THE VALUE OF NON-TIMBER FOREST PRODUCTS: AN ESTIMATION FOR TROPICAL DECIDUOUS FORESTS IN INDIA 1 KANCHAN CHOPRA Chopra, Kanchan (Institute of Economic Growth, University Enclave, Delhi 110 007, India). THE VALUE OF NON-TIMBER FOREST PRODUCTS: AN ESTIMATION FOR TROPICAL DECIDUOU FOR~TS IN INDIA. Economic Botany 47(3):251-257. 1993. Alteration of forested land to other uses incurs costs to a nation's economy that are frequently not calculated in estimates of productivity. Alternative methods of value are discussed and employed to evaluate the no products of lndia's tropical deciduous forests. Many undervalued resources found in these are described, and monetary value ascribed to them, to demonstrate the importance of the resources to the Indian economy. Key Words: non-timber forest products; tropical forests; India; economic valuation. Forests constitute a significant component of the natural capital of aneconomy. There has been an accelerated conversion of forest land to other uses in countries across the globe, often prompted by development projects. River-valley projects, for example, result in loss of forest land through submersion of land and clearance of part of the catchment. Mining projects cause the loss of topsoil and biomass. Cattle-ranching results in diversion of large areas of land from forest. Such alterations in land use incur costs to the natural resource capital. This paper attempts to estimate these costs in the context of non-timber forest products ob- tained from the tropical deciduous forests of In- dia. Whereas the value of forest timber is reflect- ed in the m a r k e t e c o n o m y and is well documented, non-timber forest products and their value constitute a relatively unexplored area (see, however, Peters, Gentry, and Mendelsohn 1989; Godoy and Lubowski 1993). Forested land as a category of resource use tends, therefore, to be under-valued. The cost of using a resource is approximated by the loss of utility accruing from its consump- tion. Markets may or may not capture this value because they use the medium of price to reflect Received 8 April 1993; accepted 5 May 1993. value. Price generally approximates the value of the resource in exchange and not its value in use (for an early distinction between value in use and value in exchange, see Smith 1937:28). A num- ber of reasons may exist for a divergence between the two values. Imperfect markets may be one rationale: demand for a product may be artifi- cially manipulated to increase or decrease its price. Asymmetry between preference patterns of different people may be another: utility arising out of a product may be person or group-specific so that a common idiom for exchange outside the group does not exist. Exchange value may not exist despite a high use value. Exchange value also depends on the distri- bution of income and property rights. Subsis- tence users without much access to cash may not be able to impute a high exchange value to prod- ucts that for them have a high assigned value. This problem canostensibly be solved by ex- amining their non-cash transactions. Such trans- actions usually take place at friendly prices and are affected by the existence of patron-client or other socially rooted interactions (see, for ex- ample, Brown [ 1990] for an analysis of value in the context of subsistence harvesters, in partic- ular North Atlantic hunting communities). Ex- change value determined by these interactions differs substantially from the value of the same product when sold in less imperfect markets. A Economic Botany 47(3) pp. 251-257. 1993 9 1993, by The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458 U.S.A.