Rural areas are notoriously difficult to reach. Roads and rail links are usually scarce, often in disrepair, and frequently impassable. This puts transportation high on the list of critical factors determining the commercial viability of ecosystem goods and services that the rural poor may wish to market. In the remote Iquitos region of Peru, for example, transportation costs are often the deciding factor in what is marketed (Neumann and Hirsch 2000:51-52).
Fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, milk, and other perishable items are particularly subject to the limitations of transport infrastructure. In Nigeria’s Niger River delta region, marketing of the African or Bush Pear (Dacryodes edulis)—a nutritious and valuable fruit much in demand—is held back by impassable roads during the rainy season, just when the pear is bearing most heavily (Adewusi 2004:144). Likewise, a market analysis of palm fruits harvested in the one of Brazil’s Extractive Reserves found that it was only profitable to market those fruits picked within 114 km of a market—about 3.5 days travel time. Beyond that, it was too slow and too costly to be worth the effort (Neumann and Hirsch 2000:52).
Of course, the need to provide efficient rural transportation goes well beyond its importance to building markets for ecosystem goods. It is a basic requirement for rural development more broadly. Studies show that transportation deficits and bottlenecks are an obstacle to economic growth. The connection of roads to poverty reduction is also wellunderstood. A recent study shows that living close to a highway decreases a household’s chance of being poor by 17 percent and increases its access to work by 32 percent (Manasseh and Chopra 2004). Nonetheless, providing adequate rural transportation has been a constant challenge for national and local governments due to the high costs of transport infrastructure, and it is likely that getting products to market will remain a lingering problem for poor producers.
