Economic Development and Non-Timber Tropical Forest Products

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This project involves exploratory research by an economic anthropologist from Harvard University studying how tribal peoples in Nicaragua, Central America exploit non-timber tropical forest products. The researcher will spend two and a half months in the field locating two different Indian communities which vary substantially in income, wages, and prices but resemble each other in type of forest setting. The research will explore how income, wages and prices of non-timber forest products affect how the Indians use the forest by studying time allocation, informant diaries, and surveys of household income and expenses. This research is important because the relatively rapid decrease in extant of tropical forests is related to how local people use the forests as well as to how large corporations exploit the forest resources. This sort of exploratory research will allow the researchers to develop plans for a more extensive study of local forest exploitation, which can inform plans for long-term forest use.