There is no such thing as virgin forest. When we look at the luxuriant equatorial vegetation, so striking to the Western traveller, we must not forget that these forests are the direct result of thousands of years of human history. Populations of swidden cultivators have been living in and trekking all over these areas for thousands of years, and in the process they have modified the natural vegetation. More than this, in the natural rainforest flora, these prehistoric populations found interesting species that they proceeded to domesticate, selecting and improving them.

Plants that feed millions of people today were originally to be found in these equatorial areas : manioc, bananas, yam, sweet potato, taro, yautia Xanthosoma, sugar cane, fruit or oil palms and many fruit trees. It is also in the dense rainforest that grow the ancestors of such cash crops as cacao, coffee (Robusta), pepper, vanilla, and hevea and these are only a few examples.

When one speaks of 'forest populations', the names that spring to mind are : 'hunter gatherers', 'Pygmies' in the Congo Basin, 'Negritos' in the Philippines, the Semang in Peninsular Malaysia, the Penan in Borneo. But these scattered groups, though typical as such, are far from being the only forest-dwellers. In fact, many populations of swidden cultivators are also dependent on forest resources and this has been the case for centuries, even thousands of years. Their livelihood (even their essence) is threatened by the possible disappearance of the rainforest ecosystem.

There are hundreds of groups of swidden cultivators : the Fang or the Mongo in Central Africa, the Iban in Borneo, the Jivaro Achuar and the Yanomami in the Amazon Basin, etc.

One of the tasks we have set ourselves in this report is to list the groups of traditional swidden cultivators and show their adaptation to the forest ecosystem.

Archaeological studies of the rainforest environment have only developed relatively recently and we cannot therefore give precise dates as to when human beings first settled in this environment. But botanical, biogeographical, ecological and archaeological research all show how crucial the role of human beings has been in forest evolution and how old this relationship is.

The following are fundamental points to the understanding of the situation :

human beings are not newcomers to the rainforest environment ; present rainforests are the result of a long-standing relationship between human beings and the forest ; consequently, traditional societies cannot possibly be seen as destroying a hypothetical virgin nature which would need protecting from them.