杏吧原创

It鈥檚 not every scientist who writes books for people who can鈥檛 read. And how many scientists want their books to look as dog-eared as possible? But Patricia Shanley, an ethnobotanist with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), wanted to give something back. After the poorest people of the Amazon allowed her to study their land and its ecology, she and co-editor Gabriel Medina turned her research findings into a picture book that tells the local people how to get a good return on their trees without succumbing to the lure of a quick buck from a logging company. It has proved a big success, and so the last thing she wants is for the new edition, to be published in a few weeks, to end up on bookshelves and coffee tables. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a book to be used,鈥� says the author. 鈥淚t鈥檚 supposed to be dirty and ripped up.鈥�

The book is called Frutiferas e Plantas Uteis na Vida Amazonica (Fruit Trees and Useful Plants in the Lives of Amazonians), but is better known simply as the 鈥渇ruit book鈥�. The second edition was produced at the request of politicians in western Amazonia. Its blend of hard science and local knowledge on the use and trade of 35 native forest species has been so well received (and well used) that no less a dignitary than Brazil鈥檚 environment minister, Marina Silva, has written the foreword. 鈥淭here is nothing else like the Shanley book,鈥� says Adalberto Verr铆simo, director of the Institute of People and the Environment of the Amazon. 鈥淚t gives science back to the poor, to the people who really need it.鈥�

Shanley鈥檚 work on the book began a decade ago, with a plea for help from the Rural Workers鈥� Union of Paragominas, a Brazilian town whose prosperity is based on exploitation of timber. The union realised that logging companies would soon be knocking on the doors of the caboclos, peasant farmers living on the Rio Capim, an Amazon tributary in the Brazilian state of Para (see Map). Isolated and illiterate, the caboclos would have little concept of the true value of their trees; communities downstream had already sold off large blocks of forest for a pittance. 鈥淲hat they wanted to know was how valuable the forests were,鈥� recalls Shanley, then a researcher in the area for the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Research Center.

The Rural Workers鈥� Union wanted to know whether harvesting wild fruits would make economic sense in the Rio Capim. 鈥淭here was a lot of interest in trading non-timber forest products (NTFPs),鈥� Shanley says. At the time, environmental groups and green-minded businesses were promoting the idea. This was the view presented in a seminal paper, Valuation of an Amazonian Rainforest, published in Nature in 1989 (vol 339, p 655). The researchers had calculated that revenues from the sale of fruits could far exceed those from a one-off sale of trees to loggers.

鈥淭he union was keen to discover whether it made more sense conserving the forest for subsistence use and the possible sale of fruit, game and medicinal plants, than selling trees for timber,鈥� says Shanley. Whether it would work for the caboclos was far from clear.

Although Shanley had been invited to work in the Rio Capim, some caboclos were suspicious. 鈥淲hen Patricia asked if she could study my forest,鈥� says Joao Fernando Moreira Brito, 鈥渕y neighbours said she was a foreigner who鈥檇 come to rob me of my trees.鈥� In the end, Moreira Brito, or Mangueira as he is known, welcomed Shanley and worked on her study. His land, an hour鈥檚 walk from the Rio Capim, is almost entirely covered with primary forest. A study of this and other tracts of forest selected by the communities enabled Shanley to identify three trees, found throughout the Amazon, whose fruit was much favoured by the caboclos: bacuri (Platonia insignis), uxi (Endopleura uchi) and piquia (Cayocas villosum). The caboclos used their fruits, extracted oils, and knew what sort of wildlife they attracted. But, in the face of aggressive tactics from the logging companies, they had no measure of the trees鈥� financial worth.

The only way to find out, Shanley decided, was to start from scratch with a scientific study. 鈥淔rom a scientific point of view, hardly anything was known about these trees,鈥� she says. But six years of field research yielded a mass of data on their flowering and fruiting behaviour. During 1993 and 1994, 30 families weighed everything they used from the forest 鈥� game, fruit, fibre, medicinal plants 鈥� and documented its source.

After three logging sales and a major fire in 1997, the researchers were also able to study the ecosystem鈥檚 reaction to logging and disturbance. They carried out a similar, though less exhaustive, study in 1999, this time with 15 families. The changes were striking. Average annual household consumption of forest fruit had fallen from 89 to 28 kilograms between 1993 and 1999. 鈥淲hat we found,鈥� says Shanley, 鈥渨as that fruit collection could coexist with a certain amount of logging, but after the forest fires it dropped dramatically.鈥� Over the same period, fibre use also dropped from around 20 to 4 kilograms. The fire and logging also changed the nature of the caboclo diet. In 1993 most households ate game two or three times a month. By 1999 some were fortunate if they ate game more than two or three times a year.

The loss of certain species of tree was especially significant. Shanley鈥檚 team persuaded local hunters to weigh their catch, noting the trees under which the animals were caught. Over the year, they trapped five species of game averaging 232 kilograms under piquia trees. Under copaiba, they caught just two species averaging 63 kilograms; and under uxi, four species weighing 38 kilograms. At last, the team was getting a handle on which trees were worth keeping, and which could reasonably be sold. 鈥淭his showed that selling piquia trees to loggers for a few dollars made little sense,鈥� explains Shanley. 鈥淭heir local value lies in providing a prized fruit, as well as flowers which attract more game than any other species.鈥�

As a result of these studies, Shanley had to tell the Rural Workers鈥� Union of Paragominas that the Nature thesis could not be applied wholesale to their community 鈥� harvesting NTFPs would not always yield more than timber sales. Fruiting patterns of trees such as uxi were unpredictable, for example. In 1994, one household collected 3654 uxi fruit; the following year, none at all. This is not to say that wild fruit trees were unimportant. On the contrary, argues Shanley, they are critical for subsistence, something that is often ignored in much of the current research on NTFPs, which tends to focus on their commercial potential. Geography was another factor preventing the Rio Capim caboclos from establishing a serious trade in wild fruit: villagers in remote areas could not compete with communities collecting NTFPs close to urban markets, although they could sell them to passing river boats.

But Shanley and her colleagues decided to do more than just report their results to the union. After they had gathered the data, they held workshops for villagers interested in their findings, both in the Rio Capim and in other areas where logging was becoming a major force for change. However, they soon realised they could only reach a small audience that way. And so, together with two of her research colleagues, Margaret Cymerys and Jurandir Galvao, Shanley wrote the fruit book. This, the Bible and a publication on medicinal plants co-authored by Shanley and designed for people with minimal literacy skills, are about the only books you will see along this stretch of the Rio Capim.

The first print run ran to only 3000 copies, but the fruit book has been remarkably influential, and is used by colleges, peasant unions, industries and the caboclos themselves. Its success is largely due to the fact that people with poor literacy skills can understand much of the information it contains, thanks to its illustrations, anecdotes, stories and songs. Take the bacuri tree, for example. An illustration juxtaposes a felled tree with a basket of fruit. It indicates that a single tree will earn the caboclos 2 Brazilian reals (about 70 US cents) when sold to loggers. Yet they can earn the same amount by selling just 10 fruits on the river bank, and each tree produces on average 300 fruit each year. Another illustration indicates that collecting fruit can earn a forest dweller as much in a day as can be earned in a week processing cassava, the main cash crop. 鈥淭he book doesn鈥檛 tell people what to do,鈥� says Shanley, 鈥渂ut it does provide them with choices.鈥� Caboclos who have used the book now have a much better understanding of which trees to sell to the loggers, and which to protect.

In rural areas of Amazonia, the information in the fruit book has been spread from farmer to farmer by what locals call the methodo forminginha 鈥� ant by ant. The book鈥檚 descriptions of the fruiting behaviour of trees are photocopied; its recipes for fruit preserves copied by hand; its jokes 鈥� there are plenty of these 鈥� passed on by word of mouth. And for the past three years, researchers working with the Mulheres da Mata (Women of the Forest) project, affiliated to the Institute of People and the Environment of the Amazon (IMAZON) and CIFOR, have also travelled throughout the region with the fruit book, holding workshops with communities who are having to deal with logging companies.

Even in Quiandeua, where much of the forest has been logged, the villagers have introduced regulations governing the placement of fields created by slashing and burning. Many communities have improved their negotiations with loggers, limiting them to specific areas and certain species, and some have even created community forestry reserves, largely as a result of the work by Shanley and her colleagues.

Part of the book鈥檚 huge appeal comes from its mere existence: local people are simply not used to benefiting from their collaborations with scientists. Much of the scientific research carried out in Brazil is written up in English, and is seldom published outside peer-reviewed scientific journals and technical reports. 鈥淭he caboclos nearly always say the same thing,鈥� says fieldworker Gloria Gaia, herself a caboclo. 鈥淭hey tell us that the scientists they have known almost never get in touch after they鈥檝e left.鈥� And so 鈥減ayback鈥� projects like the Mulheres da Mata tours have had a huge impact.

Shanley believes attitudes among scientists are beginning to change, however: they want to make a difference to the people whose environment they are studying (see 鈥淐onflicting values鈥�). 鈥淚t has been fascinating to find that many scientists are tired of their work having little or no impact on the ground,鈥� says Shanley. She is one of over 60 scientists involved in a study of NTFPs, funded by the UK Department for International Development and managed by CIFOR. Many of her collaborators have now joined together to form a 鈥渞estitution group鈥�, aiming to produce material which will reach a range of audiences and be of use to the communities they have been working with.

Such work can bring social as well as economic change. Gaia believes that the fruit book has empowered women in the caboclo communities, for example. 鈥淚t used to be the men who decided what to do with the forest,鈥� she explains. 鈥淣ow that women have proof that forest products, and their role as collectors, really matter, they have become much more courageous. They have learned to say no to the loggers.鈥�