What is secondary about secondary forest? Building smallholder forest futures in Peru’s Amazonian frontier

Secondary forest regrowth accounts for 70% of tropical forest areas, and will have to provide a significant part of future forest based environmental services.

Such forests support significant populations of poor people but are usually treated as only degraded primary forest in research/policy. Their diversity and potential are neglected.

They are often located in rural frontiers, where government presence, authority and legitimacy is limited and there is contention over what these forests are, who is to use them and how they should be used. Taking the Peruvian Amazon as a case this research will build understanding of secondary forest landscapes.

This knowledge will be used to explore forested landscape futures given market pressures, emerging conservation agendas and limited control by the state.

The interdisciplinary research team will use in four contrasting landscapes a ‘patches-approach’, combining participatory landscape assessment with forest ecology to build understanding of forest heterogeneity. This will be combined with interviews, collaborative methods and policy analysis.

The project will contribute to the socio-political understanding of secondary forest in smallholder landscapes and the dynamics of forest transition. It will analyse and reflect on development and environmental changes in an integrated manner.

This new knowledge of human-environmental relations is needed to secure and improve smallholders’ wellbeing and forest futures for the global good.