Forest Products
Forest products such as nuts, fruits, rubber, and rattan all grow naturally and are harvested locally, but they have never been seriously considered by economists as part of the overall commercial value of a rain forest. This is because timber is a high-profile export sold in international markets, and thus is highly visible. Non-wood resources are collected and sold in local markets by a large number of local people; their value is hard to monitor and easy to overlook. From the point of view of the government of a developing country, timber is more easily sold for hard currency, which can be used to service international debts.

A recent study by a team headed by Dr. Charles Peters of the Institute of Economic Botany in New York, claims that fruits and latex represent more than 90% of the total market value of the section of Amazonian forest they studies. "The results from our study clearly demonstrate the importance of non-wood forest products. These resources not only yield higher net revenues per hectare than timber, but they can also be harvested with considerably less damage to the forest."

The idea that rain forests can produce more than timber is not new in the tropical world. Indeed, it has been the basis for local economies in the forests for thousands of years. The bias towards timber as the only worthwhile commercial product may stem from the fact that the methods used by logging companies originated in Europe. Overlooking the non-wood products may be a case of the application of Western thinking and techniques to tropical forests in inappropriate ways.

The new thinking is towards using tropical rain forests as "extractive reserves", from which a wide range of products can be harvested on a sustainable basis, including some timber. But the only way in which this will become a viable reality is if a market for such products is created in the industrialized world.

Some of the nuts and other rain forest products are already familiar, but others are new. In the United Kingdom, one "green" company is looking into the marketing of a wide range of forest products, ranging from aromatic bath oils and body creams to new pot-pourris. Resins, latex and additives for cosmetics are being investigated. At least 1,650 known tropical forest plants have potential as vegetable crops.

Rattan is a non-wood product that is already used extensively for furniture manufacture; it grows as a creeper on trees in the forest. Currently rattan fetches more per ton than does timber. Rattan can be sustainably harvested from the forest - provided that the forest is maintained intact. The world rattan trade is worth about US $2 billion annually.

If non-wood forest products can be viewed as viable high-value exports, rather than just entities traded at local markets, governments of developing tropical nations will be more inclined to safeguard the future supply of these products. Safeguarding supply of these implies safeguarding the forests.