Sustainable wildlife management and legal commercial use of bushmeat in Colombia: the resource remains at the cross-road

Vliet, N. Van; Gomez, J.; Quiceno-Mesa, M.P.; Escobar, Javier Farago; Andrade, G Miguel; Vanegas, Liliana; Nasi, Robert

doi:10.1505/146554815817476521

Cited by 14 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…As most Amazon basin countries lack clear policy frameworks for allowing subsistence consumption of bushmeat by rural populations (see e.g. van Vliet et al 2015), designing participatory schemes for promoting sustainable hunting are warranted (e.g. Sandrin et al 2016).…”

Section: Understanding Livelihood Strategies and Drivers Of Populatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the ‘cornerstone of Amazonian conservation’: a socioecological assessment of Brazil nut exploitation

et al. 2017

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The Brazil nut (the seeds of the rainforest tree Bertholletia excelsa) is the only globally traded seed collected from the wild by forest-based harvesters across the Amazon basin. The large geographic scale of Brazil nut exploitation and the significant contributions to local livelihoods, national economies, and forest-based development over the last decades, merit a review of the ''conservation-through-use'' paradigm. We use Elinor Ostrom's framework for assessing sustainability in socioecological systems: (1) resource unit, (2) users, (3) governance system, and (4) resource system, to determine how different contexts and external developments generate specific conservation and development outcomes. We find that the resource unit reacts robustly to the type and level of extraction currently practiced; that resource users have built on a self-organized system that had defined boundaries and access to the resource; that linked production chains, market networks and informal financing work to supply global markets; and that local harvesters have used supporting alliances with NGOs and conservationists to formalize and secure their endogenous governance system and make it more equitable. As a result, the Brazil nut model represents a socioecological system that may not require major changes to sustain productivity. Yet since long-term Brazil nut production seems inextricably tied to a continuous forest cover, and because planted Brazil nut trees currently provide a minimal contribution to total nut production basin-wide, we call to preserve, diversify and intensify production in Brazil nut-rich forests that will inevitably become ever more integrated within human-modified landscapes over time.

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Section: Understanding Livelihood Strategies and Drivers Of Populatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the ‘cornerstone of Amazonian conservation’: a socioecological assessment of Brazil nut exploitation

et al. 2017

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“…Acknowledging and strengthening the engagement of the human dimension is considered crucial for effective conservation decision-making (Bennett et al, 2016). Despite a general consensus toward sustainable use, wildmeat trade is still strongly criminalized in Colombia and forest dwellers are forced to walk a fine line between subsistence hunting and illegal trade prosecutable by law (van Vliet and Gomez, 2015). Overlooking the role that wildmeat plays in the food security, family economy and cultural identity of rural communities poses a problem for communities and might well be detrimental for the wildlife itself (Nasi et al, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Decree 2811 from 1974 allows hunting of nonprotected species outside protected areas as long as it is for the subsistence of the hunter and her or his family. For trading, independently of the scale and purpose, hunters need an official license, which is extremely complex if not impossible to get for members of rural communities (van Vliet and Gomez, 2015). The institutional definition of subsistence in the legal framework considers only food safety.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hunting in Times of Change: Uncovering Indigenous Strategies in the Colombian Amazon Using a Role-Playing Game

et al. 2019

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Despite growing industrialization, the shift to a cash economy and natural resource overexploitation, indigenous people of the Amazon region hunt and trade wildlife in order to meet their livelihood requirements. Individual strategies, shaped by the hunters' values and expectations, are changing in response to the region's economic development, but they still face the contrasting challenges of poverty and overhunting. For conservation initiatives to be implemented effectively, it is crucial to take into account people's strategies with their underlying drivers and their adaptive capabilities within a transforming socioeconomic environment. To uncover hunting strategies in the Colombian Amazon and their evolution under the current transition, we co-designed a role-playing game together with the local stakeholders. The game revolves around the tension between ecological sustainability and food security-hunters' current main concern. It simulates the mosaic of activities that indigenous people perform in the wet and dry season, while also allowing for specific hunting strategies. Socioeconomic conditions change while the game unfolds, opening up to emerging alternative potential scenarios suggested by the stakeholders themselves. Do hunters give up hunting when given the opportunity of an alternative income and protein source? Do institutional changes affect their livelihoods? We played the game between October and December 2016 with 39 players-all of them hunters-from 9 different communities within the Ticoya reserve. Our results show that providing alternatives would decrease overall hunting effort, but impacts are not spatially homogenous. Legalizing trade could lead to overhunting except when market rules and competition come into place. When it comes to coupled human-nature systems, the best way forward to produce socially just and resilient conservation strategies might be to trigger an adaptive process of experiential learning and scenario exploration. The use of games as "boundary objects" can guide stakeholders through the process, eliciting the plurality of their strategies, their drivers and how outside change affects them.

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“…On one hand, prohibition is not proving to be effective, since it fails to prevent the bushmeat trade, and, on the other hand, it does not respond to the local realities of the country (van Vliet et al 2015b trade chains play an important role in economic, cultural and nutritional terms, which must be embraced in the formulation of national policies. Despite illegality, some recent legal instruments have opened a path for regulating wild meat trade.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use and trade of bushmeat in Colombia: Relevance to rural livelihoods

Gomez¹,

Vliet²,

Restrepo³

et al. 2016

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Relevance to rural livelihoods Key points• Except for the Andean region, bushmeat trade chains are a reality in all regions of Colombia. These chains are usually short and respond to local trade dynamics.• In the Caribbean region, bushmeat trade chains cross different administrative boundaries, thus routes operate at greater distances.• Bushmeat continues to play an important role in the local livelihoods of many communities in Colombia.• The level of dependency on bushmeat increases in rural areas that are located far from urban settlements, because of the difficultly in accessing other proteins and the lack of alternative productive activities.• Bushmeat consumption in Colombia is also associated with deep-rooted local cultural traditions.• The widespread existence of bushmeat trade chains in the different regions of Colombia, despite being illegal, highlights the need to review current legal frameworks.• Simplifying the requirements for the legal trade of surplus meat from non protected and resilient species by rural communities may be the way forward. However, there is a need to improve the capacities to monitor the use of wild meat and agree on the local governance that should be responsible for ensuring/controlling for sustainable use.

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Sustainable wildlife management and legal commercial use of bushmeat in Colombia: the resource remains at the cross-road

Cited by 14 publications

References 16 publications

Revisiting the ‘cornerstone of Amazonian conservation’: a socioecological assessment of Brazil nut exploitation

Revisiting the ‘cornerstone of Amazonian conservation’: a socioecological assessment of Brazil nut exploitation

Hunting in Times of Change: Uncovering Indigenous Strategies in the Colombian Amazon Using a Role-Playing Game

Use and trade of bushmeat in Colombia: Relevance to rural livelihoods

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