Does the Location of Amerindian Communities Provide Signals About the Spatial Distribution of Tree and Palm Species?

Abstract

This chapter examines the proximity of plants that provide critical ecosystem services to indigenous peoples of the Rupununi, southern Guyana, relative to their village centers. We explore the hypothesis that plants of greater importance to indigenous peoples’ livelihood practices are distributed closer to village centers, focusing on multiple-use plants, species that provide either two or more ecosystem services of nontimber forest products, food for wildlife, and commercial timber. We consider multiple-use plants to be more important than single-use plants, and we expect them to be distributed closer to village centers. Using the von Thünen model as a theoretical basis, we measure the average Euclidian distance of multiple-use plants to village centers, and compare their proximity across 12 villages and two controls. Results suggest that plants associated with some form of traditional use for indigenous peoples are distributed closest to village centers. This finding supports the idea that plants with higher economic value are located closest to village centers. Our analysis also suggests the potential for resource use conflict with plants in a multiple-use class, and suggests that logging close to villages has implications for traditional practices. Implications from removal of such plants for logs include accessing medicines and hunting services. The potential for resource use conflict underscores the importance of employing spatial analysis tools in studying plant distribution and resource use allocation schemes. Our results support the idea that indigenous peoples and their livelihood practices favor forest structure and plant distributions of greater economic value closer to their villages.