community may not give them the chance.  The community has established a forest defense committee to patrol and protect their community-owned forest.

Throughout the process, the Chipaota community has made its own decisions, consistent with its own interests.  The villagers were involved in every step of the management plan process, supplying most of the critical information.  They have shown themselves more than capable of managing their forest.  The value of sustainability is obvious to all.  If Chipaota succeeds, the community can claim with conviction that they did it themselves.

An update

As the US-based RP team, led by executive director Niyanta Spelman, was able to verify and witness during its visit to the community in August, 2009, the community is very enthusiastic about its partnership with RP, its work with the local RP team, about the management plan itself and about working under this management plan as a means of protecting their forest.  With the approval of the management plan in October 2009, the municipality of Chazuta and the regional government of San Martin is promoting this management plan as a model for sustainable development to be replicated elsewhere.  For INRENA, this is the first such management plan in Peru and only the fourth nontimber product to have a management plan.