The New Rurality: Globalization, landscapes and the dynamics of

forests lost and foundSusanna B Hecht

Institute for Advanced Study, PrincetonSchool 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)

CountryForest Area

Mammals Birds Reptiles Amphibian

Higher Plants

El Salvador 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

Source: World Resources Institute (1996)

Percent Tree Cover

AVHRR 92-93

MODIS 00-01

0-10%

11-25%

26-40%

41-55%

56-70%

71-100%

TABLE 1 ______________________________________________________________________________Table 1: Percent tree cover change 1992(AVHRR) to 2001 (MODIS)

_____________________________________________________________________________percent woody cover 1992 2001

0-10percent 6.9 0.911-25percent 21.3 5.626-40percent 28.9 31.441-55percent 19.3 30.856-70percent 12.2 13.871-100percent 11.2 14.6

______________________________________________________________________________Source: Hecht & Saatchi, 2005.

North34% territory

19% pob.in ‘71

13% pob. in ‘00

1971

0.7

2000

0.7

MASS(3% Territory)19% pob. in ’7132% pob. in ’00

Southeast33% territory

28% pop. in ‘7120% pop. in ‘00

2000

1.2

1971

1.0

1971

1.9

2000

4.1

Southwest includes MASS33% territory

53% pob. in ’7167% pob. in ’00

Map 1 El Salvador: Population Distribution by Zones, 1971 -2000(Millions of inhabitants)

SOURCE: PRISMA, based on population census.

• 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

Socio-Economic Forces & Land Use Change

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

70 75 80 85 90 95 2000

Decline in relative prices of the agricultural sector, 1970-2000 (GDP agricultural price index / GDP price index, 1990=1)

(National accounts Base 1990)

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

Millions of Dollars

Percent of Traditional

Agro Exports Structure

(%)

1978 2000 1978 2000 1978 2000

Traditional agro-exports* 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 Remittances Remittances as Remittances Per 1000 US Millions % Direct Foreign GDP %

Investment

El Salvador 3.8 2,206 823.7 15.44Guatemala 1.7 1,689 370.8 7.26Honduras 2.0 770 394.0 11.68Mexico 2.6 10,502 42 . 1.65Nicaragua 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.