Participatory technology development for incorporating non-timber forest products into forest restoration in Yunnan, Southwest China

Globalised forest-products: commodification of the matsutake mushroom in Tibetan villages, Yunnan, Southwest China

“…As such, many scholars have proposed exploitation of NTFPs, and mushrooms in particular, as a way to make forest conservation economically sustainable for local communities (Kusters and Belcher 2004;Yang et al 2008;He et al 2009; see also Neumann and Hirsch 2000;cf Belcher and Schreckenberg 2007). Studies of land-use change in the lowlands of this region and elsewhere in the world, however, suggest that the introduction of cash crops and the accompanying increase in rural incomes tend to undermine local interest in NTFPs (Neumann and Hirsch 2000;Senaratne et al 2003;Gopalakrishnan et al 2005;Fu et al 2009) and thereby reduce incentives to conserve forest biodiversity and ecosystem services.…”

The Contribution of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Practices to Forest Management: The Case of Northeast Asia

“…All three countries recently established laws and policies to promote public participation in forestry and the restoration of Given these changes, traditional ecological knowledge and practices were applied to adjust forest management practices (Figure 4). The Chinese government encouraged the community forestry tradition for the national cropland afforestation program [44,46]. Japan and South Korea implemented the old plantation species selection concept using environmental conditions to relieve forest underutilization and improve the forest restoration strategy [15].…”

“…These projects used local traditional ecological knowledge and practices to adjust modern knowledge and techniques to local environments. For example, such an approach has been piloted from the early twenty-first century in Yunnan Province, where villagers relied on the traditional shifting cultivation system, consisting of a short cropping phase and long forest fallowing phase [44][45][46]. In this region, traditional shifting cultivation was combined with the rotational tree planting and harvesting part of the modern forestry concept [46].…”

“…In this region, traditional shifting cultivation was combined with the rotational tree planting and harvesting part of the modern forestry concept [46]. Project staff and workers asked farmers to share indigenous knowledge of native, economically valuable crops and tree species, and actively participate in selecting tree rotation age, monitoring pilot sites, and evaluating the piloted approach [44]. They have educated local farmers on how to establish local societies for community forestry, and provided alternative energy sources and energy saving techniques to prevent forest overexploitation [43].…”

“…They have educated local farmers on how to establish local societies for community forestry, and provided alternative energy sources and energy saving techniques to prevent forest overexploitation [43]. Through these activities encouraging villagers' participation, modern knowledge and techniques (e.g., rotation age and species selection) have been further adjusted in the context of local traditional ecological knowledge and thus contributed to forest resource protection as well as local economy [44,46]. Accordingly, the model projects in Yunnan Province have provided information to reinforce the applicability of the traditions to the forestry sector.…”