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Underlying Causes of
Deforestation and Forest Degradation
Latin America Workshop ANNEX 1 The following resumes has been the specially
prepared as case studies of the Underlying Causes of deforestation and forest degradation
global initiative and presented during the Santiago workshop. Their original versions can
be found in the following electronic address :: http://www.wrm.org.uy Rodrigo Catalan and Ruperto Ramos. Southern Chilean native forests and the Mapuches In the Chilean 9th region located at 38 ? L.S. exists 907 mil 521 hectares of native forest, corresponding to one of the last temperate cold humid forest region. Compared with other temperate forests it has a high biodiversity and it is characterize by bird and plant endemisms (34% of the angiosperm genus are endemic). For centuries, until it has been initiated the colonization process and the later occupation of their territory by the Chilean population, these forests has been inhabited and use in a sustainable way by the Mapuche indigenous peoples. Currently. The Mapuches has been forced to become into poor peasants in marginalize lands in a reduced territory in regard to the original extension. In spite of this situation, they have resisted the transformation processes maintaining their ancient relationship with the forest and their traditional uses for their daily life subsistence. More than 80% of the local flora have at least one use and receive a name in Mapuche language. Though the forest of the region is disappearing and degrading in at a high rate. Currently, the main cause of this phenomena is the substitution of native forests by exotic species forest plantations of fast growth. Between 1985 and 1994 a total of 31.000 hectares has been replaced in the region which is an equivalent of 0.3 % of surface area that is deforested only by this cause. Other direct causes of the deforestation and forest degradation are : fuel wood consumption and sale, forests fires, land use changes for agriculture and cattle ranching, cattle overgrazing inside the forests, selective timber species mining. The direct actors of the deforestation and forest degradation are the forest industry and the small landowners. The main underlying causes of forest loss in the region analyzed by the case study correspond to the macroeconomics policies applied in Chile since the 80’s. These policies had privilege the economic growth over the social equity (inter cultural) and the environmental sustainability moving away from the sustainable development concept. The growth registered in the country resulting from these policies has been based mainly in the reduction of the natural capital, including the native forest. The policies have included the support by subsidies and other incentives of the forest industry based on the monoculture of pines (Pinus radiata) and of eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus). The growing paper consumption level of the northern countries and the opening of the commercial barriers have increase the activity profits, attracting transnational capitals that has unified with the powerful national economic groups. Parallel to this , it has been reduced the State size, which has been traduced in a governmental forestry and environmental institutions weakness, low audit capacity which it adds to a lack of native forest legislation. As a consequence of all these facts it has been produced a great plantations expansion covering lands that were subject to erosion but also others covered by native forests. The current situation is of a great inequity of land distribution and richness, where the Mapuche communities are the most harmed. The problem tends to be more serious because of the disappearance of native forests that play a fundamental role in the community economy and lifestyle. The reconcile the direct and indirect actors
to have a territory management that tends to a development with equity, recognition of the
indigenous peoples rights and respect for the environment seems to be a inevitable way to
face this native forest problematic and the Mapuche people. Eduardo Restrepo and Hernan Cortes. Deforestation, forest degradation bin the territory –region of the black people communities of the Colombian Pacific The Colombian Pacific region has been identified as « the world region with the highest biodiversity concentration per unit area « with 400 tree species and 800 vertebrates by hectare - a lot more than the known Amazonian biodiversity - and 2.000 plant species and 100 bird species as endemic species. The main type of forest is the rain tropical forest and forests of this region can be homogenous and heterogeneous in its species composition. This region is also characterized by an annual deforestation rate of 154.000 hectares. From the original estimated regional forest cover by the middle of the 90’s were left only the 43%. Five million hectares have been deforested in the last four decades. The Pacific region population is in its 90% black people population, descendants of African slaves brought in the XVII century by the Europeans. The rest 10% is mainly indigenous, white and mestizo population. The Pacific black peoples communities have developed cultural complex systems of practices and representations that have allow them to appropriate the Pacific jungles. Practices such as hunting, fishing, particular shifting cultivation practices , gathering of fruits and animal products with ritual or food purposes are elements of a poliactive or polyvalent systems that allows a diverse appropriation of different spaces of their environment. At the beginning of the 90’s 60% of the timber country consumption had its origin in the pacific native forests. Among the direct causes of the deforestation and forest degradation of the Pacific region we have the mentioned forest exploitation, mining, agroindustry , subsistence agriculture and cattle ranching by new settlers. The authors goes over a detailed description of the historical activities of the different industries (timber, oil palm, mining, tannin extraction, shrimps, palmetto heart), the type of capital, the owners, the State role, the area deforested /degraded by each type of industry. The predominance of the extractive economy model and the unsustainable production and consumption patterns are the first underlying cause for the pacific region forest loss according to the author’s analysis. A immediate individual profit has been the logic of every industry operating in this region without any consideration of the environmental or social effects of their activities. The State forest and mining policies have supported this extractive model through the different concessions given to the industries in ancestral territories from black people’s communities. The State control mechanisms are totally ineffective. Corruption and budgetary scarcity are intrinsic characteristics of regional forest offices. The development model and the Pacific integration in the world economy dynamics in the context of the adjustment programs and the free- trade economy have generate a new wave of forest destruction and is one of the underlying causes highlighted by the authors. The capital, the State, the new settlers, the external elite's consider nature as an obstacle for « progress » or as a resource to be exploited from the logic of the accumulation economy rationality. This capitalist nature representation is opposed to the organic nature representation of the black people’s communities. Finally the authors offer a strategy to break
the nature extractive model domination. The platform of this strategy is based on the
effective recognition the territorial rights and collective titling of the ancestral
territories of the black people’s communities which is a recent Colombia law. Marcus Colchester , Social Exclusion and Development Domination. The Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Guyana Guyana, a small country on the north coast of South America, which gained independence from the British in 1966, is one of the most forested countries of the tropics. Over three-quarters of the national territory of 21.5 million hectares is covered in some kind of forest of which some 14 million hectares are considered to be luggable. Some 90% of the population live along the narrow, cultivated coastal strip, meaning that the interior of the country is even more sparsely populated, the dominant population there being the Amerindians, descendants of the country's original inhabitants, who now number some 60,000 people. Even if rates of deforestation in Guyana are not high compared to other parts of the Americas, and are limited to the coastal forests near to settlements, the degradation of the other forests of the interior is becoming a real problem. Guyana is experiencing a rapid degradation of its forests due to poorly regulated logging. Already the majority of the country's accessible forests have been handed out as concessions mainly to foreign logging companies. While deforestation is not yet extensive, significant loss is being caused by fuel wood gathering, charcoal burning, mining, road building and, to an unknown extent, forest fires. There are concerns that cross border migration along a newly opened road from Brazil could initiate forest loss by migrant farmers but this is not yet a problem. A complex web of historical and contemporary social and economic forces underlies these problems. The historical and continuing domination of the economy by trade interests and transnational corporations has resulted in a society divided by race and class. Amerindians and ex-plantation workers have suffered social exclusion, while a unaccountable, corrupt and manipulative political elite has established itself in power. Lack of transparency and the absence of strong civil society institutions has allowed decisions to be made with regard to natural resources that favor these transnational and the political elite at the expense of excluded social sectors and the environment. During the years of one party rule the economy was chronically mismanaged resulting in a massive debt burden and a growing dependency on foreign aid. Aid agency prescriptions to redress the balance of payments crisis through structural adjustment and a liberalization of the economy have encouraged an astoundingly rapid escalation of logging and mining. These activities are resulting in widespread deforestation and forest degradation. Although the government and the aid agencies have taken some measures to strengthen the state regulatory institutions that control logging and, to a lesser extent, mining, these have been too little, too late. Only since the mid-1990s have the IMF and World Bank begun to give much attention to the need to build up the capacity of the GFC and GGMC and develop new environmental standards. Even so, the aid agencies have been reluctant to confront the entrenched problem of social exclusion and only intense advocacy by NGOs has obliged, for example, the British Department for International Development to push for changes in forest policy to favor Amerindian interests. The Government's reluctance to recognize Amerindian land rights remains a major obstacle to progressive reforms. One of the recommendations given by the author
is that the debt burden on Guyana must be further relieved and proposed macroeconomics
reforms must be preceded by detailed social and environmental impact assessment. Jesus Ibarra and Francisco Nunez . A case study from Yvytyrusu Mountains, Paraguay. Paraguay has had between the years 1981-1990, the highest deforestation rate of South America. The Yvytyrusu Mountains in Guaira Department is covered with forests characteristic from the oriental region of Paraguay, subtropical humid forests. This mountains are inhabited by small –scale farmers with properties that varies from 3 to 10 hectares and medium and big land owners whose properties oscillate in between 60 to 1000 hectares. The main national underlying causes identified as forces behind the Yvytyrusu mountains deforestation are the State development policies related with colonization and the Paraguayan agrarian reform processes promoted in the sixties during the Gral. Stroessner dictatorship period. The international organizations (IMF, WB, AID, IDB, and Progress Alliance strategies ) helped different governments of Latin America through financial and technical assistance to support Agrarian reform programs. This agrarian reform was a temporal solution mechanism to resolve the peasant’s land needs. The distant and rocky forest lands of Yvytyrusu in the beginning of the colonization programs were inhabited by indigenous peoples, although the lands were publics and poorly valued, these were the reasons because they were converted in areas of colonization, to lower the high concentration of land and the inequitable land distribution in Guaira Department, in areas near the mountains. During the sixties, the 4,2 % of the agricultural exploitations occupied the 47,7 % of Guaira lands with 1,6 ha by peasant’s populations. Even today 90 % of them don't have any definitive properly titles. The transformation of forestlands into different agricultural uses has been promoted by the prevailing concept that the forest cover was under the category of rational unexploded and unproductive land. The impose model was that the land must be transformed into agricultural land. The credits for small –scale farmers that could have promoted the sustainable use of forests and its conservation, or for any productive alternative had never been seen in Yvytyrusu. Since 1990, when a nature reserve was declared to be the Yvytyrusu National Park, 200 small scale farmers belonging to 8 different communities of the Yvytyrusu mountains have got together in an Association of Cerro Yvytyrusu dwellers (A.P.C.Y.) in order to defend their rights face to a possible displacement when the Park will be implemented. As international underlying causes the case
study authors highlights the international markets for agricultural products, particularly
by demand and high prices of cotton and soja and the promotion of the country agro-export
model coincides with the highest deforestation rates in Paraguay. Though the direct links
with the deforestation rates Yvytyrusu are still to de established. The timber species
exports based on Paraguayan six tree species has been the historical way that Yvytyrusu
forests were incorporated to the international timber market. Now with the MercoSur treaty
which Paraguay is part it is expected that the last country forests will not be destroyed
by the increase of this new demand. Among the possible solutions the author’s
highlights the community development and democracy process promotion, the sustainable
production and the formulation of public policies based on land use management. Domingo Paredes and Antolin Tapuyo. Ecological Reserve and Protected Forest Mache- Chindul, Esmeraldas province, Ecuador. The ecological reserve and protective forest Mache – Chindul has 120.000 hectares and is located the Esmeralda Province in the northwest of Ecuador. This territory is part of the Choco biographical region characterized by an unique level of endemic species and high level of biodiversity. The rain tropical forests and the mangroves that cover this Province are threaten with extinction processes. Ecuador timber consumption is 9.7 millions cubic meters annually and 8.5 millions comes from native forests. The country northwest, particularly Esmeralda Province, provides 1.7 million cubic meters of this total consumption. In 1967 the Province had 1 million and 55 thousand hectares of forests by 1993 it was left 800.000 hectares. Under a rate of timber exploitation of 500 thousand m 3 /year it is foreseen that the Province forests will be extinct in 2005. The area of Mache – Chindul is inhabited by indigenous 3 Chachi indigenous communities (San Salvador, Balzar and Chorerra Grande) and by more than 30 disperse colonist settlements. The Chachi’s communities are dedicated to the timber exploitation to financial their children education in the nearest cities and to cover their debts. The construction of roads infrastructure (the planned Marginal Pacific road), the shrimps factories in the west south of the Reserve , the conversion of forests land into cattle – ranching and agricultural uses, the forest exploitation by the Chachi communities, new colonist settlers and by commercial enterprises are among the direct causes of deforestation and forest degradation described by the authors. Among the underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation identified by the author's are the development style and strategies. The author’ s quote Baez, a dean of Ecuadorian Catholic University : « Ecuador and the rest of the emergent economies don't have any possibility to financial their development meanwhile they are paying the imperial tribute called the external debt, in the case of Ecuador is the 50% of the State budget « . In this context the strategy to generate currency for paying the debts services are based on the agro- mining exportation model, reduction of the State role, elimination of the tariff – barriers, fiscal austerity, in synthesis the neo – liberal economy model. The highly concentration and excluding nature of this strategy has generate in Ecuador a social synergy expressed in growth of poverty, marginality and precarious life conditions. These strategies are subordinated to the transnational economic circuits. The Chachi community identifies as well the patterns of consumption of western societies as an underlying cause of deforestation, the low prices of their products in the international economy, the pressure exert by international organizations such as World Bank and IMF in the national economy. They think that all these conditions for the debt payment violates all the fundamental norms of peaceful cohabitation and the solidarity among peoples. Finally the authors identify all the objectives, motivations, incentives, contradictions and strategies of different actors in the deforestation process and recommend short, medium and long-term solutions to tackle the main underlying causes. ANNEX 2 Pablo, Pacheco B. Extent and causes of deforestation and forest degradation in Bolivia The Bolivian lowlands are covered by 440.000 km2 of rain tropical forests which represents 57% of the lowlands total surface. The Bolivian deforestation rates are of 168.000 hectares/year (0.3%/year), data comparatively low in relation with other tropical forest countries (0.6%/year for the Amazon countries). The author uses an analytical framework that includes identification of agents, immediate causes of forest loss in Bolivia. The Bolivian deforestation and forest degradation is an historic consequence of all Latin American countries development styles that promotes economic accumulation based on the unrestricted use of natural resources. Since the last years of the 80’s, the adjustment and stabilizing policies have promote the expansion over forests lands of mechanized crops (Soya, wheat, sunflower, rice) in medium and large properties. This has been the principal cause of deforestation in Bolivia. These policies had also increase the timber exports which has been traduced in a greater forest degradation. The inequitable land distribution policies and the forest legislation have been also additional elements that have contribute to Bolivian forest loss. New policies in the 90’s related with
expedition of new land and forests laws (Law of the National Service of the Agrarian
Reform (1996) and Forest Law (1996)) give new hopes for a different management of forest
resources. Though these policies continue to be separated from the economic and social
reforms and policies that support the expansion of agriculture exports. Rosa Roldán . Industry role the Aracruz case study, Brazil Aracruz Cellulose is the world biggest pulp industry of short fibber. The Eucalyptus platantions in the south - East Coast of Brazil in a land of 30.000 hectares are the basis of this industry. This territory belongs since pre - Hispanic times to the Tupinikín and Guaraníes indigenous peoples. Since 1967 Aracruz bought the land through intermediaries to the indigenous peoples and transformed native forests into eucalyptus plantations. The State has subsidized timber private enterprises through specific programs of incentives and tax reductions to promote exotic species monocultures and with infrastructure policies. The money to support this subsidies and incentives has been financed by international institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. The paper consumption of the world open the market for the pulp production of Aracruz most of it being exported. Since 1975 the indigenous peoples are fighting to recuperate their lands. Between 1975- 1985 they have recuperate 4.500 hectares from Aracruz cellulose lands and between 1993 - 1998 they have recuperated 2.600 hectares. Aracruz cellulose presents her as a
sustainable forest management enterprise with sensibility for social issues. It says that
for each 6 hectares of eucalyptus they leave 5 hectares of native forests. It also argues
that it gives employment to the local people. In 1990 were given 7.000 employment and
today the amount has been reduced to 2.000 employment. Nicolo Gligo. Macro factors and sectorial policies that influencedeforestation and forest degradation process If we analyze the evolution of the development styles and models that have prevailed in Latin America we conclude rapidly that they had been illegal or offensive with the natural resources. Even if the current international conditions does not permit to change the model of economic growth and derived development styles we can slow down or mitigate some trends that deteriorate our ecosystems. At the national level, we have to differentiate between the environmental explicit strategies and policies and environmental implicit strategies and policies . We work generally in the explicit strategies and policies, which are reactive. These policies are created to treat emergency problems, those by which were created in our countries the Ministries of Environment, National Commissions of the Environment, etc. These environmental organisms are forgotten institutions that act out of the way because there is no political willingness from the other governmental institutions to incorporate the environment issues in their agenda. The forest institutions inside these environmental organisms are even more forgotten by the dominant forces. Historically this kind of reactive policies hasbeen demonstrated to be inefficient. The implicit policies are were the real fate of the forests ecosystems is defined. These policies are environmental policies but with negative sign which exist in the other sectors of the economy. The colonization, infrastructure, the energetic policies, timber and pulp production policies are perfect examples of this implicit policies in every country of Latin America. And all these policies have an implicit negative environmental policy. At the international level, the author highlights several underlying causes that affect the conservation and sustainable use of our forest ecosystems. The current globalization that has meant a big and strong role to the TNC’s (transnational corporations ) that allows them to make self – control of their activities and not the society that have to control them. The science an technology in the globalization process which is not interested anymore in having knowledge about the forests as ecosystems and in the transformation of highly harmful harvest technologies. The new valuation of the forest ecosystems as
biodiversity reservoirs and carbon sinks changes the negotiation possibilities in relation
with these forest ecosystem functions. The citizen participation is a crucial factor to
influence internationally this new forests values that we trying to conserve. Alberto Salas . Central America: The case of forest fires. In Central America 1 million and a half hectares has been affected by forest fires during the 1998 summer. This is the equivalent of 4 years of deforestation of the 7 countries of this region. The economic losses of timber and non timber products, biodiversity, water, soils ecoturism and landscape and emissions of CO2 caused by the forests fires has been calculated by the authors by a total of US$ 5.343.185.200. Without the CO2 costs inclusion economic loss has been US$ 488.668.200. They have also evaluate the indirect impacts on the air and land transport and public health which has not been included in the costs calculations because of reliable statistics. The authors explain the causes of the forest
fires in Central America by the following causes : a). institutional and political causes
among them he highlights an inadequate system of detection, organizational structure
weakness , inadequate legal framework, lack of coordination, lack of capacity and
equipment, incoherent extrasectorial policies; b) Agricultural causes : land use changes,
industrial crops, extensive cattle ranching and subsistence agriculture; c) Forests causes
: lack of sustainable forest management and lack of regulation and control. Marcedonio Cortave. Case study of the Peten department, Guatemala – community forest concessions. The forests of Peten (Guatemala) , Chiapas (Mexico) and Belize form together what is called « The Maya Jungle « which is the biggest rain tropical forest north to the Amazon. In Peten, a northern department of Guatemala, this rain tropical forest is protected by the Maya Biosphere Reserve (20.000 Km2) which is the biggest forest reserve of Central America. The direct causes of deforestation and forest degradation in Peten are timber exploitation, cattle –ranching, shifting cultivation, mining and forests fires. The author identifies as well the actors of each of these causes and their interests. The main underlying causes are: inequitable distribution of land and rural migration. Since 1992 the peasants communities affected by the creation of the Maya Biosphere Reserve has formed and association representing 16 communities and two cooperatives called ACOFOP. Its main objective is to promote the social and economic development and improvement of their life quality of its members through their participation in the forest conservation and sustainable use. Currently the government has gave communities forests concessions inside the Maya Biosphere Reserve. This means that the ACOFOP communities will have the right to use a forest area for 25 years. During the Central American forests fires
during the 98 summer the community forest concessions has been the least affected by the
forest fires. The reasons that explain this fact are summarize by one of the community
concession members : « because we love our forests, we take care of it. We eat from the
forests, we support the studies of our children from them, who will take care of the house
of another ? Adalberto Merrero et al . Deforestation and forest degradation in the Cuban forests in the colonial and neo-colonial history and the reversion of this unsustainable illness with the Cuban revolution. Today the Cuban archipelago is covered by forests in 21% of its territory (2,41 millions of hectares) . The mangrove ecosystems cover 70% of the Cuban coasts and represents 26% of the total forest cover of the archipelago. The deforestation and forest degradation started in Cuba since the arrival of the Europeans five centuries ago in which 80% to 90% of the territory was covered by forests . The main direct causes of the Cuban forest loss according to the authors were before the Cuban revolution (1959) the sugar industry and other crops , cattle ranching, and mining . The authors also highlight as direct causes of the mangrove deforestation and degradation the hurricanes and cyclones, contamination by residual waters from the sugar, pork and cattle industry, construction of infrastructure for tourism and agriculture, forest fires and progressive salinization. The underlying causes were the European colonization, the north American neo colonization, the government corrupted policies, the legislation's that were never executed and the unsustainable production and consumption patterns. The country forest cover that the Cuban revolution inherits was of 13,4% of the territory. The silviculture development has been one of the objectives of the Cuban revolution. The repopulating programs in different areas of the country had allow to increment the forest area from 13,4% to 21,6%. From this area 1 million 954 thousand hectares are of natural forests and 454,4 thousand correspond to plantations. From this plantation area 249 thousands hectares has been made with native species some of them improved genetically.
ANNEX 3 A central question in the search for sustainability is: How can the forests be managed so that people living inside or surrounding the forests can enjoy a better quality of life? Three concepts are fundamental in the search for solutions at the local level: autonomy, self-sufficiency, and diversification. Autonomy The first question about the concept of autonomy is related to the vision of community. What is a community? Community is not simply a set of people living in proximity. Community is more than that. It is defined in terms of a vision and of a capacity to impose mutual obligations over people who have responsibilities to other members and to the community as a whole. This implies that many individual decisions are not valid until the whole community accepts them. It clearly represents a restriction on individual freedom, a restriction that is generally accepted as a condition for being accepted as a member of the community. Community involves a set of mutual obligations and responsibilities, as well as, of course, mutual benefits. When we discuss autonomy, it is not a discussion of an individual's autonomy, it involves the community as a whole declaring: "We, as a community, are constructing our own capacity to govern, our common vision." This emerges from a collective ability to cooperate, to work together, to form and then to strengthen the community – the capacity to integrate people, who understand that some measure of sacrifice of individual liberty is required for the common project. This concept offers a sharp contrast to bourgeois democracy, where individual decisions are often respected over and above (and sometimes in spite of) the collective project, especially when they are taken by the rich and/or powerful. The concept of a collective project, of a community vision, has implications for the community's role in resource management; when communities begin to think collectively, they reevaluate their contribution to the society of which they are part. To address these matters, we begin by examining the way in which the community relates to broader society. Is it allowed to be a full participant in society? In many instances, conflicts begin because the community is not considered to be a legitimate claimant on resources and its members are excluded. When it strives to participate, the community must define the way in which it attempts to assert its autonomy. Autonomy refers to the effort of creating an independent process of local management for all community resources: natural, human, produced, and social. In the process, the community seeks to create mechanisms that protect and enhance its own capacities and resource base while strengthening and enriching its contribution to the larger society of which it is a part. This approach to autonomy is quite different from a separatist project. In many of our societies, communities are never given the opportunity to consider independent options, or if they do they face terrible forms of repression; but even if they can resist these pressures, they don’t have access to resources. For some communities, however, they can maintain and expand their scope for independent action, either by remaining insignificant in the larger society, or by negotiating favorable terms for such action; to the extent that their alternative model does not pose a threat to the dominant power structure, they may enjoy the possibility of implementing their projects. How does society react to local projects of autonomy? Privileged sectors often see this attempt at self-management as a threat to their inherited patterns of control; this may be the origin of conflicts and the community must clearly define the extent that it is willing to negotiate on this issue. A project to protect the forest, is generally a project that limits the capital accumulation process. Challenging past forest management practices inevitably involves restricting private appropriation of these resources that support specific patterns of social organization at the global and local levels; community projects for a different management approach represent a direct attack on the polarization process based on the control of resources. Therefore, the autonomy project requires an innovative resource management program, restricting its contribution to capitalist accumulation. The assertion of community control, then, requires explicit consideration of the negotiation process. What will be offered in exchange for local autonomy?
Self-sufficiency The second element in a program of sustainability is self-sufficiency . Why it is important? Because autonomy doesn’t make sense if the community has to go elsewhere for its basic necessities. In elaborating a program, it must pose the fundamental questions: What part of basic needs can be produced locally? For those goods that can’t be produced locally, are the community members willing to sacrifice them in times of emergency? Finally, to what extent are the community's projects subject to the « scissors effect », of unfavorable price movements on local or world markets, and are there mechanisms to help protect the community? Self-sufficiency is not a demand that can be pursued at any cost. The current world economy does not permit a community to separate itself totally from the world market; rather, a project to improve a region's sustainability, and therefore its autonomy, requires each society to define a minimum level of self-sufficiency that can't be negotiated. What are the steps that must be taken to ensure the region's ability to achieve this level, the investments in machinery, environmental processes, technology, and skills that are needed to defend realistically this non- negotiable position? A minimum of production to assure an adequate supply of basic needs for everyone in the community. In international circles they speak of « food security »; it is a complex concept that involves important questions for all concerned. How does a society achieve self-sufficiency? In the forests, this means elaborating an agenda that is frequently not discussed: Agrosilviculture. The forest can feed us, in the most literal sense of the word; but it can not nourish us if we accept the current models of what it is a forest. What area of the forest must be cleared for these purposes? In the context of this discussion, we are speaking in the first person in plural; this is very important because the community is not a nuclear family; is must expand to take into the collective management of resources, on a socially relevant scale for the entire population in the area. This means that the individuals – I insist – have to give up some their liberty to move, they must contribute to building a collective capacity for organization and receive in exchange an enhanced capacity of negotiation and production. But this is only possible if community acts as a single political organization to demonstrate its commitment to a long-term program of social and resources management as well as its capacity to produce results. If self-sufficiency is fundamental, it requires an explicit consideration of the consumption pattern that the community is willing to adopt or improve. It necessarily involved a profound discussion of the way in which the broad changes in consumption, promoted by the expansion of the world market, affect local demands and needs. The basic grains of the past are frequently not the preferred foods of today? Can these changes be supported by the local ecosystem? Is the community willing to import its basic foods and other items or the inputs (seeds, fertilizers, cloth, …) needed to produce them? Some level of self-sufficiency cannot be subject to negotiation. Productive diversification Once we have defined self-sufficiency, productive diversification is another crucial part of any strategy to promote sustainability. This diversification does not involve achieving self-sufficiency; rather, it exists as a complementary principle. Here the question is: What is the value of the forest, and how can this value be enhanced while protecting the resource? To begin to define the possibilities for productive diversification, an investigation might identify the ways in which the people who accumulated their fortunes from it have exploited the forest. Since the logic of this pattern was probably based on the extraction of resources rather than their management, and the displacement of local people rather than their involvement, this response will clearly not produce an appropriate scheme for sustainable exploitation. The community must identify ways to produce products that will allow the region to continue to be productive for the indefinite future, while its members can produce goods that allow them to guarantee themselves adequate living standards. The final answer is the difference between the value of the forest for the capitalism and what the community is receiving; there must exist a significant distance there. A new diversification program requires some consideration of the ways in which more value can be added to the resources, and new products can produced. Of special interest are projects that will involve as many people as possible from the participating communities, and markets that will appreciate and remunerate the efforts to protect and enrich the resource. Thus, the challenge is to modify the relationship of the producers to the resource and to their markets; by placing greater value on the resource, it will be necessary to find ways of raising its price in the marketplace, transforming it in form or in significance, by charging for the value of the protective services that the new productive program offers. In many cases, it is possible to take advantage of emerging markets for "peasant" or "organic" products, or to create new goods and services that cater specifically to segments of the market willing to pay more to be responsible consumers. This is the local counterpart to the efforts to incorporate environmental accounting values and practices into all facets of the market economy. The necessity to create greater value in the forest, must not imply transforming the work force into a voiceless proletariat. If the community is to defend itself against proletarianization, it must define the self-sufficiency as a primordial value, one new way to protect the forests. Only by creating a mechanism to guarantee some measure of basic security for all basic needs, and obtain others through a process of diversification, can the community protect itself from the dangers inherent in proletarianization. This implies that we can’t cheat ourselves. We have to give value to the forest and we have to decide what part of the forest we will permit to be appropriated. In this sense, I think that one of the failures of many agents working with the communities, it is that we have not become demanding enough of ourselves. We don’t demand that we are the best technicians, the best marketing agents, the best accountants, the best bankers; we will not survive unless we become expert in everything we do. We must specialize and acquire the most appropriate technology and the best technical skills and knowledge; we must inform of our actions with the best creativity that exists in the world, to enhance value of our forests, to forge alternatives to the approaches offered by transnational capital. This requires work in at least 5 dimensions:
Conclusion Thus, what needs to be done, is to strengthen the demand for control of the forest by developing a capacity to negotiate on the basis of the community's ability to contribute to national or regional development and to protect the ecosystem while assuring the community's own well-being. A crucial question in the process is: How can the community protect itself from the pressure to operate as a profit making firm, that gradually transforms the forest into corporate capital, and the members into a new, perhaps more egalitarian, proletariat? The first step in this process involves not only creating a base of food security, but also assuring universal access to basic necessities; by insisting that community decisions are a priority and that the long-term protection of the ecosystem is fundamental for the continuity of the community. The community has the moral authority and support of its participants, not for accumulation but to guarantee the integrity and strength of the community. A final reminder: this strategy implies necessarily, that certain activities like basic food production may not be profitable. It is important that the community accepts, analyze, and encourage them, because they are important; the collective commitment and the success of the diversification program must support them. |
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