Environmentalists, Rubber Tappers and Empowerment: The Politics and Economics of Extractive Reserves Katrina Brown and SeÂrgio Rosendo ABSTRACT Extractive reserves are important initiatives in tropical forest zones which seek to integrate conservation of natural resources with development and human welfare objectives. Increasingly in such initiatives empowerment of local communities is seen as both a means of achieving this integration and as an end in itself. This article presents a theoretically informed analysis of the interactions between rubber tappers and environmental organizations in the establishment and implementation of extractive reserves in RondoÃnia, Brazil. It distinguishes two dimensions of empowerment Ð political and economic Ð and examines how the alliances between organizations have impacted differentially on the two dimensions. The analysis suggests that these alliances have so far been more successful in enabling political rather than economic empowerment. Advances in political empowerment are shown, in the short- term at least, not to have resulted in improvements in livelihood conditions of poor forest dwellers. INTRODUCTION One of the best-known examples of grassroots environmental action is the movement of rubber tappers which emerged in Brazil during the 1980s, fighting for the conservation of forests through the establishment of extractive reserves, which can be defined as `conservation units that guarantee the rights of traditional populations to engage in harvesting forest products such as rubber and fruits' (Anderson, 1992: 67). The creation of extractive reserves has been promoted as `among the most important strategies for forest conservation' (Hecht, 1989: 53). The designation of extractive reserves has gained support from a diverse array of actors, particularly conservation and environmental organizations who regard it as an opportunity to put into practice an explicit linkage between conser- vation and development. The rubber tappers' struggle for rights to natural resources in these areas gained world-wide media attention at a time when deforestation, especially in Amazonia, was becoming a major issue for northern environmentalists. Development and Change Vol. 31 (2000), 201±227. # Institute of Social Studies 2000. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.