CHAPTER 1
 INTRODUCTION

 For many, community forestry appears to be a promising way to meet poverty

alleviation for rural communities and conservation of forests for a wider range of

stakeholders. However, the lack of market access, a healthy forest, business skills or an

appropriate policy environment may lead community forestry initiatives to fail

economically. In addition, successful community forestry initiatives must also take into

account the socio-cultural complexities of the communities -an aspect of community

forestry that has too often been overlooked and can lead to substantial negative effects on

the local population and the forest (Schmink, in press). Community forestry initiatives,

such as the communal carpentries described and analyzed in this study, may become

drivers for many social, economic and environmental changes. These changes are often

more severe when community forestry initiatives integrate relatively isolated

communities to the market economy (Godoy 2001).

 This research explores the socioeconomic effects of three communal, small-scale

carpentries in Ashaninka indigenous communities in the Upper Amazon in Peru. In the

next chapter the livelihood systems, in which the communal carpentries became an

additional activity, are examined focusing on the productive activities, especially those

that are market oriented. In the third chapter, the socioeconomic effects of the carpentry

operation on the people are explored at both the household and village levels. This thesis

has been organized such that the second and third chapters are two individual and fully