Peasant charcoal production in the Peruvian Amazon: rainforest use and economic reliance

Recent studies point to the promise of rain forest extraction for more sustainable rural development in Amazonia but often overlook important differences within traditional communities in terms of relative economic reliance upon specific forest resources. This paper reports on a study of charcoal production among forest peasants in an Amazonian river community, near Iquitos, Peru. In-depth household interviews (n=36) provided information on household economic activity, demographic composition, and access to land, labor and capital as well as on the nature, role and economic importance of charcoal in the household economy. Our results indicate that peasant charcoal production — often cast as a rapacious, wasteful use of the forest — can provide significant cash income for forest peoples and high returns per hectare, particularly when integrated into swidden-fallow agroforestry systems, without causing notable forest destruction. Low returns to labor, however, limit prospects for peasants to prosper by charcoal production. Variations in household output of charcoal are explained by differential access to intra- and extra-household labor. Among those households most reliant upon charcoal, two subgroups are found — ‘charcoal-dependent’ households and ‘charcoal-specialized’ households — both of which rely on charcoal production, but for different reasons and with distinct outcomes. These two sub-groups are divided by differences in non-market mediated access to local land and labor. Clearly, to be successful, initiatives aimed at promoting rain forest conservation and management among ‘resource-reliant’ households must be informed by careful attention to the underlying conditions that give rise to differential rain forest reliance.