Non-timber Forest Products (NTFPs) and Prospects for Bioeconomy in the Tropics
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Economics, Policy, and Social Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (22 June 2023) | Viewed by 3465
Special Issue Editors
Interests: natural resource management; environment biodiversity and conservation; environmental science; sustainable development; environmental analysis; sustainability forest management; environmental impact assessment
Interests: forestry; urban ecology; biodiversity; climate change; EIA; nature-based solutions; sustainable use; lesser known wild edibles; agrobiodiversity; indigenous and local knowledge systems; policy analysis; restoration; sustainability sciences
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Forest-based livelihoods are complex, and often include the use of a variety of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) throughout the year in order to meet household subsistence needs, trade (formal and informal) or for diverse recreational and religious uses. The use of NTFPs in forest-based livelihoods is inherently linked to cultural values, religion, as well as informal Indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge (ITEK) systems. Despite the ecological and cultural importance of the NTFPs to forest-based livelihoods and the promising role of bioeconomy as a development strategy, NTFPs (particularly in the tropics) tend to be marketed as raw unprocessed materials with low added value that give them less economic value compared to value-added NTFPs. Bioeconomy is believed to add value to these raw unprocessed NTFPs and foster their sustainable use by infusing scientific knowledge as well as technological and social innovation into the processing and economic valuation of NTFPs, supporting their ecological conservation. The Nagoya Protocol (NP) may advance prospects for adding value to the use of NTFPs and their associated Indigenous and traditional knowledge. The Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) clearing house (https://absch.cbd.int/) provides mechanisms to foster and add value to the use of biodiversity. However, the implementation of bioeconomy agendas (from global to local) and market-driven approaches has its own tradeoffs and controversies.
In this Special Issue we call for papers that explore the role and relevance of bioeconomy in adding value to NTFPs, as well as those that explore the benefits of bioeconomy for both industry and forest-dependent communities alike. We call for papers that summarize, interpret and review data that attempt to include a characterization and inventory of NTFPs (rather than only focusing on single NTFPs) used by households across the world that might benefit from the growing bioeconomy agenda. Our questions are as follows:
- What is the potential of NTFP-based bioeconomy in livelihood security and income inequality mitigation?
- From the diversity of the NTFPs used by forest livelihoods, how many and which potential NTFPs are likely to be successfully included into the bioeconomy of national/regional agendas?
- How can markets for NTFPs be beneficial to biodiversity and communities where biodiversity knowledge originates, in addition to being beneficial to industry?
- What are the policy and governance implications for transition to NTFP-based bioeconomy?
Prof. Dr. Sónia Maria Carvalho-Ribeiro
Dr. Shalini Dhyani
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- NTFP
- household and macro-economics
- livelihoods
- policy
- sustainability
- sustainable development transformation
- new product development
- bioeconomy
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