Given the lack of access of forest dependent rural dwellers to resources and markets as well as the lack of an institutional environment that is conducive for reconciling biodiversity conservation and livelihood strategies in the Brazilian Amazon, the main and sub-research questions are respectively: How do informal and formal institutions affect the access to Brazil nuts and markets by buyers and, especially, by gatherers within the Brazil nut value chain in the Lower Amazon basin? How are institutions – that affect resource and market access – institutionalized and formalized?

By identifying self-declared informal and formal institutions filtering resource and market access of upstream value chain actors, it is scoped for leverage points towards locally adapted institutions to overcome such access limitations in the realm of strengthening Brazil nut gatherers’ chain position. The following institutions in use have been found to be crucial for determining the (lack of) access to livelihood relevant resources (Brazil nuts) and markets in the Lower Amazon basin.

The informal institution analyzed is the debt-peonage system aviamento and the formal one is the ‘Term of Compromise’ (TdC, per acronyms in Portuguese) in Brazil. The TdC is a legally-based instrument for overcoming conflicts between the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio, per acronyms in Portuguese) – as responsible branch of the Brazilian Ministry of Environment (MMA, per acronyms in Portuguese) for managing federal Protected Areas (PAs) – and traditional populations over natural resources in such areas. The innovative analytical framework developed herein captures how both informal and formal institutions (determinants) as well as related formalization and institutionalization (processes) affect the resource and market access by upstream value chain actors.

This framework helps capturing institution-based access restrictions affecting the chain position of Brazil nut gatherers (corresponding to the main research question). It builds the groundwork for constructing a model to help understand what is behind empirical phenomena pertaining to the institutionalization and formalization of access limiting institutions (corresponding to the sub-research question herein).