Indigenous Peoples and Conservation Organizations

The Runa in Ecuador 37
agement costs was to develop a business plan that
targeted an export or a national market that could
absorb a wider variety of tree species, offer better
prices, and bypass middlemen. The relatively
modest scale of the initial proposal soon expanded
as dryers, carpentry equipment, milling gear,
and a processing center to house them were proposed
as a way to add value to local wood and
produce high-quality, planed lumber for export.
The cost of acquiring this infrastructure while
training novice workers to operate and maintain it
would quickly become substantial.
By industrial standards, the envisioned enterprise
looked miniscule, but keeping it supplied
with wood to fulfill contracts with demanding
buyers would require the communities to adopt
socioeconomic models that were completely new
to them. The communities would have to learn
to work together as a team and pool forest
resources to generate the volumes needed since
preliminary inventories of their trees made it
clear that none had sufficient reserves to justify
a stand-alone enterprise.
Although the upgraded project would be demanding,
it seemed doable, and all parties decided to
move ahead. However the shift in project focus
left little wiggle room for mistakes and proved to
be more difficult to implement than either the advisors
or the community members had anticipated.
Some of the challenges were common to timber
enterprises throughout the tropics. For instance,
there is no developed market for the lesser-known
woods that make up the majority of tree species
found in rain forests. This problem was exacerbated
in the PUMAREN project because the forest
reserves of the three communities comprised different
ecosystems and therefore different kinds of
wood. Huahua Sumaco’s land ranges in elevation
between 1,000 and 1,400 meters, and is characterized
by Premontane Rain Forest growing in volcanic
soils on dissected mountainsides, often with
steep slopes. Rain falls throughout the year and
totals 4 to 6 meters annually. Many of the tree
species found there and higher up on the mountain
are not found in either of the other two communities
even though they are common near Huahua
Sumaco. The woods of Amazonas and Chonta
Cocha grow at elevations below 400 meters, are
rooted in sedimentary soils, and are classified as
Tropical Moist Forest. Joining forces would,
indeed, boost the amount of timber a pilot project
could process, but the diverse makeup of that wood
would make marketing much trickier.
The expanded project also intensified the importance
of training in both forest management and
business skills. Forest management was relatively
easy for community members to grasp and
master since they had extensive knowledge of
their land and its habitats. Even so, inventorying
trees to identify marketable species and drafting
final management plans that adjusted harvesting
methods to regeneration cycles fell behind schedule.
Many of the snags were the result of not
delegating sufficient control of the process to the
communities who were expected to operate the
enterprise once it was up and running. By the
time phase three of PUMAREN was scheduled to
start, only the community of Huahua Sumaco
had finished a management plan.
This did not bode well for other aspects of the
project that did not rest on a solid foundation of
prior community experience. As a later study by
regional indigenous organizations of income-generating
community projects would show (Smith
and Wray 1996), business administration and
marketing skills are difficult to graft onto the
trunk of a “gift economy”—one that is based on
subsistence and reciprocal exchange. In the case
of PUMAREN, market experience varied widely
among the three communities. Huahua Sumaco
was the most closely linked to and dependent on
markets, and its local project leaders proved to be
very entrepreneurial. However, even they had
difficulty picturing who their customers would
actually be. For the business to flourish, the
communities would need substantial and sustained
technical support.
Because the economic challenge was understood
to be daunting, it received much of the focus of
project advisors and participants. Unfortunately,
the social challenge was not so well understood.
What looked like a hill was actually the summit
of a mountain enveloped by clouds. Even the
federation and villagers were unaware of how
massive the hidden obstacles might be. The
communities were selected, in part, because they
had shown the ability to mobilize to protect their
land. Yet they had not had much experience
working with each other, which is what they
would have to do in processing and marketing if
the project was to be economically viable.