Regulating Local Environmental Standards Through Private Incentives

This chapter tackles the implications of ‘scaling down’ the traditional ‘command and control’ of public regulation that is traditionally centralised in the national authority in order to place those in polycentric governance structures at the local level. The aim is to set up new local standards as social and environmental indicators for the so-called Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs). Market incentives such as organic certification, expertise and know-how on seeds and fruit collecting, and the empowerment of rural families in monitoring institutional arrangements (cooperatives and smallholders associations) are fostered by Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in cooperation with the private sector. We argue that stronger governance mechanisms between private incentives and local authorities are necessary in order to promote tools and instruments to measure and evaluate the local sustainable development. This chapter is mainly focused on the observational and qualitative aspects based on empirical data collected during fieldwork researches conducted in local extractive communities in the Amazon rainforest.