village forest area in Malawi was cited as the most important reason for the minimal

success of their market oriented forestry initiatives (Coote et al 1993).

 Isolated communities are especially vulnerable to harmful effects of market

exposure. As community forest enterprises become more involved in the market,

pressures on forest resources may increase beyond sustainable harvest levels. Socio-

economic differentiation may erode local community interests and capabilities for

sustainable resource use. Also traditional incentives for conservation could be weakened.

 However, Sierra et al. (1999) found in their study in Huaorani indigenous

communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon, that the initial stages of market integration do

not seem to have relevant effects on the group and on the environment. In indigenous

communities where forest resources are abundant, and labor is used extensively, early

market integration brings benefits to community members with no major social and

environmental costs. In this stage, labor surplus is shifted to trading activities without

affecting the subsistence ones.

 Although early stages in market integration appear to have no major impacts in the

population and the environment, some drivers may lead to latter stages in market

integration with different outcomes. Social, economic and environmental drivers appear

to lead the changes toward an increasing market integration economy (Jodha 1998). The

social drivers are the increase of population, change of gender roles and changing

knowledge. The economic drivers are an increased requirement of cash, and cash

producing activities from exotic species, timber, arable crops and land use change. The

ecological drivers are the change from primary forest to secondary forest, introduction of

cash crops, more extraction of timber, and replacing agroforestry by bush fallow.