Combined criteria to characterize the livelihood strategies of agroecological producers in the Bolivian Amazon

Abstract

As the local experience demonstrates within the Bolivian Amazon Region, smallholder forest
management systems do not consist of specialized production systems, but form a component
of multi-enterprise household activities, including not only forestry activities, but also other farming
activities such as agro-ecology, as well as some off-farm employments. Consequently,
the norms and decisions on forest management that includes agro-ecology, are dependent
upon to consider major characterization on how to structure the overall package of household
practices. Therefore, in order to avoid generalization tendencies and, what is more, to avoid
universalizer the classes of producers and their strategies, it is necessary to have a system to
classify the livelihood strategies of local producers, that allows sequential and complementary
combination of the criteria most frequently used.