Transcript The New Rurality: Globalization, landscapes and the

The New Rurality: Globalization,
landscapes and the dynamics of
forests lost and found
Susanna B Hecht
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
School of Public Policy, UCLA
• All tropical landscapes are deeply linked to
global dynamics in terms of their
perceptions, ideologies, economies and
histories: “Socially constructed” as well as
biotic entities.
• Reflect social relations, ideologies and
political economies, and K flows that are
both local and increasingly global. Its not
just “demography”
Landscape Typologies and their Political Ecologies
•
Primordial landscape of tropical
forests: ends of the earth and
beginnings of time
•
Landscapes of modernization
(agroindustrialization and global
commodities: soy, maize, cane, tree
plantations, oil palm, some cattle)
•
Post modern (pre modern?). Critique
of both Agroindus and primordial but
within new productionist framework:
landscapes based on claims of history,
identity, traditional territoriality
indigenous knowledge systems (native
reserves, ejidos, quilombos, traditional
peoples reserves
•
Peasantries. Historical actors in
making modern nation state, vilified as
forest destroyers; lack resonance:
(state historical interlocutor)
•
•
•
“socially” ahistorical landscape; biotic
entity. Set asides, Conservation
biology, national and international
conservation finance, Cap and trade,
PES
Linked in international commodity
mkts: technological trend mills, huge
beneficiaries from SAPs commodity
mkts.(Reg Devt Transfer creds, mkts)
Campaigns human rights, elaborated
niche markets, indigenous knowledge,
Varying degrees of essentialism about
relations w/nature.
Declining sector: deeply undermined by
commodity sector, losing political
ground to primordial/premodern
Hybrid systems of production:
increasingly emerging as complex
factor, (poorly understood) in forest
resurgence
•
•
Forest Resurgence:
A rose by any other name? Woodland succession, land abandonment, extension of
agroforestry systems, reforestation, valorization of NTFPs: many dynamics
•
BUT we do know a few things
1. Really Widespread (Puerto Rico, Mexico, Ecuador, Honduras, Amazon basin,
Peru, Colombia; greater Central America=33%)
2. Complex of factors that engender it
(War, remittances, rural labor dynamics, mkts, agrarian reform, mkt failures, ecol
problems)
3. Poorly studied: bias against evaluation of anthropogenic landscapes but significant:
dynamic ecosystems, landscape diversity, livelihoods
Theories: EKC
Forest transition
4. almost a marker of globalized peasant economies.
Forest cover history in the US
3D Image of El Salvador
Landsat TM & SRTM DEM
Malthus’ nightmare
• El Salavdor: “Where nature is
extinguished”
• Mostly deforested by end 1970s
• Small (2m Ha)
• Anthropogenic landscapes
(Biodiv elements not bad 350+ birds; but
generally poorly collected.
Table 1 compares the diversity of El Salvador with other
countries in Central America.
Table 1 Biotic Diversity in Central America (Number of species per 10,000 km2)
Mammals
Birds
Reptiles
Amphibian
Higher
Plants
167,000
106
365
57
18
1,956
Guatemala
4,253,000
114
304
105
45
3,638
Honduras
4,608,000
78
308
68
25
2,252
Nicaragua
6,027,000
86
322
69
25
3,003
Panama
2,123,000
112
477
116
84
4,618
Costa Rica
1,569,000
120
496
125
95
6,421
Country
El Salvador
Forest
Area
Source: World Resources Institute (1996)
0-10%
Percent Tree Cover
11-25%
26-40%
41-55%
56-70%
71-100%
AVHRR 92-93
MODIS 00-01
TABLE 1 ______________________________________________________________________________
Table 1: Percent tree cover change 1992(AVHRR) to 2001 (MODIS)
_____________________________________________________________________________
percent woody cover 1992
2001
0-10percent
6.9
0.9
11-25percent
21.3
5.6
26-40percent
28.9
31.4
41-55percent
19.3
30.8
56-70percent
12.2
13.8
71-100percent
11.2
14.6
______________________________________________________________________________
Source: Hecht & Saatchi, 2005.
Map 1
El Salvador: Population Distribution by Zones, 1971 -2000
(Millions of inhabitants)
North
0.7 territory
34%
0.7
19%
1971 pob.in
2000
‘71
Southwest
includes MASS
33% territory
53% pob. in ’71
67% pob. in ’00
13% pob.
in
‘00
4.1
Southeast
33% territory
28% pop. in ‘71
20% pop. in ‘00
1.0
1.9
1971
2000
MASS
(3% Territory)
19% pob. in ’71
32% pob. in ’00
1971
1.2
2000
SOURCE: PRISMA, based on population
census.
Socio-Economic Forces & Land Use Change
•
The outcomes of regional and international economic integration
and trade liberalization on grain prices, and the volatility of
international coffee prices. “Shock Doctrine”
The impacts of El Salvador’s civil conflicts as they reflected
hemispheric cold war politics. These had effects on the
agricultural
frontier, migration and agrarian reform.
•
The effects of structural adjustment policies on rural credit and
subsidies, and the implementation of decentralization programs.
•
The emergence of Int’l and Regional environmental politics
Decline in relative prices of the agricultural sector, 1970-2000
(GDP agricultural price index / GDP price index, 1990=1)
(National accounts Base 1990)
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
70
75
80
85
90
95
2000
Source: PRISMA based on data from the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador
El Salvador: Changes in the primary sources of foreign exchange, 1978 and 2000
Percent of
Traditional
Agro Exports
Millions of
Dollars
1978
Traditional agro-exports*
2000
1978
2000
Structure
(%)
1978
2000
514
292
100%
100%
81%
11%
Non-Trad exports outside Central America
54
145
11%
50%
8%
5%
Maquila (net income)
21
456
4%
156%
3%
17%
Remittances
51
1,750
10%
599%
8%
66%
Total
640
2,643
100%
100%
Total excluding remittances
589
893
* Coffee, cotton, sugar, shrimp. Note: The table does not include exports to Central America.
Source: PRISMA (2002) based on data from the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador
El Salvador:
Percentage of households
that receive remittances by department
Table
Migration and remittances in Central America
Country
Net migration
Per 1000
Remittances
Remittances as
US Millions % Direct Foreign
Investment
Remittances
GDP %
El Salvador
3.8
2,206
823.7
15.44
Guatemala
1.7
1,689
370.8
7.26
Honduras
2.0
770
394.0
11.68
Mexico
2.6
10,502
42 .
1.65
Nicaragua
1.3
759
573.7
36.71
________________________________________________________________________
New Rurality: Questions of
Products; Questions of services
• Modernization and Marxian dev’t has peasants disappearing which
they seem to not have done; “Via campesina” forestal?
• Huge shift of peasant question to ideological framework of post
modernity (primordial people in a way: ethnicity inc) and its
engagement w/global environmentalism, nativism, markets and
finance systems
• Peasants are still there and actually occupy sites of resurgence;
Do so in a policy vacuum; largely self financed (Biased against for
many reasons incl anthropogenic landscapes). Innovative and not
“traditional sector”
Policy issues” PES; (watershed, view sheds, habitat corridors, cap
and trade, support innovation in other forms)
Globalization and its malcontents
•
Globalization a major feature constructing modern rural and conservation
landscapes:
• Conservation strategies still catching up. Often enmired in imagined
versions of the pristine: Blinding to many interesting and necessary forested
systems.
• Understanding social construction and political economies of landscapes
helps design better options for each of the different systems: capture
dynamisms that are so far fairly “invisible”.
• Inhabited landscapes (and peasant landscapes increasingly have to be
understood as sites of significant
conservation opportunities, livelihoods, social justice.
Landscapes of forest resurgence as emblematic of peasant systems.
Forest creators rather than the demonized peasant pyrocmaniacs.