tropical resources23 growth of big-leaf mahogany (swietenia macrophylla king) in natural forests in...

2004 Volume 23

The Bulletin of the Yale Tropical Res ources InstituteThe Bulletin of the Yale Tropical Resources Ins titute

T R O P I C A L R E S O U R C E ST R O P I C A L R E S O U R C E S

In this issue

About TRI3 Letter from the Director: Dr. Lisa M. Curran5 TRI 2003 Fellows6 Mission Statement and Vision

Articles8 World Parks and Protected Areas: The Impact of Young

Conservationists at the Fifth IUCN World Parks CongressLeigh A. Baker, MEM 2004

11 The Soybean Frontier: Polarized Agriculture and ContestedLandscape in the Brazilian Amazon

Corrina Steward, MESc 200423 Growth of Big-leaf Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla King)

in Natural Forests in BelizeKenichi Shono, MEM 2004, and Laura K. Snook, Center forInternational Forestry Research (CIFOR)

31 Reconfiguring Discourses: National Transformations of theGlobal Convention on Biological Diversity

Nikhil Anand, MESc 200437 Coffee, Cattle, and Colonialism: Historical Effects of Markets

and Agricultural Policies on Cloud Forests in CentralVeracruz, Mexico

Alexandra Ponette, PhD candidate45 Three Forms of Amorphophallus lambii and Three Forms of

Rungus-Dusun Plant Expert KnowledgeBetony Lee Jones, MESc 2004

53 Ethnographies of Territorialized Terror: Research withinViolent Environments

Kevin Woods, MESc 200461 Agroforestry Strategies over a Lifetime

Robin Barr, MEM 200467 Haat Colors

Raji Dhital, MESc 200475 Community Responses to International Reforms: A Case

Study of Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro, Michoacan,Mexico

Sarah Davidson, MESc 200483 Social Movements and the Scholar: Discussions at the 2004

World Social ForumCompiled by Andrea Johnson, MESc 2005

87 Announcing the TRI 2004 Fellows

“Flying squirrel”In The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. By Mark Catesby. London, 1731-43. Beinecke Rare Bookand Manuscript Library, Yale University.

1 Volume 23, Spring 2004

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the 2003-04 Tropical Research Institute (TRI) Bulletin, which showcases TRI-funded researchprojects conducted by students at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies(F&ES). The paperspublished within cannot be adequately summed up in any one theme; rather, their diversity and individual stylereflects the range of disciplines and interests that research on tropical environmental issues encompasses nowadays.Hence Nikhil Anand’s paper on the politics and discourse of India’s biodiversity policy process is includedalongside Ken Shono’s analysis of mahogany regeneration rates in Belize and Robin Barr’s survey on Kenyanhousehold agroforestry strategies. As editors, we have attempted to ensure that papers reflect the geographic aswell as thematic scope of tropical research, with work conducted in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

Perhaps it is precisely the diversity of this year’s Bulletin that provides our central theme. There is a growingawareness in contemporary environmental studies of the complexity of achieving conservation goals. Suchcomplexity necessitates that problems be approached from multiple disciplinary angles – forestry, anthropology,political science, economics, and beyond. Corinna Steward’s work on soy landscapes in Brazil, or SarahDavidson’s study of NAFTA’s impacts on a Mexican community forestry operation, demonstrate the profoundlyinterdisciplinary way in which we have come to understand environmental issues. Complexity also demands thatresearch be carefully situated within the unique environment in which it is embedded. Alexandra Ponette’sarticle, integrating historical, economic, and natural processes in a discussion of tropical montane cloud forestconservation in Mexico, provides an example of this contextualization.

A consideration of research process is also evident, suggesting the gradual paradigmatic shift in the academiccommunity towards a more reflexive interpretation of the researcher’s role. Rather than scientific “detachment”or “objectivity,” contributors have attempted to clearly delineate their standing in the context of the field site,articulating a nuanced and individual perspective. Raji Dhital’s eloquent piece on Nepali farmers finely illustratesthis approach. Several authors explicitly wrestle with the ethical, methodological, and epistemologicalimplications of research, asking important questions about the contested process of knowledge production.Betony Jones meditates on understanding the complexity of ethnobotanical knowledge, while in Kevin Wood’sarticle on violent development, even the act of writing involves personal decisions with respect to disclosure andcontent.

Also included in this year’s Bulletin is Leigh Baker’s piece on the 2003 World Parks Congress, and adistillation by Andrea Johnson of a student workshop held at the 2004 World Social Forum. At each event adelegation of Yale F&ES students attended both as observers and as active participants. Their reports provide aglobal and contemporary context in which to situate the ideas explored within the individual student researchprojects presented here.

On a personal note, we would like to thank Dr. Amity Doolittle, who has been an extremely patient andresponsive overseer of our somewhat haphazard working schedule, and Judy Karbowski-Hall without whose layoutskills this Bulletin would never have materialized. Finally, we are cognizant of the dedication and commitmentthat our contributors exhibited in preparing their pieces for publication and feel that their efforts have beenrewarded in the quality of this year’s Bulletin. We were not always the gentlest of editors, but we hope that theprocess of writing for TRI was instructive and beneficial. We certainly enjoyed the opportunity to learn from andcollaborate with all involved.

Victoria Critchley and Andrea Johnson

TROPICAL RESOURCES 2

Table of Contents

About TRI3 Letter from the Director: Dr. Lisa Curran5 TRI 2003 Fellows6 Mission Statement and Vision

Articles8 World Parks and Protected Areas: The Impact of Young Conservationists at the Fifth IUCN World Parks

C o n g r e s sLeigh A. Baker, MEM 2004

1 1 The Soybean Frontier: Polarized Agriculture and Contested Landscape in the Brazilian AmazonCorrina Steward, MESc 2004

2 3 Growth of Big-leaf Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla King) in Natural Forests in Belize Kenichi Shono, MEM 2004, and Laura K. Snook,Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

31 Reconfiguring Discourses: National Transformations of the Global Convention on BiologicalDiversity Nikhil Anand, MESc 2004

37 Coffee, Cattle, and Colonialism: Historical Effects of Markets and Agricultural Policies on CloudForests in Central Veracruz, MexicoAlexandra Ponette, PhD candidate

45 Three Forms of Amorphophallus lambii and Three Forms of Rungus-Dusun Plant ExpertKnowledgeBetony Lee Jones, MESc 2004

53 Ethnographies of Territorialized Terror: Research within Violent EnvironmentsKevin Woods, MESc 2004

61 Agroforestry Strategies over a Lifetime Robin Barr, MEM 2004

67 Haat ColorsRaji Dhital, MESc 2004

75 Community Responses to International Reforms: A Case Study of Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro,Michoacan, MexicoSarah Davidson, MESc 2004

83 Social Movements and the Scholar: Discussions at the 2004 World Social ForumCompiled by Andrea Johnson, MESc 2005

87 Announcing the TRI 2004 Fellows

Dear TRI Community,

It is my sincere pleasure to dedicate this 20th anniversary TRI volume to Dr. Bill Burch and Dr. HerbBormann (2003 winner of the Blue Planet Prize). We held a warm and lovely tribute to our past in April withDrs. Ramachandra Guha, Katherine Snyder, Daniel Nepstad, and John Parotta returning to campus to toast (androast) our colleagues and their illustrious careers and contributions.

The legacy that Bill and Herb have helped, with much support, to create leaves me with a deep sense ofgratitude. This wonderful institute is a credit to the many people who have been instrumental in its formationand development. The commitment and passion for interdisciplinary tropical studies at the Yale School ofForestry and Environmental Studies (F&ES) is evidenced by the over 350 F&ES students who have conductedresearch in 60 countries in the past twenty years.

In its anniversary year TRI has had yet another productive and diverse year. To give just a few examples, wehave expanded our collaborations with international non-government and academic institutions, receivedadditional funding from a diversity of sources, as well as expanded our international environmental justiceprogram. Important areas of excellence and research that have been made available by the generous support ofour funding partners include a Video Center (donated by the Class of 1980), Compton Foundation researchgrants, and World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) support for student research in Africa. In addition ananonymous donor has donated the resources to establish a highly successful film and speaker series.

In this regard, special thanks must go to Program Director Dr. Amity Doolittle, whose leadership in programdevelopment, student professional training, and fund-raising has been exceptional. TRI also owes a particular debtof thanks to F&ES Graduate Diane Russell. She has been an active promoter and sponsor of TRI not only withinICRAF, but also in assisting us to forge new partnerships with Dr. Chimère Diaw from CIFOR, and Dr. PeterBrosius from the University of Georgia Department of Ecological and Environmental Anthropology. We areparticularly excited about ICRAF supporting our publication of six working papers under the ALAM partnership.These will be based on previous research by F&ES and University of Georgia students in collaboration withICRAF.

Another major development this year is that TRI will be joining the International Union of the Conservationof Nature (IUCN) as a voting member. To launch this exciting new role, Achim Stiener, General Director of theIUCN, addressed F&ES with his keynote on “Conservation and Environmental Governance.” During his visit anMOU was signed with Dean Gustave Speth. A delegation of faculty and students from TRI has been organizedto attend the World Conservation Congress in Bangkok in November 2004. We greatly appreciate the efforts ofAban Kabraji, fomer McClusky Fellow at F&ES and Regional Director of IUCN Asia, for promoting and makingthis connection possible.

Expanding our tropical offerings this spring were Drs. David McGrath and Daniel Nepstad from the WoodsHole Research Center (WHRC) & Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia, Brazil (IPAM), who with Dr.Stephan Schwartzman (Environmental Defense, Washington, D.C.) were regulars on campus, teaching a seminaron Conservation and Development of the Amazon. In addition, a consortium of scientists from the New YorkBotanical Garden offered Tropical Plant Systematics with a field component to Costa Rica over spring break. We


appreciate the efforts of our WHRC, IPAM, and NYBG colleagues and partners to be active on campus andprovide practical training opportunities for our students.

Students were equally active this semester. A highlight was the dynamic conference “People in Parks: Beyondthe Debate: Achieving Conservation in Human-Inhabited Protected Areas” by the International Society forTropical Forestry (ISTF) at F&ES. With over 25 speakers and 150 attendees (from academic institutions, NGOs,and governmental agencies) this interdisciplinary event stimulated tremendous discussion and debate. Thestudent organizers are to be commended for their professional skills in organizing this highly successful event.

The TRI bulletin has been greatly improved, not only by the excellent range and quality of studentsubmissions, but by the hours of careful editing and formatting by our editors, Victoria Critchley and AndreaJohnson, and by the care and attention to layout and design provided by Judy Karbowski-Hall. David Kneas hasbeen tireless in his efforts to establish a professional and state-of the art video editing center at TRI, thanks to thegift from the Class of 1980. This facility will be of tremendous use for TRI students, and others in the FEScommunity, who wish to incorporate video and documentary research into their projects.

In closing, I trust you will enjoy this 20th anniversary TRI bulletin. We would enjoy hearing from you andappreciate any suggestions, potential collaborations, or additional opportunities for students as we continue toexpand our programmatic reach.

May the forest be with you,

Lisa M. CurranAssociate Professor Director, Tropical Resources InstituteYale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies [email protected]


Belize: Ken ShonoBolivia: Maria Teresa VargasBrazil: Christian Palmer • Corrina Stewart • Daniela Vizcaino Cambodia: Jonathan PadweCentral African Republic: Vincent MedijibeIndia: Nikhil Anand • Fulton RockwellKenya: Robin BarrMadagascar: Misalalation Andriamihaja • Yusuke Taishi • Jennifer VogelMexico: Cecilia Blasco • Sarah Davidson • Alexandra PonetteMexico/USA: Helen MillsNepal: Raji DhitalNew Guinea: Libby JonesPeru: Jonathan Cook • Heather Wright • Hillary YoungVenezuela: Jennifer BalchZambia: Susan Matambo


TRI 2003 Fellows

Mission

The Mission of the Tropical Resources Institute is the application of interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, applied research to the creation of practical solutions to the most complex challengesconfronting the management of tropical resources worldwide. Lasting solutions will be achievedthough the integration of social and economic needs with ecological realities, the strengthening oflocal institutions in collaborative relationships with international networks, the transfer ofknowledge and skills between local, national, and international actors, and the training andeducation of a cadre of future environmental leaders.

Vision

The problems surrounding the management of tropical resources are rapidly increasing incomplexity, while demands on those resources are expanding exponentially. Emerging structures ofglobal environmental governance and local conflicts over land use and environmental conservationrequire new strategies and leaders able to function across diversity of disciplines and sectors, and atlocal and global scales. The Tropical Resources Institute aims to build linkages across natural andsocial sciences and among government agencies, academia and practitioners, enabling the formationof successful partnerships and collaborations among researchers, activists and governments. TheTropical Resources Institute seeks to train students to be leaders in this new era, leveragingresources, knowledge, and expertise among governments, scientists, NGOs, and communities toprovide the information and tools this new generation will require to equitably address thechallenges ahead.


Yale Tropical Resources Institute:Envisioning Synthesis and Synergy


“Cardinal”In The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. By Mark Catesby, London, 1731-43. Beinecke Rare Bookand Manuscript Library, Yale University.

The atmosphere at the opening ceremony of theFifth World Parks Congress in Durban, a port cityon the southeastern tip of Africa, was as lively andcharged as a South African drumbeat. Once everyten years, world leaders in the conservation fieldgather to debate the future of the earth’s protectedareas and chart the course of protected areasmanagement into the next decade. NelsonMandela, Congress Patron and former president ofSouth Africa, opened this decade’s conferencesaying, “You may very well be a little curious to hearwhat an old man without a job, office, power orinfluence, and with his roots far in the past, is goingto say about challenges in the future! The future isafter all, in the hands of the youth.” Mandelafurther inspired the senior conservationists inattendance, whom he jokingly referred to as the“gray heads,” by stating, “the under-representationof youth is a matter for concern…and without theinvolvement of youth, the future cannot be secured.I am therefore particularly gratified and impressedto note the importance that this Congress hasattached to engaging youth.”

Mandela’s words had particular resonance for thetwelve Yale School of Forestry and EnvironmentalStudies graduate students who stood amidst 3,000 ofthe world’s foremost conservation leaders. We werepresent to explore the very question raised byMandela: How can young conservationists influencethe future of protected areas worldwide? If we are tomeet our goals for twenty-first century conservation, areal need exists to increase opportunities and createbetter frameworks and resources in this regard.Congress organizers had explicitly acknowledged thisneed by inviting the attendance of young peopleactive in the conservation field.

Our student group had been invited to attendthe World Parks Congress in order to diversify theconstituencies represented and to promote theCongress theme, “Benefits Beyond Boundaries.”The Congress’ main objective was to transcend boththe physical and conceptual borders of nationalparks and clearly show the relevance of protectedareas to economic and social as well asenvironmental agendas. Our group sought to breakdown the boundaries placed between generations inthe field of protected areas conservation byproviding an interactive space for young professionalvoices to be heard. The Yale School of Forestry andEnvironmental Studies (F&ES) increasingly strivesto be a global school, a place where our communalintellect, passions, and skills are channeled toinfluence environmental decisions from corporateboardrooms to remote communities. The WorldParks Congress provided an ideal forum to shareand exchange our views with other youngconservationists from around the globe. Our goalwas to ensure that the thoughts and concerns ofyoung professionals were considered in the draftingof the Durban Accord, the vision statement andprinciple output of the World Parks Congress.

Preparations to attend the Congress began witha special course taught at F&ES that explored theperceptions of young conservation professionals onthe future of protected areas. Over 130 people from52 countries responded to a survey designed andimplemented as part of this course. For purposes ofthe study, young conservationists were defined asthose between the ages of 20 and 35 working in thestate, private, or non-governmental sectors. Thesurvey, consisting of six open-ended questions, was


World Parks and Protected A r e a s :The Impact of Young Conservationists at t h e Fifth IUCN World Parks Congress

Leigh A. Baker, MEM 2004

written in French, Spanish, and English anddistributed via email based on a participant listprovided by the Congress organizers.

Six central themes emerged in its analysis:

(1) The majority of survey respondents believedthe overall justification for protected areasto be the conservation of biologicaldiversity.

(2) Respondents found the greatest challengesfor protected areas in the future to be in thesocial realm.

(3) Young conservationists believed thatcommunity-based conservation andeducation are the two greatest tools foraddressing these social challenges.

(4) Overwhelmingly, young professionals seekincreased learning and networkingopportunities to gain professional skills intheir field.

(5) Education is believed to be our best tool forengaging youth in the conservation ofprotected areas.

(6) There is a wide range of opinions amongyoung conservationists with respect to thebest way for protected area managementand conservation to progress in the future.

The overall results of this survey made it clearthat not all young professionals share the samebeliefs about protected areas management.However, we do share a uniform respect for thework of the people that came before us, as well as adesire to forge connections between all levels of ourprofession.

The ultimate product of this survey and coursewas a document entitled “Young Conservationistsand the Future of Protected Areas Worldwide: ACall to Discussion at the Fifth World ParksCongress, Durban, South Africa, September 2003.”This document served as a tool to guide workshopdiscussions organized and led by our Yale delegationon the second evening of the World Parks Congress.

Over 100 Congress delegates attended theworkshop and openly shared their views, hopes, and

challenges as students and young professionals inimpacting protected areas management regimes. Ofthose who attended the workshop, many weredoctoral students studying protected areas issues,faculty members just starting their teaching careers,and young professionals working with local,regional, and international government agencies,NGOs, or as private consultants.

One main theme that emerged was the need forbenchmarking, evaluation, and adaptive managementof protected areas. Challenges mentioned byparticipants included the need for professionaldevelopment and for mechanisms to utilize and sharescientific data. Moreover, the need for increasedcommunication between generations as well as acrossdisciplines was voiced as a pressing issue.

Recommendations from the workshop weresummarized and presented to our YouthRepresentative, Susan Matambo (MEM 2004), whonegotiated in sometimes heated discussions to havethese points incorporated into the final drafting ofthe Durban Accord. Susan described herexperiences on the Durban Accord Drafting Teamas highly rewarding: “It was a valuable experience todebate with other constituency groups to get ouryouth and young professional views heard…It isreally easy in negotiating to just give up and say ‘Justwrite whatever!’ But to really impact the languageof a document such as this and get everyone to agreewas incredibly challenging. I learned so much!”

The Durban Accord, subtitled “Our GlobalCommitment for People and Earth’s ProtectedAreas,” is legally non-binding and represents thecollective ideologies and intentions of the Congressparticipants. It was created as a flexible workingdocument to direct positive action for protectedareas throughout the world. As a result of theYoung Conservationists’ participation at theCongress, the Durban Accord acknowledges ourneeds and concerns as future leaders in this field.The Durban Accord recognizes younger generationsas stakeholders in the stewardship of protected areas,and voices a concern that the capacity of youngergenerations is insufficient to actively contribute to


Leigh A. Baker

the new protected areas agenda. The Accordtherefore urges commitment to engage and enlistthis constituency, deeming the input of youngergenerations in decision-making, strategic planning,and programming essential in securing thesustainable future of protected areas. Mechanismsmentioned in the Accord for increasing the capacityof young conservationists include increasingfinancial resources for building professional capacity,identifying local opinion leaders as targets forinformation outreach, and establishing a Task Forceon Intergenerational Integration within the IUCN.

Since the Congress, a Younger GenerationsNetwork has been initiated by Yale F&ES and willserve as an internet-based forum to share new ideas

and influence policies at global, national, andregional levels. The momentum to incorporateyoung professionals in global decision-makingcontinues as Susan Matambo represented YaleF&ES at the Seventh Conference of the Parties onthe Convention on Biological Diversity inFebruary 2004 in Malaysia. Additionally, acollaborative effort between F&ES and the WorldConservation Union may bring more youngprofessionals to the negotiating table at the WorldConservation Congress to be held this Novemberin Thailand. It is an exciting time to be enteringthe field of international conservation, and theopportunities to actively participate in globaldecisions are at our doorstep.


World Parks and Protected Areas: The Impact of Young Conservationists at the Fifth IUCN World Parks Congress

Figure 1: Yale students, faculty and alumni at the World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa. Photo courtesy of CharlesBrunton (F&ES ’03).

IntroductionThe Amazon is the new frontier in Brazil’s

economic development plans to increase soybeanproduction for export. In the Amazonianmunicipality Santarém, in the state of Pará, soybeanmono-crops are transforming both forests and theagricultural landscape. Among the dramatic changesare the large extent of smallholder farmers (colonos)selling their land to soybean farmers; the increasingnumber of colono communities with schools,community centers, churches, and water suppliesbeing abandoned; and the rising rates ofdeforestation of secondary and primary forest forgrain cultivation (soy, rice, and corn). The Braziliangovernment advocates soy production as an axis ofeconomic development to generate revenue for debtreduction and to efficiently utilize Brazil’s land area.

Amazonian frontier development literatureidentifies environmental impacts such asdeforestation resulting from Amazoniandevelopment schemes (e.g., Laurance et al. 2001;Nepstad et al. 2001), but it does not examine howdevelopment programs construct the socio-economic and ecological value of the landscape tolegitimize their projects, while de-legitimizingalternative land uses. My research conducted fromJune-August 2003 investigates the agro-industrialmodel’s environmental and socio-economic readingof the landscape with respect to forests,environmental degradation, and the viability ofcolono and mechanized agriculture activities in theSantarém landscape. This article will outline myresearch findings regarding (1) these discursiveconstructions with respect to soybean development,(2) the way in which state-sponsored maps

legitimize soybean farming in Santarém, and (3) theenvironmental and socio-economic consequences ofthe agro-industrial development model forSantarém’s forests and communities.

Background The Santarém region experienced several

economic boom and bust cycles aroundcommodities such as rubber, gold, and jute. Today,the majority of the region’s population relies onfishing, logging, and agricultural activities forincome.

National land-reform programs in the 1970sestablished agricultural settlements for colonos thatmigrated from southern and northeastern Brazil.Colonos live in Santarém’s rural areas where theypractice slash-and-burn agriculture for commercial1and subsistence crops and manage secondary forestsfor fruit and extractive products.2 For colonos, alandscape in different stages of succession ensuresthe fertility of future agricultural lands andmaintains a diverse and lucrative agro-system (e.g.,Unruh 1988; Padoch et al. 1985). Colonos’ land-use therefore affects forest dynamics of deforestationand re-growth (Walker 2003). Shifting cultivationby colonist families, however, “is not likely to clearmuch land given household constraints” (Ibid).Walker’s forest dynamics model predicts between 20and 90 hectares of net deforestation per family.These anthropogenically maintained secondaryforests, in addition to their socio-economicimportance, provide ecological functions such ascarbon sequestration, forest fire prevention, andcorridors and habitats for many species (Brown andLugo 1990).


The Soybean Frontier: Polarized Agriculture and Contested Landscapesin the Brazilian Amazon

Corrina Steward, MESc 2004

Development projects like highway paving, orin Santarém’s case, the onset of soybean farming,displace colonists and spur increased forest clearingas they move into new areas (Walker 2003). TheAmazon’s increasing urbanization is also attributedto development schemes (Browder and Godfrey1997). Santarém became closely linked withnational development interests in 1995 with theunveiling of an enormous infrastructuraldevelopment program3 that includes paving the

Cuiabá-Santarém Highway, BR-163 (see map 1).BR-163 links the burgeoning soybean producingstate Mato Grosso with the Amazon River inSantarém.

Anticipating BR-163’s completion, themultinational agricultural corporation Cargill built aport on the Amazon River in Santarém in 2000.But well before Cargill’s arrival, Santarém laid thegroundwork for agro-industrial development. In1996 the governor of Pará hired the consultingagency Agrária Engenharia e Consultoria, S.A. to doa study on Santarém and neighboringmunicipalities’ potential for commercialagriculture.4 Based on Agrária’s recommendations,the local municipalities implemented a soy pilotproject5 and formed a co-op to solicit money fromthe state to develop soybeans.

Armed with the results of the soy pilot projectand state-produced maps6 highlighting the feasibilityof mechanized agriculture for the Santarém region(see map 2), local government officials andSantarém businessmen traveled to the state of MatoGrosso to convince soy producers to invest in theregion. Beginning in 1997, a group of agribusinessentrepreneurs that now constitute the foundation of


The Soybean Frontier: Polarized Agriculture and Contested Landscapes in the Brazilian Amazon

Map 1: The BR-163 connects Santarém with Cuiabá, thecapital of Mato Grosso, one of Brazil’s most productive soystates (source for map: Nepstad et al. 2002).

Map 2: Map showing the agro-ecological zones producedby the federal agricultural agency, EMBRAPA, and theMineral Integration Program in Amazon Municipalities,PRIMAZ.

Santarém’s mechanized agriculture sector, includinggrain buyers, agricultural technicians, agriculturalinput suppliers, and land dealers, establishedagricultural land holdings in the region.

By 2003 there were approximately 200mechanized grain farms in the Santarém region. Assoybean expansion grew, local farmers’ unions andnon-governmental organizations (NGOs) raisedconcerns that mechanized farming threatenscolonos’ livelihoods. Reports of high numbers ofsmallholders selling their land to soybean farmers,sometimes through coercion, and moving toprimary forest regions or to urban centers,established a strong divide between the mechanizedsector and colonos and their advocates. InJ u ly 2003, a campaign, launched by the RuralWorkers Union (O Sindicato dos TrabalhadoresRurais, STR) and sponsored by several NGOs andunions,7 called on colonos to refuse to sell their landto soybean farmers.

Site Description, Research Objectives andMethods

Santarém municipality sits at the confluence ofthe Amazon and Tapajós Rivers in Western Pará(see map 3). The urban population is approximately200,000, and the rural population is 45,000 (IBGE1996). My research was multi-sited including areasof secondary forest generated by colonos and cattleranchers, dense terra firme forest,8 the city ofSantarém, and the Cargill office.

To investigate how the agro-industrialdevelopment model represents the landscape and thesocio-economic and environmental implications ofthis particular representation, I explored thefollowing questions: (1) who the key agriculturalactors are; (2) how the expansion of soy cultivationalters land-use practices and colonos’ socio-economic well-being; and (3) what the agriculturalactors’ perceptions are of the socio-economic andecological viability of agricultural practices anddevelopment models. I conducted semi-structuredinterviews to “study up and down” the region’sagricultural actors (Pierce 1995). Interviews were

with the following persons, institutions, andbusinesses: soy producers, colonos, communityleaders, Cargill and local agri-businesses, farmers’unions, the national environmental protectionagency (IBAMA), agricultural agency (EMBRAPA),and land settlement and titling agency (INCRA),Banco da Amazonia (BASA), and various NGOs.9

ResultsSubjects and goals of development

My research identified three key agriculturalactors that constitute the foundation of Santarém’sagro-industrial development: agribusiness, soybeanfarmers, and local and national government (see fig.1).1 0 The current expansion of mechanizedagriculture depends on the relations between theseactors. There are six agribusinesses focused on thesale, production, and purchase of grain in theregion—Cargill, Mato Grosso Cereais Ltda., TapajósArroz Ltda., Rech Machinery, Stefanelo Seeds, andQuinco Ltda.1 1 The majority of Santarém’s soybean

Corrina Steward

Map 3: Santarém municipality sits at the confluence of theAmazon and Tapajós Rivers in Western Pará.


farmers have migrated to the region from MatoGrosso, Rio Grande do Sul, and Paraná with thehope of establishing larger landholdings and farmproduction than in their former localities.1 2Government actors include both national agenciessuch as EMBRAPA and the local municipalgovernment like the mayor’s office.

Each mechanized agricultural actor has aspecific role in establishing agro-industrialdevelopment that is distinct from, yet dependent on,the others. Agribusiness provides a commercial‘buying and selling’ component.1 3 Grain farmers’role is to connect the national soybean agenda with

the local development agenda both literally andsymbolically. Soy farmers view themselves asfulfilling national economic goals when theypurchase land, clear and prepare it, and cultivategrain to sell for export – as one articulated to me,the soybean farmers are national heroes. The federalgovernment’s role, via the national agriculturalagency EMBRAPA, is to supply agriculturalresearch, products, and information to soybeanproducers and agribusinesses. Local government’sfunction is to ease the expansion of mechanizedagriculture by providing local political support.1 4Representatives of Cargill’s Santarém branch



Figure 1: Each sphere supports soybean development in Santarém. For instance, the international demand to increase soybeanproduction prompted Cargill’s port on the Åmazon and local government’s development plans for mechanized agriculture.

explained that the local government upholdsmechanized agriculture as the ideal economicactivity for the region. The agricultural actorsinteract at local, national, and international scales tosupport the local production of mechanizedfarming.

The soybean actors believe that mechanizedagriculture is the only way to establish the baselinefor regional economic growth, and it is the primarytool for improving local residents’ economic well-being. They assert that without mechanizedagriculture, the Santarém region would beeconomically linear or unstable, continuing tofollow boom and bust enterprises. In contrast tothis opinion, regional colonos, STR, the agriculturalworkers’ union (FETAGRI), and several NGOspoint to the region’s agro-diversity and nativeagricultural goods made from this diversity as theregion’s economic (as well as social and cultural)strength. STR is designing an agro-extractive reservethat would be modeled from rubber extractivereserves and would protect colono land rights,encourage a diverse agro-system, and market colonoagricultural products.

Socio-economic and environmental reading ofthe landscape

My interviews revealed several dominant themesin the mechanized agricultural actors’ environmentaland socio-economic interpretations of the Santarémlandscape, with respect to forests, environmentaldegradation, social groups, and mechanized andnon-mechanized agricultural activities. Soy actors’discourse, land-use practices, and the state-sponsoredmaps that delineate Santarém’s agro-ecologicalzones, soil types, and forest cover all reflect theseinterpretations.

The majority of the mechanized agricultureactors interviewed explained that 550,000 hectaresare available in the Santarém municipality for grainproduction. This number was calculated from datacollected for the agro-ecological zoning map, whichdefines zones appropriate for mechanized agricultureas lands heavily degraded by anthropogenic uses,

either from smallholder slash-and-burn agricultureor cattle ranching. The agro-ecological zonescategorize all areas of secondary forest, regardless ofsuccession stage, as most suitable for mechanizedagriculture.1 5 The region’s agribusinesses and grainfarmers rely on the maps to determine where toestablish grain production. When new soybeanfarmers arrive at Cargill to procure regionalinformation, Cargill’s soybean buyers point to thesoil and agro-ecological zoning maps to indicatesuitable areas for cultivation. Cargill highlightssecondary forest and cattle ranching lands as idealfor soy cultivation and, otherwise, without value tothe region’s development objectives.

When informed of my research objective tounderstand economic development models for theAmazon, a high-level manager for Cargill-Brasilexclaimed, “What economics? There are only treeshere!” The agro-industrial model of developmentespoused by Cargill bases the landscape’s economicvalue solely on grain production. Moreover, by notacknowledging local uses of the mechanizedagricultural zone for small-scale farming, cattleranching, agro-forestry, and non-timber forestproduct extraction, this model literally erases theseuses from the map, expunging them from localgovernment’s development plans, soybean farmers’land-use considerations, and agribusinesses’conception of Santarém’s socio-economic andenvironmental needs.

The agro-ecological zoning map formulates anenvironmental reading of the landscape based on thevalue of secondary and primary forest for the agro-industrial development model. When asked if thereare any negative environmental effects from soybeanproduction, all mechanized agricultural actorsdeclared that one of the most advantageous aspectsof this form of Amazonian development is that itdoes not require deforestation. Interviewees notedthat, in fact, there are 550,000 hectares available tobe exploited for grain production withoutdeforesting the Santarém landscape. These actors’rhetoric for describing the mechanized agriculturalzone marks secondary forest as non-forest suitable


Corrina Steward

for grain cultivation. There is no regard to the factthat producing soy on the 550,000 hectares wouldrequire dislocation of the majority of Santarém’scolonos who are currently cultivating the land.

Primary forest also takes on a particulareconomic and environmental value. Brazilian lawrestricts Amazonian land-use by requiring 80percent of one’s landholdings to remain in reserve(i.e., as forest) and 20 percent in productiveactivities such as grain cultivation. Interviewsrevealed that, in the Santarém municipality, localofficials and IBAMA largely overlook soybeanfarmers who do not abide by the land-use law.Soybean producers’ interviews disclosed that manyproducers either assign areas of primary forest,sometimes hundreds of kilometers from theirsoybean farm, as their “reserves,” or abide by the lawfor Brazil’s savannah region, which requires a smallerreserve. In keeping with the agro-ecological zonemap, primary forest remains in reserve. Severalanecdotes regarding soy producers’ plans to extracttimber from their reserves to prepare the land forgrain production demonstrate that the reserves areseen as future grain production areas.

Though the maps do not display them, theagro-ecological zone earmarked for mechanizedagriculture is primarily occupied by colonos(Futemma and Brondizio 2003).1 6 Colonos’exclusion from the map and the local developmentmodel is also reflected in mechanized agriculturalactors’ description of the region’s agriculturalactivities before and after the soybean industry’sarrival to Santarém. When asked about previousdevelopment efforts, agribusiness representatives andlocal and national government officials describe onlythe rubber and gold mining eras and identify themas unstable economic growth that left the Santarémregion economically decimated. With respect toagriculture, the mechanized agricultural actorsstressed that before the presence of agro-business,colonos’ products such as manioc and local fruitsoffered little to no economic benefit. Santarém’ssmallholder farming areas are viewed as uneconomicand valueless to the region’s economic growth. In

addition, all mechanized agricultural actors agreethat colonos’ agricultural methods environmentallydegrade the landscape, a notion that the agro-ecological zoning map supports by calling these areas“anthropogentrically degraded.”

In direct contrast to the perceived economicand ecological value of colonos’ agriculturalactivities, the mechanized agricultural actors arguethat soybean farming actually restores the landscape,ecologically and economically. A Cargill soy buyerasserted that agro-industrial development upholds amore stable pattern of development because it islinked to the global agricultural market where soyhas great product versatility and a lucrative worldprice. Mechanized agricultural actors believe thatagribusiness’ expansion to the Santarém regionsignals an upward economic growth trend, one inwhich all of Santarém’s citizens will benefit. Onesoybean buyer described the region’s developmenttrend as embodying a new, “hopeful expectation.”This description stands in vivid contrast to thereports colonos gave: 50 to 100 percent of colonosselling land to soy farmers in at least ten agriculturalcolonies; the loss of hard-won communityinfrastructure such as schools and drinking waterwhen one to a few soy farmers buys a wholecommunity; colonos returning to their previouscommunities fruitlessly seeking new arable land afterfinding no opportunity in the city or other ruralareas; the increasing pressure to sell land as soyfarms surround their fields; produce lost andchildren sick from pesticide spraying; and thediminishing or completely destroyed water sourcesresulting from agricultural machinery that causeserosion and sedimentation (see photos 1 and 2).

Discussion Frontier development and constructinglandscapes

The argument that large-scale agriculturalactivities can transform the Amazonian frontier intoan economically productive and environmentallyvaluable landscape is not a new one. Agriculturaldevelopment plans from the 1960s through the



1980s advocated commercial agriculture (mostlycattle ranching) and agrarian reform programs toease population pressures in northeastern andsouthern Brazil. Critics of these programs assertthat they lead to deforestation and national policiesheavily invested in agribusiness (e.g., Laurance et al.2001; Nepstad et al. 2001; Fearnside 2002).

In contrast to previous agricultural projects inthe Amazon such as cattle ranching, soybeandevelopment is closely linked to the global

market.1 7 The socio-economic and ecologicallandscape constructed by the state-made maps andinstitutions like Cargill and the local governmentprovide a case for globalizing the region’sagricultural resources. In describing the localecological landscape as best suited for mechanizedagriculture, the maps naturalize the land’scomparative advantage for mechanized grainproduction over other economic activities. Agrowing body of literature examines the power ofmaps to construct landscapes for natural resourceexploitation and economic control over a region(e.g., Harley 1992; Scott 1998; Peluso 1995). Scottargues, “[Maps]…are always far more static andschematic than the actual social phenomena theypresume to typify…[maps] consider only thedimension of land and its value as a productive assetor as a commodity for sale” (1998: 46-47). Theregional maps and actors’ discourse provide aneconomic analysis of Santarém’s landscape and drawboundaries around land suitable for soy (e.g.,secondary forest) and not (e.g., primary forest). Theresult is rigid, static agro-ecological classificationsthat simplify land-use into compartments. Toguarantee a return on their socio-economic andpolitical investment, the mechanized agriculturalactors must construct a soy landscape, a landscapethat begs to be cleared, mechanized and cultivatedwith soy. No other landscape (e.g., a smallholderfarming landscape) appears economically orpolitically logical.

Consequences of the agro-industrialdevelopment scheme

Simplified prescriptions for land-use such aszoning ignore the dynamic social and ecologicalforces of landscapes (Zimmerer 2000). As noted,research suggests that colonos’ land-use practices addecological value to the landscape through agro-biodiversity and carbon sequestration. However,their land-use is not easily defined as “agriculture,”“forest management,” “cattle ranching,” etc.McMichael (2000: 173) explains, “smallholderagriculture is ‘multi-functional’ in protecting


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Photo 1: A colono’s abandoned home sits on the border ofthe soybean frontier transition. In this town, fifty familiessold their homes of 25 years to one soybean farmer andeither formed new communities deeper in the forest orabandoned rural life for the city.

Photo 2: Protected by law, a lone brazil nut tree stands in afield being prepared for soy. Before the land conversion,this town was home to fifty colono families, an elementaryschool, and a diversity of agricultural crops and fruit trees.

biodiversity, enabling food security, anchoring ruralsocial development, and preserving culturalheritage.” Colonos’ complex land managementsystem contrasts with homogeneous, rigid zones.The agro-industrial development model is unable toacknowledge dynamic landscapes, because itrationalizes landscapes with respect to theireconomic return.1 8 While colonos yield littlenational capital gain, studies on smallholder farmingin Southeast Asia and the Amazon indicate thatlandscapes absent of smallholders are less biologicallydiverse and often result in unintended degradation(Dove, Sajise, and Doolittle, in press).

Beyond implications for biodiversity, agro-industrial development and its reading of thelandscape have very real consequences forSantarém’s rural and urban landscape andcommunities. The most notable consequences are:increased deforestation and urbanization, landownership concentration, decreased agriculturaldiversity, and socio-economic and politicalmarginalization of smallholders. In July 2003Brazil’s National Institute for Space Researchreleased the latest Amazon deforestation rates; itreported a 40 percent increase from the previousyear and attributed the increase to soybeanproduction (Gazeta de Santarém 2003). By placingno socio-economic or ecological value on secondaryforest areas absent of grain production, soybeandevelopment systematically destroys secondaryforests and the communities living in these areas (seephotos 3-4). Despite the soybean industry’s directrole in forest clearing, colonos are often blamed asthe deforestation perpetuators (e.g., Browder 1995).As indicated, smallholders’ displacement fromsecondary forest areas by soybean farmers results insome colonos migrating to primary forest regions toprepare new communities. In the future, as somesoybean farmers reported, these areas will be transformedto secondary forest and deemed appropriate for grainproduction. Colonos’ marginalization from theregion’s economic activities allows them to be

blamed for the area’s deforestation and overlooks thesoybean industry’s contribution to the process offorest conversion.

Increased marginalization in the rural landscapealso encourages colonos to migrate to cities.Gutberlet (1999) describes smallholders’ increasedsocial exclusion, poverty, and marginalization inMato Grosso following the introduction ofmechanized agriculture. In Santarém, this is evidentwhen colonos sell land in communities with existingbasic infrastructure. Newly established colonocommunities in primary forested areas have no



Photo 4 : A soybean farm being constructed complete withsoy fields, grain dryer and silo, a gas post, family home, andstatue of Jesus.

Photo 3: Aerial photo of the emerging soy landscape withaccompanying deforestation and fragmentation. Note thecontrast between smallholder farming (bottom right) andadjacent mechanized soy fields.

infrastructure and are further isolated from marketsand government services. Urban settings, whetherin Santarém or Manaus,1 9 are little better. Recentrural migrants lack basic services, live in shantytowns where water contamination and water-relatedhealth problems are prevalent, and find it difficult toprocure work due to high unemployment rates andthe adjustment from rural to urban life (Browderand Godfrey 1997).

With increasing urbanization, the ruralagricultural landscape transforms from smallholder-based to mechanized agriculture, and smallholderagriculture becomes increasingly difficult to market.Smallholders I interviewed spoke of decreasingincentives to maintain an agricultural livelihood.One smallholder who had sold all of his land to asoybean farmer explained that he was tired ofstruggling to make a living and that soybeaninsurgence in the region, coupled with familyconflicts, had demoralized him until he lost interestin farming. Perversely, the arrival of large-scale soyproduction can lead to the “lack of production offood for local consumption because crop land usedfor subsistence agriculture is taken over by soybeans”(Fearnside 2001: 24). Gutberlet (1999) notes thatthe arrival of soy farming in Mato Grosso resulted inan overall decrease in rice, bean, and manioccultivation. While it is too early in the agro-industrialization process to say, similar food securityand agro-diversity trends could occur in Santarém.

ConclusionTransforming Santarém’s landscape from a

myriad of smallholder farms and cattle ranches tomedium and large agro-industrial farms establishesan unsustainable development model. It threatenscolonos’ livelihoods without providing alternateforms of economic gain; accelerates the urbanizationprocess; contributes to secondary and primary forestdegradation, and devalues the socio-economic andecological importance of non-mechanizedagricultural activities.

Through the active creation of a soy landscape(with the help of maps and the key soy actors),

Cargill was certain of Santarém’s soy developmentfuture. A high-level manager explained that despitepolitical uncertainties regarding paving BR-163,“We felt that if we built the port, then it wouldconvince the national government to support pavingthe highway.”20 As Brazil moves rapidly forwardwith Amazon infrastructure projects that supportsoybean development, this research points to theenvironmental and socio-economic consequences if adifferent path is not forged. An alternative path liesin redefining the landscape from a ‘frontier’ void ofnational economic importance to one rich in socio-economic and ecological attributes valuable tonational development. This article demonstrates thenecessity for a new interpretation of the Amazonianlandscape as dynamically shaped by complexhuman-nature relationships (e.g., Stokstad 2003;Balee 1989; Denevan 1992). Additionally,‘development’, from the perspective of both Brazil’slocal and national governments, needs to be re-examined with respect to who benefits from agro-industrialization.

Considering a reinterpretation both of thelandscape and of development calls for severalconcrete steps forward: (1) on a national and localgovernment level, recognition of the ecological andsocio-economic value of colonos’ economicactivities; (2) on levels local to international,encouragement of diverse agricultural practices thatmeet both the needs of national development andlocal economic and environmental sustainability;and (3) local and national support for small-scaleagriculture through provision of technologicalassistance and transportation, active creation ofmarkets, and ensuring basic infrastructure incolonos’ communities. By investing in both formsof agriculture, and integrating colonos in local andnational development objectives, ‘development’ canbenefit all. Without progress in these areas, thesoybean frontier threatens to be just that—soy.

Notes1Colonos’ commercial crops consist primarily of

manioc, corn, rice, beans, black pepper, tomatoes,


Corrina Steward

pineapple, oranges, watermelon, and squash. 2There are several social groups practicing

smallholder agriculture in the region: colonos (themain focus of this research), caboclos (people ofindigenous, African, and Portugese descent that liveand work the region’s flood zones) and extractivistsin rubber and non-timber forest product reservesalong the margins of the Tapajós River.

3The development program is the multi-milliondollar “Plano Brasil de Todos” (formerly AvançaBrasil), with several phases and goals. Among themajor infrastructure projects are hydroelectric dams,natural gas and oil pipelines, and railroads.

4This account of the history of soybeandevelopment in the Santarém region is compiledfrom interviews with agribusinesses, the InstitutoCultural Sena Biblioteca (Cultural Institute andSena Library) in Santarém, and local government.

5The pilot project was conducted on privateland owned by a cattle rancher and agribusinessentrepreneur who now rents land to soybean farmersand buys grain (soy, rice, and corn) frommechanized agricultural farms.

6Maps were produced by the federal agriculturalagency, EMBRAPA, and the Mineral IntegrationProgram in Amazon Municipalities, PRIMAZ.

7The sponsoring organizations are Saúde eAlergia (Health and Happiness), Conselho Nacionaldos Seringueiros (National Council of RubberTappers), Organização das Associações da ResexTapajós-Arapiuns (Association of the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserves), the agriculturalworkers union FETAGRI, and Comissão Pastoral daTerra (Pastoral Land Commission).

8Terra firme consists of forested and agriculturalareas not within the margins of rivers. These dryland areas comprise 98 percent of the Amazon’sforests (Pires and Prance 1985). Ecological featuresof terra firme that influence land-use practicestypically include low soil fertility, high tree speciesdiversity but low species density, soil erosion andcompaction of cleared lands (Wambeke 1992; Bawa1992; Grubb 1995).

9My findings are based on 40 interviews, three

weeks of participant observation at Cargill, severalfield excursions to soy farms and colonocommunities and extended stays with colonocommunities.

10A fourth actor, financial supporters of soysuch as the Banco da Amazonia (BASA), is alsorelevant and noted in the political and economiclinkages diagram. For instance, BASA providedloans to all of the soybean farmers I interviewed.Without BASA’s financial support, most soy farmerswould not be able to establish in Santarém.Investigating their relationship further goes beyondthe scope of this article.

11All of the businesses, with the exception ofQuinco Ltda., are new to Santarém.

12Grain farms in the Santarém region rangedfrom 500 to 1500 hectares of productive land and,generally, at least twice as much land in reserve (i.e.,forested and/or uncultivated). Smallholder farmerstypically own 100 hectares and cultivate 20-30hectares annually.

13Mato Grosso Cereais Ltda. and Tapajós ArrozLtda. both insisted that they were doing “[their] partfor local development” by establishing businessesthat can buy grain.

14The Santarém municipality’s politicalplatform is anchored by the slogan “Santarém, theland of development.” The government’sinvestments and activities make clear that“development” means soybeans and mechanizedagriculture.

15Other land uses such as forest managementand extractive activities are reserved for forests in theTapajós National Forest and areas of continuousdense old-growth forest.

16While the land titling and settlement agency,INCRA, states that less than 30 percent of colonoshave formal title to their land, colonos know theirland boundaries, which are generally respected byfellow community members and INCRA (i.e., theagency does not attempt to give formal title to othercolonos where it is believed colonos already live).There is a property grid for the region that wasdrawn up in the 1970s and is being updated by a



University of Indiana research team throughinterviews and GIS/GPS.

17Fearnside (2001: 26) points out that soybeanexpansion contrasts with previous land use practicesin the Amazon such as cattle ranching, which waslargely motivated by “land speculation, land-tenureestablishment, and fiscal incentives.”

18Research shows that colonos’ agriculturalpractices typically provide basic economicsubsistence, and attributes their persistent poverty toinstitutional and market failures (e.g., Barbier andBurgess 2001; Cattaneo 2001; Vosti 2003).

19Manaus is located in Amazonas state at theconfluence of the Rio Negro and Amazon rivers.

20As of June 2003, the Brazilian governmentguaranteed the financing of paving BR-163 throughprivate and public sources (A Cidade 2003 andGazeta de Santarém 2003).

ReferencesA Cidade. June 14, 2003. “Maggi pede iniciativa

privada na BR-163,” 31: 7.

Balee, W. 1989. The culture of Amazonian forests.Pages 1-21 in Resource Management inAmazonia: Indigenous and Folk Strategies, D.A.Posey and W. Balee, eds. The New YorkBotanical Garden, New York.

Barbier, E. B. and J. C. Burgess. 2001. Tropicaldeforestation, tenure insecurity, andunsustainability. Forest Science 47(4): 497-509.

Bawa, K.S. 1992. Mating systems, geneticdifferentiation and speciation in tropical rainforest plants. Biotropica 24(2b): 250-255.

Browder, J. 1995. Deforestation and theenvironmental crisis in Latin America. LatinAmerican Research Review 30(3): 123.

Browder, J. and B. Godfrey. 1997. Rainforest Cities:Urbanization, Development, andGlobalization of the Brazilian Amazon.Columbia University Press, New York.

Brown, S. and A. Lugo. 1990. Tropical secondaryforests. Journal of Tropical Ecology 6: 1-32.

Cattaneo, A. 2001. Deforestation in the Brazilian

Amazon: Comparing the impacts ofmacroeconomic shocks, land tenure, andtechnological change. Land Economics 77(2):219-240.

Denevan, W. 1992. The pristine myth: The Americasin 1492. Annals of the Association of AmericanGeographers 82(3): 369-385.

Dove, M., P. Sajise, and A. Doolittle. In press.Introduction: The problem of biodiversitymaintenance. In Biodiversity and Society inSoutheast Asia: Case Studies of the InterfaceBetween Nature and Culture. Southeast AsiaMonograph Series, 54. Yale University Press,New Haven, Connecticut.

Fearnside, P. 2001. Soybean cultivation as a threat tothe environment in Brazil. EnvironmentalConservation 28(1): 23-38.

Fearnside, P. 2002. Avança Brasil: Environmental andsocial consequences of Brazil's plannedinfrastructure in Amazonia. EnvironmentalManagement 30(6): 735-747.

Futemma, C. and E.S. Brondizio. 2003. Land reformand land-use changes in the lower Amazon:Implications for agricultural intensification.Human Ecology 31(3): 369-402.

Gazeta de Santarém. June 28-July 4, 2003."Desmatamento cresce em 40% na Amazonia," 4.

Gazeta de Santarém. June 28-July 4, 2003. "Lulagarante asfaltamento da BR-163 até Santarém," 8.

Grubb, P.J. 1995. Mineral nutrients and soil fertilityin tropical rainforests. Pages 308-330 inTropical Forests: Management and Ecology,A.E. Lugo and C. Lowe, eds. Springer-Verlag,New York.

Gutberlet, J. 1999. Rural development and socialexclusion: A case study of sustainability anddistributive issues in Brazil. AustralianGeographer 30(2): 221.

Harley, J. 1992. Deconstructing the map. Pages 231-247 in Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text andMetaphor in the Representation of Landscape,T.J. Barnes and J.S. Duncan, eds. Routledge,New York.


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IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro do Geografia e Estastistica).1996. Censo 95/96. http://www.ibge.gov.br,retrieved November 2003.

Laurance, W.F., M.A. Cochrane, S. Bergen, P.A.Fearnside, P. Delamonica, C. Barber, S.D’Angelo, and T. Fernandes. 2001. The futureof the Brazilian Amazon. Science 291: 438-439.

Laurance, W. F., A. K. M. Albernaz, et al. 2002.Predictors of deforestation in the BrazilianAmazon. Journal of Biogeography 29(5-6): 737-748.

McMichael, P. 2000. Development and Social Change:A Global Perspective. Pine Forge Press,Thousand Oaks, California.

Padoch, C., J. Chota Inuma and W. de Jong. 1985.Amazonian agroforestry: A market-orientedsystem in Peru. Agroforestry Systems 5: 47-58.

Peluso, N. 1995. Whose woods are these? Counter-mapping forest territories in Kalimantan,Indonesia. Antipode 27(4): 383-406.

Pierce, J. 1995. Reflections on fieldwork in a complexorganization: Lawyers, ethnographic authority,and lethal weapons. Pages 94-110 in StudyingElites Using Qualitative Methods, R. Herz andJ.B. Imber, eds. Sage Publications, ThousandOaks, California.

Nepstad, D. et al. 2001. Road paving, fire regimefeedbacks, and the future of Amazon forests.Forest Ecology and Management 5524: 1-13.

Nepstad, D., D. Alencar, A. Barros, A.C. Carvalho, G.Santilli, M. Vera Diaz, M. del C. 2002.Frontier governance in Amazonia. Science 295:629.

Scott, J. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How CertainSchemes to Improve the Human ConditionHave Failed. Yale University Press, New Haven,Connecticut.

Stokstad, E. 2003. 'Pristine' forest teemed with people.Science Now, Vol. 1. American Association forthe Advancement of Science.

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Wabeke, V. 1992. Soils of the Tropics: Properties andAppraisal. McGraw-Hill, New York.

Walker, R. 2003. Mapping process to pattern in thelandscape change of the Amazonian frontier.Annals of the Association of AmericanGeographers 93(2): 37-398.

Vosti, S. A. B., E. M. Carpentier, C. Line d’Oliveira,and M.V.N. Witcover. 2003. Rights to forestproducts, deforestation and smallholder income:Evidence from the western Brazilian Amazon.World Development 31: 1889.

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“Map of Brazil”From Venetia: Nella Stamperia de' Giunti.By Giovanni Battista Ramusio, 1565.General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book andManuscript Library, Yale University.

IntroductionBig-leaf or Honduras mahogany (Swietenia

macrophylla King) is a species of grand and majesticproportions, sometimes exceeding 45 m in height,25 m to the first branch, and 1.8 m in diameter(Weaver and Sabido 1997). Highly valued for itsattractive reddish color and superior physicalcharacteristics, big-leaf mahogany has been forcenturies the most commercially valuable timberspecies in the neotropics (Lamb 1966; Weaver andSabido 1997; Snook 1998). Despite an extensivenatural range, from Mexico to the southern Amazonbasin of Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru (Lamb 1966),forest loss and timber harvesting over the last 300years have depleted mahogany populations, leadingto concern for the future of the species and itscommercial trade. As a result, in 2002, big-leafmahogany was listed on Appendix II of the CITES(Convention on International Trade in EndangeredSpecies of Wild Fauna and Flora).1

Background Mahogany timber for the international trade is

still obtained, as it has been for centuries, fromnatural forests in Latin America (Blundell et al.2002). Past experiences with mahogany plantationsin its native range have proven unsuccessful due tothe attack of the Hypsipyla grandella shootborer.Mahogany harvests from natural forests are typicallymanaged according to polycyclic systems (Gullisonet al. 1996; Weaver and Sabido 1997; Snook 1998;Grogan 2001). In a polycyclic system, removal ofselected trees is conducted in a continuous series offelling cycles that are shorter than the time it takesthe trees to reach harvest size (Whitmore 1998:132).

At Belize’s Rio Bravo Conservation andManagement Area, the production forest ismanaged on a 40-year felling cycle with a 60-cmminimum cutting diameter. The forest area isdivided into multiple compartments. Harvests arecarried out on compartments totaling one-fortiethof the production forest area each year, and treesover the minimum diameter limit are extracted ateach harvest. Trees smaller than the minimumcutting diameter are left in the forest to grow toharvest size in the interval between felling cycles.This system will provide for sustained yields ifharvested trees are replaced by the growth ofexisting residual trees and sufficient regeneration isestablished in each annual cutting area, eithernaturally or artificially (Snook 2003).

Research Objective In spite of mahogany’s commercial

importance, management options for sustainableharvest are insufficiently tested and documented.This research examines the growth of maturemahogany trees in the study area, and evaluates thesustainability of current harvesting practices. Theresearch was conducted in Belize as part of a majorongoing project on sustainable mahoganysilviculture initiated in 1995. Its primary objectiveis to determine how best to ensure mahoganyregeneration.

Site DescriptionThis study was carried out near the Hill Bank

Research Station (88° 42’W, 17° 36’N) in the RioBravo Conservation and Management Area inOrange Walk district northwestern Belize (see fig.1). The area is classified as the Subtropical Moist


Growth of Big-leaf Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla King) in NaturalForests in Belize

Kenichi Shono, MEM 2004, and Laura K. Snook, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

Zone, according to the Holdridge classificationsystem (Lamb 1966). The seasonal tropical forestof the region is composed of over 100 canopyspecies, with an average canopy height of 20-25 m(Snook and Negreros-Castillo 2004). There is athree month dry season from February to April,typically including drought conditions in April andearly May. Highest rainfall occurs in June andOctober, during the wet season. Annual rainfall inthe area is approximately 1600 mm, however, totalannual precipitation and seasonal distribution ofrainfall varies widely from year to year (Whitman etal. 1997). Occasional prolonged dry seasons andhurricanes are the major climatic events that impactthe Belizean forests. Alluvial calcareous soilsderived from porous limestone found in the areaare moderately deep and well drained, with aslightly acidic to slightly alkaline reaction (Weaverand Sabido 1997). Topography of the region ismostly flat.

The 260,000-acre Rio Bravo Conservation andManagement Area (RBCMA) is managed by aBelizean non-profit organization, the Programmefor Belize (PfB), for the combined purposes ofbiodiversity conservation, education, recreation andtourism, and research in ecology, archaeology, andforest management. It is the largest private reservein Belize. Approximately 80 percent of theRBCMA is managed as a strict nature reserve forthe protection of biodiversity and natural habitats,while 20 percent is designated as a surroundingbuffer zone. It is within this buffer zone thattimber harvesting is carried out, along withcomplementary forestry research. Income from thetimber harvest is used to help pay for theconservation costs of the RBCMA.

MethodsCollection of field measurements

This study analyzes diameter measurementsobtained yearly from permanently marked mahoganyseed trees from 1999 to 2003. The trees are locatedin two 100-hectare logging compartments: PuntaGorda (PG-01), to the northwest of Hill BankResearch Station; and West Botes (WB-20) locatedsoutheast of the research station. Before thecommercial logging of PG-01 in 1997, 20 seed treeswere selected from among the population ofmahogany trees in the compartment, by using a GISmap of all commercial timber trees to determinewhich individuals would have the most trees of otherspecies extracted downwind of each potential seedtree. Then the harvest was carried out, leaving the 20mahogany seed trees. A total of 183 trees of 15species were removed from the 100-hectarecompartment (Robinson 1998). In WB-20,commercial logging was conducted in 1998. In 1999and 2000, an additional 60 seed trees were added tothe original data set of 20 seed trees in order to ensurethat seed production was sampled for all mahoganytrees that might shed seed on experimentally treatedregeneration areas. Data was obtained from 31 seedtrees starting in 1999 and from 75 seed trees from2001-2003. Seventeen of the seed trees are located inWB-20 and 58 are in PG-01.


Growth of Big-leaf Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla King) in Natural Forests in Belize

Figure 1: Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area(RBCMA)


Kenichi Shono and Laura K. Snook

Diameter measurements were taken witha diameter tape each year in May or June ateither 1.3 m, or 20 cm above buttresses.Measurement heights were indicated withpaint marks, but some trees had multiple paintlines on them, meaning that not all diametermeasurements were taken at the same height.However, the height of each diametermeasurement was recorded, and in some years,measurements were taken at all paint marks aswell as at the standard DBH height of 1.3 m. This permitted comparison of four years of diameter measurements.

Data analysisAnnual diameter increments were calculated

by subtracting the diameter each year from thediameter for the same tree the previous year.Diameter measurements from the year 2000 werenot used in this analysis because they lackedcorresponding height measurements for eachdiameter measurement. In order to include thisperiod, we assumed equal annual diameter growthbetween 1999-2000 and 2000-2001, and estimatedannual diameter measurements by dividing by twothe diameter increment between 1999 and 2001.2DBH measurements were also used to calculatebasal area and volume of the seed trees in eachyear, and their annual increments. A single-treevolume equation derived from plantation-grownmahogany in Sri Lanka was used for calculation oftree volume (Mayhew and Newton 1998):

V = 0.056-0.01421(DBH) +0.001036(DBH)2

This formula represents the overbark volume ofthe main stem to a 10-cm-top diameter, or to thelast 2 m log, excluding the branches.

A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) wasused to determine the statistical significance ofannual variation in growth rates. Regressionanalyses were performed to evaluate relationshipsbetween diameters and parameters of growth.

ResultsFigure 2 depicts the diameter-class frequency

distribution of the seed trees. It is noteworthy thatthe size-class distribution is not balanced. Thisreflects the fact that the initial cohort of seed treeswas obtained from among the mahogany trees ofcommercial size (i.e. > 60 cm). Subsequent sampletrees were selected according to their location withrespect to experimental treatment areas, and sorepresent a broader spectrum of diameters.

Diameter increments were highly variableamong the individuals in different size classes (seefig. 3). Regression analysis revealed that diameterwas only a marginally significant predictor of annualdiameter increment (p = 0.005). The overall meanannual diameter increment among all seed trees was1.01 cm/year.

It was not surprising that absolute annualincrements in basal area increased from one sizeclass to the next, culminating in 157.28 cm2 o fannual basal area growth in the largest diameterclass. Absolute annual volume growth alsoincreased from 0.0317 cm3 in the smallest diameterclass to 0.1945 cm3 in the largest diameter class.Annual percent volume growth, however, decreasedwith increase in size (see table 1). This probablyreflects the fact that as volume increases, theproportion of volume laid down each year issmaller, in relation to that initial volume. Growthrates varied considerably among years (see table 2).A one-way ANOVA confirmed that variation ingrowth among years was significant, and that

Figure 2: Diameter class distribution of mahogany seed trees.

growth in 2002-2003 was significantly lowerthan growth in 2001-2002 (p < 0.001).

Discussion Several studies have reported on growth

rates of mahogany in natural forests. Thesedata, including results from this study, arepresented in Figure 4. Growth has beenfound to vary by age (Snook 2003), and bysize class (Gullison et al. 1996; Grogan2001). In addition, annual amount andseasonal distribution of precipitation wasfound to exert significant influence onmahogany growth in Quintana Roo, Mexico,with annual diameter increment averaging0.20 cm in a dry year and 0.65 cm in a wetyear (Whigham et al. 1998).

Growth rates of mahogany revealed in thisstudy were greater overall than those reportedin other studies carried out in Mexico, Bolivia,

and Brazil. This variation may be due in partto differences in study methodology. Amongthe studies, sample sizes varied and samples



Table 1: Annual mean diameter increments, basal area increments, volume increments, and percent growth bydiameter class.

Table 2: Annual mean DBH increment, basal area increment and percent, and volume increment and percentby year.

Figure 3: Annual diameter increment by diameter size class.* Tops and bottoms of the boxes indicate 75 and 25 percentile.Whiskers indicate maximum and minimum values, and starsindicate outliers. Lines inside boxes indicate median valueswithin each diameter class.

were selected usingdifferent parameters.Some of the study siteshad been logged, andthe intensity of loggingvaried. Study period aswell as size of study areaalso differed from onestudy to another. It ispossible that growth ofthese mahogany sampletrees was stimulated bythe removal of othercanopy trees. Loggingon PG-01 only opened2.4 percent of thecanopy, but 6 percent,on average, of thedownwind seed shadows(Robinson 1998).However, it is worthnoting that a sub-sample of trees growing in apasture-like open environment and in a forestheavily logged for secondary species in Brazil hadlower growth rates than found in this study.Subsequent silvicultural treatments on thiscompartment completely removed the vegetation onthe quadrants downwind of 10 of the mahoganyseed trees, and girdled the residual trees downwindof another 5 seed trees. These subsequenttreatments may have also stimulated the growth ofthese seed trees.

Growth differences may also reflect differencesin regional precipitation patterns and soil properties.In Pará, Brazil, the highest density of mahoganytrees was found in the most fertile soils adjacent tofirst-order streams, and planted mahogany seedlingsperformed best on soils with high levels ofexchangeable cations (Grogan et al. 2003). Climateand physical conditions in northwestern Belize,including calcareous soils with generally favorablenutrient status, seem to present optimal conditionsfor mahogany development in a natural forestformation. Additionally, the provenance of

mahogany found in theregion may be a fast-growing variety.

Inter-annualvariation in growth ratesis probably explained bythe variation in annualamount and seasonaldistribution of rainfall,as was reported innearby Quintana Roo,Mexico (Whigham et al.1998). Biotic andabiotic factors such assize and position of thetree crown, competitionfrom other plants,microsite differences insoil drainage andnutrient status, andgenetics of individual

trees, resulting in a wide variability.

Conclusion: Implications for SustainabilityBased on the average growth rate for each

diameter class revealed in this study, the majority ofthe residual trees from the first cutting cycle in the20-60 cm diameter class will reach commercial sizeby the time of second harvest 40 years later. Eightyyears from the first harvest, in the third cuttingcycle, most of the harvest will be dependent on newregeneration that became established after the firstharvest. Fast growing individuals can reach the 60cm diameter limit in 60 years, assuming a sustainedgrowth rate of 1 cm/year. Thus new seedlings thatbegin at the time of first harvest in year 0 shouldprovide the next generation of harvest trees by thethird cutting cycle in year 80. However, fieldobservation shows that naturally occurringmahogany seedlings and saplings are rare in theforest today, so it seems likely that artificialregeneration must be established on each cuttingarea at each harvest.

Because mahogany is a light-demanding, large-



Figure 4: Growth rates of mahogany in natural forests.*Belize data is from Shono & Snook (2004) (this study). Brazil data isfrom Pará, in Grogan et al. (2002). Bolivia data from Chimanes inGullison et al. (1996) was originally grouped into 2.5-10, 10-20, 20-40, 40-80 and 80-160 cm diameter categories. In order to include datafrom Quintana Roo, Mexico (Snook 2003), in which sample trees weregrouped by age, each age group was assigned to a diameter class basedon their average diameter. Average annual precipitation in each of thestudy sites were; 1300 mm in Mexico, 1600 mm in Belize, 1800 mmin Brazil, and 2166 mm in Bolivia.

gap species that regenerates after catastrophicdisturbances (Snook 1996), ensuring regeneration ina closed forest represents a challenge. Imple-mentation of appropriate silvicultural treatments isrequired in order to provide the necessary conditionsfor recruitment and seedling growth, namely highlight levels and reduced above- and below-groundcompetition (Grogan et al. 2002; Snook andNegreros-Castillo 2004). Experiments have shownthat mahogany seedlings grow best on clearings of5,000 m2 or more, and that natural regenerationand growth of planted seedlings can be enhanced byclearing vegetation using methods that preventsprouting, such as burning (Snook et al. in press). Ithas also been demonstrated that treefall gaps do notprovide favorable conditions for sustained growth ofmahogany seedlings (Grogan et al. 2002).

Growth rates of mahogany trees by size class canbe combined with data from complete stock surveysof the logging compartments to calculate annualproduction of mahogany from this area. Sustainedyields of mahogany at the RBCMA are premised onthe successful recruitment of new regeneration andharvest level that is balanced by the rate of growth.This research on regeneration and growth willcontribute to the development of a sustainablemahogany management plan in the conservationarea. It is hoped that successful implementation ofsuch a management plan will ensure the continuedutilization and preservation of this valuable resource.

AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank the following people

for their contribution to this research project. Dr.Florencia Montagnini, Dr. James Grogan, and Dr.Mark Ashton provided guidance and advice.Nathaniel Alvarado, Jed Brown, Andrew Spees, andKenichi Shono collected all 2003 data used in thisstudy. Diameter measurements for previous yearswere made by Haris Iskandar, Kristen Ohlsen,Marcia Toledo, Gregory Buppert, Joshua Cohen,and Charles Robinson. Research was funded by theYale Tropical Resources Institute and the Center forInternational Forestry Research. Programme for

Belize provided logistical support, and Hill BankResearch Station staff facilitated our research byproviding transportation to the field site andhospitality.

Notes1Under the regulations of the U.N. sponsored

treaty, CITES, exporting countries of species listedon Appendix II must issue export permits that verifythat each shipment was obtained legally and that itsharvest was not detrimental to the survival of thespecies (Blundell 2002).

2 Because the study evaluates annual diameterincrements averaged over the four year period, thisassumption does not bias our results. Growthduring this two year period was not used inevaluating inter-annual variation.

ReferencesBlundell, A.G, and B.D. Rodan. 2002. Monitoring

mahogany. Tropical Forest Update 12(1).International Tropical Timber Organization.

CITES (Convention on International Trade inEndangered Species). http://www.cites.org,retrieved January 25, 2003.

Grogan J. 2001. Big-leaf mahogany (Swieteniamacrophylla King) in southeast Pará, Brazil: Alife history study with management guidelinesfor sustainable production from natural forests.Ph.D. Thesis. Yale University, New Haven,Connecticut.

Grogan, J., P. Barreto, and A. Verissimo. 2002.Mahogany in the Brazilian Amazon: Ecologyand Perspectives on Management. Imazon,Belem, Pará, Brazil. Http://www.imazon.org.br.

Grogan, J., M.S. Ashton, and J. Galvao. 2003. Big-leafmahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) seedlingsurvival and growth across a topographicgradient in southeast Pará, Brazil. ForestEcology and Management 186: 311-326.

Gullison, R.E., S. N. Panfil, J.J. Strouse, and S.P.Hubbell. 1996. Ecology and management ofmahogany in the Chimanes Forest, Beni,Bolivia. Botanical Journal of the LinneanSociety 122(1): 9-34.



Lamb, F.B. 1966. Mahogany of Tropical America: ItsEcology and Management. The University ofMichigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Mayhew, J.E., and A.C. Newton. 1998. TheSilviculture of Mahogany. CABI Publishing,Wallingford, United Kingdom.

Robinson, C. 1998. Selective logging and sustainablesilviculture at the Rio Bravo Conservation andManagement Area in Northwestern Belize.Master´s project, Nicholas School of theEnvironment, Duke University, Durham,North Carolina.

Snook, L.K. 1996. Catastrophic disturbance, loggingand the ecology of mahogany (Swieteniamacrophylla King): Grounds for listing a majortropical timber species in CITES. BotanicalJournal of the Linnean Society 122(1): 35-46.

Snook, L.K. 1998. Sustaining harvest of mahogany(Swietenia macrophylla King) from Mexico’sYucatan forests: Past, present, and future. Pages61-80 in Timber, Tourists, and Temples:Conservation and Development in the MayaForests of Belize, Guatemala and Mexico, R.B.Primack, D.B. Bray, H.A. Galletti, I. Ponciano,eds. Island Press, Washington D.C.

Snook, L.K. 2003. Regeneration, growth andsustainability of mahogany in Mexico’s Yucatanforests. Pages 169-192 in Big-leaf Mahogany:Genetics, Ecology, and Management, A.E.Lugo, J.C. Figueroa Colon, and M. Alayon, eds.Springer-Verlag, New York.

Snook, L. and P. Negreros-Castillo. 2004.Regenerating mahogany on clearings inMexico’s Maya Forest: The effects of clearingtreatment and cleaning on seedling survival andgrowth. Forest Ecology and Management189:143-160.

Snook, L., P. Negreros-Castillo and J. O’Connor. Inpress. Sobrevivencia y crecimiento de plántulasde caoba en apertures de diferentes tamaños,creadas de tres diferentes maneras en la SelvaMaya de Belice y México. Recursos Naturales yAmbiente (CATIE).

Weaver, P. and O. Sabido. 1997. Mahogany in Belize:A Historical Perspective. USDA Forest ServiceSouthern Research Station General TechnicalReport IITF-2.

Whigham, D.F., J.F. Lynch, and M.B. Dickinson.1998. Dynamics and ecology of natural andmanaged forests in Quintana Roo, Mexico.Pages 267-281 in Timber, Tourists, andTemples: Conservation and Development in theMaya Forests of Belize, Guatemala and Mexico,R.B. Primack, D.B. Bray, H.A. Galletti, and I.Ponciano, eds. Island Press, Washington D.C.

Whitman, A.A., N.V.L. Brokaw and J.M. Hagan.1997. Forest damage caused by selection loggingof mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) innorthern Belize. Forest Ecology andManagement 92: 87-96.

Whitmore, T.C. 1998. An Introduction to TropicalRain Forests, 2nd Edition. Oxford UniversityPress, Oxford.



“The Rhinoceros” In Parley's panorama, or, Curiosities of nature and art,history and biography. By Samuel Griswold Goodrich.E. Nebhut & Brothers, Georgia, 1861. Yale Collectionof American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book andManuscript Library, Yale University.


“Ptilinopus Swainsonii, Swainson's Fruit Pigeon”In The Birds of Australia, Vol. 5. By John Gould. London, 1848. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

IntroductionApproved at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the

Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD) has beenwidely heralded as a landmark in the establishmentof a global environmental governance regime.While the United States is still to ratify the CBD,over 188 nations are now party to it. The CBDrequires national governments to put in placenational and regional plans for the conservation ofbiodiversity. This article makes some observationsabout this process in India, based on fieldwork Iconducted from June through August 2003.

Motivated by the imperative to conserve geneticdiversity, the CBD draws on an intellectual traditionof environmentalism that emerges from critiques ofindustrialization.1 This discourse of conservation ispredicated on the need for careful science to protectnature from human destruction. Within itsnarrative, a particular notion and valorization of‘indigenous peoples’ is also constructed.

Non-government organizations (NGOs)working on India’s national biodiversity action plansadopted the uncritical valorizations of indigenouspeoples embedded in the CBD. However they alsoplaced at the forefront the roles of Indian farmersand others in the creation and propagation ofagricultural biodiversity – a constituency missingfrom the language of the Convention. In so doing,global ideas of conservation that had traditionallyseparated people from nature were criticallyreconfigured.

Global Conservation DiscourseThe Convention for Biological Diversity

emerges from a Northern environmental tradition

that Guha (2000) characterizes as a “response tomodernity” – a rebuttal of industrialization. TheArticles of the Convention can be categorized intothree distinct components. The first privileges andexpands the activities of a global pool of trainedconservationists (Articles 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14). Thesecond focuses on a set of strategies centered oneducation, training, awareness building, and local-level conservation incentives (Articles 11, 12, 13).And the third (Articles 5, 15,16,17,18,19) governsthe transfer of genetic resources across nationalborders.

The first two components of the CBD are basedon the premise “that biological diversity is beingsignificantly reduced by certain human activities”(CBD Preamble 1992). Focusing primarily onforested areas, effective biodiversity conservation isimplicitly envisioned as a process that attempts toscientifically manage and distribute the benefits of aproductive and fertile nature. Behind its languageon the need for awareness building and education isthe presumption of unenlightened popular culturesthat are destructive to biodiversity and that need tobe controlled for its preservation.

This is not to say that the CBD does notreference local people in a positive light in respect tonature and biodiversity in its text. It recognizes “theclose and traditional dependence of manyindigenous and local communities embodyingtraditional lifestyles on biological resources” (CBD1992, emphasis added). That these particularcategories of people have been described as close tonature (while many others, such as agriculturalists,remain invisible) is not accidental. In ModernForests (2002), Sivaramakrishnan urges us to


Reconfiguring Discourses: National Transformations of the GlobalConvention on Biological Diversity

Nikhil Anand, MESc 2004

examine distinctions that have placed environmentin the public domain while agriculture remains theprivate concern of agriculturalists. Zimmerer (2000)also urges our attention to system boundaries that,as conceptual constructions, determine what is andwhat is not considered part of the environment.

Categorized as ‘traditional’ and completelydivorced from modernity, indigenous peoples haveoften been idealized as ‘natural’ allies of thee n v i r o n m e n t .2 Environmental organizationsfrequently ask their audiences to make connectionsbetween images of the indigenous and those of apristine nature, battling against the destructiveprograms of state-led ‘development’. “The use ofthe term environment to represent autonomousnature, divorced from the agrarian landscape,facilitates dichotomous understandings of aNorthern produced industrial ethic of destruction,and Southern, ‘indigenous’, pre-industrialpopulations in balance with nature” (Agrawal andSivaramakrishnan 2000: 7). As manifest in theCBD, the global discourse of conservationmaintains these dichotomies. Consequently, itreinforces the divide between nature (and theindigenous people that are part of it), and all otherpeople, including non-indigenous farmers, whocannot but act against it.

Conklin (1997) shows that these essentialismsboth fix indigenous people within certain landscapesas well as give them a platform from which to arguefor particular privileges and rights. This is reflectedin the exceptional visibility of indigenous people inthe CBD (and also in the Indian National Plan). Atthe same time, the CBD renders farmingcommunities invisible. Though people have beenselecting and breeding crop varieties for generations,there is little space in the Convention for thosewhose lifestyles encompass both biodiversity andengagement with the modern market economy.Manifest in the first two sections of the CBD,therefore, is a discourse that is not sympathetic to amajority of India’s agrarian populations.Furthermore, it negates the creative roles that thesepopulations have played in the existence and

multiplicity of agricultural biodiversity. As a large international agreement, the

Convention consciously asserts that biodiversity “is acommon concern for humankind,” thereby placingit as a resource in a global commons to be managedby global experts (CBD Preamble 2002). Withmost biodiversity in the global South, governmentsin these countries worry that this language of thecommons will be used by transnational interests toclaim common heritage and thereby rights to thebiological resources contained within their borders.

Arguably, some of the more commerciallyvaluable biodiversity resources are in agriculturalcrops. The Indian state is allied with itsagriculturalists in arguing for national regimes ofproperty within the global discourse of conservationof agricultural resources. It has recently fought aseries of high profile cases in international and U.S.courts on the appropriation of patent rights byprivate industries with respect to rice, turmeric, andneem. In these cases, Indian farmers and the Statehave used the language of national development toargue for a fair share to the benefits of biodiversity.

A dynamic tension therefore emerges betweenthe language of the global commons and that ofnational sovereignty. The third section of the CBD,which describes the protocols for transnationaltransfer of biological resources, is thus criticalbecause it provides ways in which nation states likeIndia can re-territorialize their resources. It marks asmall moment of rupture in the language of a globalcommons, as it delineates the need to regulate andcompensate countries and peoples that have createdand managed these resources.

Conservation Conventions in IndiaIn 1999, the Indian Ministry of Environment

and Forests (MoEF) handed over the coordinationof the National Biodiversity Strategy and ActionPlan (NBSAP) to Kalpavriksh, a non-governmentorganization long engaged in people-centeredenvironmental projects. There are a number ofreasons that may have prompted the ministry to takesuch a step, one of which is the increased trend


R e c o n figuring Discourses: National Transformations of the Global Convention on Biological Diversity

towards decentralization in planning and a parallelrise in the influence of NGOs in India.3

This shift towards decentralization emergesfrom demands by local and global contexts forgreater transparency and participation in statefunctioning. These demands come as much fromthose arguing for free market capitalism managed by‘good governance’ as from widespread populiststruggles against neoliberalism itself. However, theexpanding discourses of democracy and participationacross the political and economic spectrum are thesubject of a different study. For our purposes here,it would suffice to say that state bureaucrats, asparticipants in these local and global processes,are simultaneously influenced by thesediscourses.

The NBSAP process provided asuitable test case for state actors to exa-mine the effects and impacts of adecentralized and NGO-coordinatedprocess. In comparison to other stateplans, biodiversity is relatively low onthe agenda, and the Ministry ofEnvironment and Forests is weaker thanmost other state ministries. Even withinthe ministry, other interests, like forestry,are far more important than biodiversity.

This set of factors was appropriate to situate thebiodiversity plan as a state ‘performance’ ofdemocratic and transparent plan making (AjayGandhi, pers. comm.). Significantly, it wasshowcased at the World Summit on SustainableDevelopment in Johannesburg. In a report preparedfor the summit, the Ministry of Environment andForests described the NBSAP as “India’s biggestenvironment and development planning process”(MoEF 2002a: 1). Central in its presentation of theNBSAP was that, “for the first time, government hashanded over the responsibility of developing thisentire plan to a non-government organization”(Ibid: 1). In a different report, also prepared for themeeting in Johannesburg, entitled EmpoweringPeople for Sustainable Development, the PrimeMinister’s foreword reads, “I hope that the

document would serve as a useful input into thepursuit of sustainable development in India – and beof some use to other countries as well” (MoEF2002b). The audience for India’s policy processestherefore, is not only the Indian public, but also alarger transnational public such as the one present inJohannesburg.

To both publics, Kalpavriksh is an organizationwith considerable credibility. It first emerged in theearly 1980s as an urban youth movement toconserve Delhi’s urban forest, but has since takenradical positions on a variety of development andenvironment projects. It engages with a

considerable network that spans statebureaucracies, conservation foundations,

human rights organizations, and socialmovements, both in India and aroundthe world. Kalpavriksh committed itselfto a decentralized process of planformation. Rejecting the idea that asingle plan could comprehensivelyaddress the different regions and

dimensions of biodiversity, it identifiedthe need for over seventy plans at sub-

state, state, ecoregional, and thematiclevels, though all seventy could also be

considered as stand-alone documents. Foreach of these plans, a nodal coordination agency wasidentified. In some cases, this was the ForestDepartment; in others, it was an NGO or auniversity.

A Technical and Policy Core Group (TPCG)was convened to facilitate the communication andcoordination of state plans, as well as to draftlanguage for the national plan. Constituted byKalpavriksh in consultation with the Ministry ofEnvironment and Forests, the TPCG also containedtribal activists and other representatives frommovements that find the term ‘conservation’ verycontentious.4 To engage with these, and otherhuman rights groups, the TPCG was very clear thatneither livelihood security nor ecological securitywould be compromised in the plan. Moreover, theyinsisted that biodiversity was not contained solely in


Nikhil Anand

Indian NationalBiodiversity Strategy and

Action Plan logo

forests, and that its value went beyond the aestheticvalues of charismatic large mammals or theecological services of natural systems.

The decision to include agriculture in theprocess was made by the TPCG soon after it firstconvened. For the coordination of the ecoregional,state, thematic, and substate plans, nodal agencieswere given guidelines by the Group. Prominent inthese guidelines are two subsections: the first dealingwith “wild biodiversity” and the second with“domesticated biodiversity” (livestock breeds andcrop varieties). Thus, the TPCG created a space inwhich the importance of livelihoods and biodiversitycould simultaneously be considered. By recognizinga biodiversity commons, and those protecting it(such as indigenous peoples), the TPCG criticizedForest Department programs that did not recognizethe land rights of these groups. In this respect, itdrew from and enhanced the global biodiversitydiscourse that is manifest in the CBD.

But the Technical and Policy Core Group alsopicked up elements of a national developmentagenda that valorized the creativity, initiative, andvalue of agrarian populations in biodiversityconservation. Thus in India, the TPCG interpretedthe Convention with a range of actors and actionsthat had previously been ignored by theinternational biodiversity community. The NBSAPrecognized the relationship between natural and wilddiversity by placing human resource systems inrelationships with both domesticated and wildbiodiversity. For example, the National Planproposes strategies such as “understanding the linksbetween cultural diversity and biodiversity”(Chapters 7.1.1.3 and 7.2.1.4, MoEF 2004) and“secure tenure over natural resources” (Chapters7.1.5.1 and Chapter 7.2.5, Ibid).

At the state and sub-state levels, the planningprocess was more creative. Coordinating the processin this region, the Deccan Development Societyorganized bullock cart biodiversity y a t r a s ( f e s t i v a l s )where native seed varieties were on display. Theirsuccess at interacting with farmers about agriculturalbiodiversity gained tremendous media coverage.

Other plans, like those made in Munsiari,Uttaranchal state, listed different livestock breedsthreatened by state-managed animal husbandryextension programs (Foundation for EcologicalSecurity 2003). The sub-state plans of Nahikalanand also the plan in Munsiari provided detaileddescriptions of agricultural practices thatdemonstrated important ways in which humancommunities actively create and propagate biologicalvarieties. The Nahikalan Sub-State Plan describesthe state agricultural and livestock extensionprograms, in which indigenous breeds are replacedwith unsuitable exotic varieties and chemical inputs,as a threat to agricultural biodiversity (Vividhara2003). The Plan argues that this policy has resultedin nutritional deficiencies and livelihood insecurity inNahikalan village. In doing so, the Nahikalan Plan,like the national and state plans, selectively draws onand critiques different dimensions both of globalconservation efforts and of government actors.

By broadening its understanding of‘environment’ to incorporate agriculture, theNational Biodiversity Strategy and Action Planenvisions and represents a peopled nature. In sodoing, the Plan makes a vital link between India’smountains and forests (which is where biodiversitywas isolated in the human imagination) and thedensely populated agricultural heartlands of thecountry (see Agrawal and Sivaramakrishnan 2000).As a result, the NBSAP in effect reconfigures thedivide between nature and culture whose artificialityhas been the subject of recent critical attention insocial ecology (see Tsing 2003; Dove 2003).

By assuming that forests were not the onlyrepositories for biodiversity, the national discourseof biodiversity conservation provided an importantspace for non-government organizations and farmworkers to make strong critiques againstindustrialized agriculture.5 Rejecting stateagriculture development paradigms that favormonocultures, fertilizers, and pesticides over multi-cropped organic landscapes, the NBSAP argued formarket and institutional incentives for non-chemical-based polyculture farming.



Given the strong criticisms directed at it, it isnot surprising that the Ministry of Agriculture didnot respond. This lack of political support from theMinistry for the implementation of the nationalbiodiversity process highlights both the practical andthe conceptual limits of participatory planning.Those pushing the NBSAP were constantly requiredto negotiate compromises with powerfulbureaucracies. To do so they used the planningprocesses of the Indian state itself, and the globalcommitments that the Indian state had made tobiodiversity. Yet, when the biodiversity plan itselfdid not fit in with the priorities of the Ministry’svision of agricultural development, the agency couldnot be forced to participate.

ConclusionAs a global environmental regime, the CBD

envisions a professionalized conservation,implemented by international and national bodies ofconservation and management experts. Supportiveof the state’s sovereign claim to biodiversitycontained within its borders, Indian non-government organizations took the opportunity ofthe Convention’s national planning process to makeexplicit the existence and significant value ofdomesticated biodiversity. In so doing, theyhighlighted the roles of modernizing, agrarianpopulations in the conservation of agriculturalbiodiversity – thereby blurring the boundaries ofnature and culture.

Non-government organizations were also usingthe ‘ecological tribal’ of the global environmentaldiscourse to secure rights and entitlements for localagrarian populations, such as the right to practicelivelihoods and land rights within state forests.Thus we can see these Indian civil society groupsselectively employ the global imaginaries of thesustainable indigenous person to critique stateprocesses of marginalization and eviction. At thesame time, Indian non-government organizationsuse the language of nation states to critique thenotion of the global commons – thereby securingrights of farmers to their seeds. The NBSAP was a

process through which, by mixing up tribes andpeasants in the same plan, indigenous people madeclaims to land rights and social justice, even aspeasants made claims of customary forest andbiodiversity management (see Tsing 2003 for anexample of this in Indonesia).

Though the Ministry of Environment andForests found the process too contentious for itsliking, its desire to be seen by the internationalcommunity and its domestic constituencies as anagency that respected biodiversity and participationmade it difficult for the ministry to reject non-government organization efforts entirely. Therefore,when presenting the process to the internationalcommunity, the ministry took ownership of theeffort as a landmark process, signaling its acceptanceof a state process that was critical of itself, whilesimultaneously making visible for the internationalcommunity a reconfigured national biodiversitydiscourse that included both people and nature.

AcknowledgmentsTo the different participants of the NBSAP

process in India, who are seeking innovative ways tounderstand the complex issues of people living intheir environments. Special thanks to AshishKothari, Kanchi Kohli, Bhopal Singh, AjayMahajan, E. Theophilius, and Arun Kumar.Though we occasionally speak in differentlanguages, we share the goals of environmental andsocial justice. Thanks also to the TropicalResources Institute, the Career Development Officeand the Program in Agrarian Studies for supportingthis research.

Finally a big and special thanks to AmityDoolittle and the editors of the TRI Bulletin fortheir consistent and patient support.

Notes1Emerging from a Foucauldian perspective, I

understand discourse to mean a particular languageof knowledge through which only particular thingscan be said or even imagined.

2For examples of pre-modern/anti-modern


Nikhil Anand

writings on indigenous peoples, see journals such asCultural Survival Quarterly, The Ecologist, and alsothe thrust of different environmental campaigns bygroups such as Rainforest Action Network.

3 This trend has been much critiqued in recentliterature. Decentralized plan making might, forexample, also be read as an effective way for the stateto cut costs (Mosse 1997). However, there is aninherent danger in ascribing unity and purpose tostate actions (Starn 1999). The actions of stateactors are better understood when placed in thecontext of multiple and competing discourses ofenvironment, governance, and development inwhich state officials are also situated through theirparticipation and engagement with both citizenpopulations and transnational actors. As such, statesare more a “set of practically mediated relations”than “a coherent imposition” (Sivaramakrishnan2002: 78), or, as I would prefer to argue, apractically mediated set of impositions.

4 Globally, there is a significant history ofdisplacement of indigenous peoples from areasdeemed to have conservation value.

5 It is important to note the absence of thesecritiques from the CBD.

ReferencesAgrawal, A., and K. Sivaramakrishnan. 2000.

Introduction: Agrarian environments. Pages 1-21 in Agrarian Environments: Resources,Representation and Rule in India, A. Agrawaland K. Sivaramakrishnan, eds. Duke UniversityPress, Durham, North Carolina.

Conklin, B. 1997. Body paint, feathers and VCRs:Aesthetics and authenticity in Amazonianactivism. American Ethnologist 24: 711-737.

Convention on Biological Diversity. 1992.http://www.biodiv.org, retrieved December 12,2003.

Dove, M. 2003. Forest discourses in South andSoutheast Asia: A comparison with global

discourses. Pages 103-123 in Nature in theGlobal South: Environmental Projects in Southand Southeast Asia, P. Greenough and A.L.Tsing, eds. Duke University Press, Durham,North Carolina.

Foundation for Ecological Security. 2003. ABiodiversity Log and Strategy Input Documentfor the Gori River Basin, Munsiari.

Guha, R. 2000. Environmentalism: A Global History.Oxford, New Delhi.

Ministry of Environment and Forests. 2004. SecuringIndia’s Future: The National BiodiversityStrategy and Action Plan.

Ministry of Environment and Forests. 2002a. Fromthe Local to the Global: Developing theNational Biodiversity Strategy Action Plan.

Ministry of Environment and Forests. 2002b.Empowering People for SustainableDevelopment.

Mosse, D. 1997. The symbolic making of a commonproperty resource: History, ecology and localityin a tank-irrigated landscape in south India.Development and Change 28: 467-504.

Sivaramakrishnan, K. 2002. Modern Forests:Statemaking and Environmental Change inColonial Eastern India. Stanford UniversityPress, Palo Alto, California.

Starn, O. 1999. Nightwatch. Duke University Press,Durham, North Carolina.

Tsing, A.L. 2003. Agrarian Allegories and GlobalFutures. Pages 124-169 in Nature in the GlobalSouth: Environmental Projects in South andSoutheast Asia, P. Greenough and A.L. Tsing,eds. Duke University Press, Durham, NorthCarolina.

Vividhara. 2003. National Biodiversity Strategy andAction Plan – Nahikalan Sub State Site,Uttaranchal.

Zimmerer, K. 2000. The reworking of conservationgeographies. Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers, 356-69.



IntroductionConservation of tropical montane cloud forest

(TMCF) fragments in Mexico is vital for theprotection of watersheds, soils, and biologicaldiversity (Hamilton et al. 1995). These uniqueforest types provide human settlements and adjacentfields with valuable environmental services, such aswater capture, storage and filtration, soilpreservation, and erosion and flood control(Bruijnzeel and Proctor 1995; Vogelmann 1973).Currently restricted to just 1 percent of the country(Rzedowski 1996), TMCF face many conservationchallenges.

Nowhere are the challenges greater than inhuman-dominated landscapes where populationgrowth, agricultural expansion, and urbanizationsimultaneously contribute to forest loss andfragmentation. Highland Veracruz, for example,illustrates the synergistic effects of these processes onthe spatial distribution and abundance of montaneforests. Once an area that harbored the fourthlargest proportion of TMCF in Mexico, today cloudforests in Central Veracruz remain as small isolatedpatches in a matrix of shade coffee plantations, cattlepasture, sugar cane fields, and urban areas. Majordrivers of this large-scale environmentaltransformation include: (i) colonization andsettlement of the town of Xalapa and environs in thesixteenth century; (ii) historical dependency of localcommunities on global export markets forlivelihoods; and (iii) implementation of policiesfavoring agricultural industrialization overtraditional practices.

How should forest conservation efforts proceedin landscapes with a historical legacy of human usefor agriculture? In highland Veracruz, the most

feasible and cost efficient way to retain forestremnants as integral components of the land mosaicis to involve local communities in the managementof cloud forests and the surrounding agroecologicalmatrix. For this to occur, it is key to have anappreciation of how inhabitants of Central Veracruzhave viewed and interacted with TMCF patches intothe present day. As this case study will demonstrate,a general understanding of the social, economic, andpolitical factors affecting human-environmentinteractions is needed to realistically assesspossibilities for future conservation. This multi-stepprocess of ‘contextualization’ involves detailedassessment of societal goals, historical trends andconditions, and future scenarios and alternatives(Clark et al. 2001). Applying this approach to thecase of cloud forest fragmentation in CentralVeracruz reveals how knowledge of regionalenvironmental history can aid scientists in designingresearch questions and forest management plans thatare place-based and relevant to conservationists andthe needs of local communities.

This article reviews the historical drivers (i.e.,trends and conditions) of landscape change inCentral Veracruz from pre-colonial time to present.It tells the stories of two land uses, coffee and cattle,that directly compete with cloud forests for humanvaluation and space, with a view to demonstratingthe role of markets and agricultural policies in landuse/land cover trajectories. An interpretation of pastevents and their effects on current and futureconservation efforts are also discussed.

Study DescriptionThe Xalapa-Coatepec region lies between 900 m.

and 1500 m. above sea level (asl) along the e a s t e r n


Coffee, Cattle, and Colonialism: Historical Effects of Markets and Agricultural Policies on Cloud Forests in Central Veracruz, Mexico

Alexandra Ponette, PhD candidate

slopes of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain rangein Central Veracruz, Mexico ( see fig.1). Theenvironment is characterized by frequent cloudiness,cool temperatures, rugged topography, steep slopes,and deep narrow canyons (Siemens 1990).

Land Use and Land Cover Changes inCentral VeracruzPre-Columbian land-use

Old-field relics indicate that native peoplesinhabited the lower piedmont zone prior to Spanisharrival in 1519 (see fig. 2), coping with difficultenvironmental conditions by adapting theiragricultural systems (e.g., shifting cultivation) anddeveloping advanced farming technologies such asterraces and vertical zonation of crops (Whitmoreand Turner 1992). More detailed knowledge ofpre-colonial land use in and around cloud forests isscarce, although recent evidence that Aztecs exactedtribute in the form of resplendent quetzal feathers(Pharomachrus mocinno) and sweet gum resin(Liquidambar styraciflua), both cloud forest species,suggests that forest extraction was practiced(Peterson and Peterson 1992). Furthermore, in anearby TMCF region, paleoecological data points tothree phases of human occupation, deforestation,

and erosion, and two phases of abandonment andregrowth during the late Holocene (Conserva andByrne 2002). These studies suggest thatMesoamerican highland forests were not ‘pristine’during the pre-Columbian era; early on, their

structure and composition were modified byhuman as well as by natural disturbanceregimes.

Spanish conquest and the introductionof cattle (1521-1810)

The arrival of Hernán Cortés to the Portof Veracruz in 1519 marked the beginningof widespread agricultural change inVeracruz. As the Spaniards traveled throughthe lowland, piedmont, and highland regionsof the Sierra Madre Oriental, over the MesaCentral and on to Mexico City, theytransformed the pre-Columbian landscapematerially and conceptually (Sluyter 1999).Spanish introduction of disease, exotic plants

and animals (e.g., cattle, sugar cane), and newsystems of land and labor organization werekey factors in the rapid conquest of

indigenous groups and environmental modification(Whitmore and Turner 1992).

From 1521 to 1619, the Spanish crown grantedland titles to Spanish soldiers in lowland Veracruz.Soldiers converted abandoned fields to pasture andpracticed transhumant ranching (the movement of


Coffee, Cattle, and Colonialism: Historical Effects of Markets and Agricultural Policies onCloud Forests in Central Veracruz, Mexico

Figure 1: Schematic diagram of main vegetation types along an elevationalgradient from lowland to highland Veracruz. Source: Vogelmann 1973.

Figure 2: The coastal plain, wetlands, and piedmont regions oflowland Veracruz. Source: Sluyter 2002.

livestock to different grazing grounds with thechanging of seasons). Internal demand for tallowand hides stimulated the rapid growth of herdpopulations and ranch expansion. Consequently,semi-wild cattle roamed freely, destroying nativeagroecosystems, and causing soil compaction,erosion, siltation, increased flooding, and harvestloss (Sluyter 1996). Along with cattle, the Spaniardsalso introduced sugar cane, cotton, and tobacco;these crops were cultivated extensively withAmerindian and West African labor (Sluyter 1996).

Some European immigrants found respite fromthe heat and disease of the harsh lowlandenvironment in the highlands. The town of Xalapa,located on the major travel route between the Portof Veracruz and Mexico City, evolved as an ideallocation for settlement, trading, and commercialactivities (Siemens 1990). The arrival of Europeansettlers to Xalapa fueled the growth of agriculture inits environs and the replacement of cloud forestareas with farms.

The institutionalization of cattle ranching andplantation agriculture in colonial Veracruz shapedfuture social dynamics and largely determinedsubsequent land use and land cover trajectories.First, the Spanish divided lands into large blocks fitfor grazing cattle and cash crop monocultures,setting a precedent for future tenure arrangements.Second, transhumant ranching in New Spaindisplaced native populations and agroecosystems(Sluyter 2002). In addition, dramatic nativepopulation declines from smallpox and typhusepidemics between 1600 and 1800 enabled Spanishsettlers to appropriate abandoned lands. Ranchesand farms expanded through a process of landaccumulation and appropriation that created aninequitable distribution of wealth and degradedvegetation, soils, and wetlands. Third, becauseranches were exclusive to Spanish elites, they wereassociated with values of power, prestige, and wealth(Montagut-Gonzalez 1999). By contrast, thebenefits of traditional agriculture, including wetlandcultivation and the use of fallow lands, wereunacknowledged or unappreciated. Fourth, markets

for European goods fostered the early settlement anddevelopment of commercial towns like Xalapa inCentral Veracruz. Colonial social, political, andeconomic institutions shaped the region’s landmanagement decisions and paved the way for post-colonial and present day land-use and policy trends(Sluyter 1999).

Mexican independence, revolution, andagrarian reform (1821-1925)

Mexico achieved independence from Spain in1821, but the legacy of colonial land use in Veracruzcontinued into the postcolonial period. Towardsthe end of the nineteenth century, increasing exportcrop production of sugar cane, coffee, cotton, andtobacco led to the establishment of large haciendasor estates and the exploitation of peasant labor onlands previously controlled by Spaniards (Barreraand Rodriguez 1993). Mexico City’s boomingpopulation and increased demand for milk and meatalso supported a growing market for cattle(Montagut-Gonzalez 1999). With financial supportfrom the government, Veracruzan ranchers acquiredsmallholder farms and created new grazing areas. Aspastures occupied more and more land, smallholdersmoved upslope, cutting into areas occupied by cloudforest.

The Mexican Revolution (1911-1925) signaleda time of political, economic, and social change.Rural peasants fought for land reform. Socialconflict between ranchers and peasants peaked inviolence between 1928 and 1932, with haciendasexpropriated from powerful landowners andredistributed among poor rural farmers in the formof communally-owned farms or ejidos (Ginzberg1998).

Growing internal and external markets for milk,meat, and Old-World crops, supported theexpansion of cattle ranching and plantationagriculture in Veracruz during the post-colonial andpost-revolution eras. Although the MexicanRevolution led to significant land reform and ejidoestablishment, control of extensive farm and grazingareas remained concentrated in the hands of large


Alexandra Ponette

hacienda owners during the twentieth century. Thisposition was supported by new federal and stategovernment legislation such as the law ofunproductive land, which facilitated theappropriation of smallholdings and forest clearing.

In actively promoting cattle and tropical cropexport industries, the government encouragedprocesses of land concentration, social conflict, andforest loss strikingly similar to those engendered bytheir Spanish predecessors. Land scarcity andviolence encouraged smallholder peasants to migrateto higher elevations, resulting in the increasedutilization and conversion of cloud forestecosystems.

Coffee growers compete with ranchers (1920-1989)

In the 1920s, when land reform and theorganization of ejidos were nascent processes,marginalized groups established the first smalldomestic coffee farms in Veracruz. The Veracruzanhighlands were optimal for smallholder cultivationof Coffea arabica. Mid to high elevations (900-1200 m asl), frequent cloud cover and rainfall, warmtemperatures, and fertile soils allowed for theproduction of high quality coffee on steep slopes.Moreover, diversified shade coffee farmssimultaneously provided poor households withsubsistence and commercial goods.

Worldwide increase in demand for Coffeaarabica beginning in 1954 and regulation of coffeeprices shortly thereafter fueled enormous growth inthe export market for coffee (Nestel 1995).Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, rising coffeeprices, coupled with Mexico’s national policy ofagricultural modernization (Krippner 1997),precipitated a second major land-use transformationin Central Veracruz, one of the most importantcoffee-producing regions in the country.

The Mexican government’s policy of increasedstate intervention in the production process led tothe intensification and expansion of coffee lands.The Mexican Coffee Institute (INMECAFE)encouraged farmers to incorporate new lands into

production, to modify the physical structure offarms, and to adopt advanced technologies.Specifically, INMECAFE promoted theemployment of agrochemicals, reduction orcomplete removal of shade trees, increased density ofcoffee trees per unit land, and utilization of highyield varieties. As a result, forests and other land-use systems (e.g., sugar cane) were substituted withplantations of Coffea, and diversified coffee farmswere simplified and homogenized.

Of course, the motivation to ‘modernize’plantations in Veracruz was to increase yields andmeet the escalating demand for coffee. Yet becauseland areas optimal for coffee-growing were occupiedby montane rainforest, the coffee bonanza was amajor driver of deforestation (Challenger 1998).Further, the vegetationally and structurally diversecoffee matrix was simplified, with unknownconsequences for adjacent cloud forest ecosystems(see photo 1). An estimated 30 percent of farms inVeracruz were transformed from polycultures tomonocultures, and an average of 22 percent receivedtechnical assistance (Nestel 1995).

After 1954, growth in the coffee sector forcedVeracruzan smallholders to compete with largerlandowners. The latter entered the coffee marketand increased yields with technological packagesprovided by the government. For instance, in theCoatepec region, there is evidence that during the



Photo 1: An intensively managed and simplified coffee farmnear Coatepec.

coffee boom land concentration occurred (Nestel1995), causing some smallholders to occupymarginal forested lands and to create grazing systemswithin TMCF. As with the cattle industry, theMexican government encouraged a highly polarizedproduction structure – that is, small versus largefarmers.

Trade liberalization (1989-present)Liberalization of agricultural trade in Mexico

began in the mid 1980s and had a remarkableimpact on the cattle and coffee industries ofVeracruz. During his term (1988-1994), PresidentCarlos Salinas de Gortari encouraged policies ofprivatization and decreased market intervention bythe state. Subsidies on most agricultural inputs wereeliminated or reduced, guaranteed prices set foragricultural commodities were removed (except formaize and beans), crop insurance programs wereeliminated, state bank credit programs to peasantswere suspended, and Article 27 of the Mexicanconstitution was changed to allow the sale ofcommunally-owned ejido lands (Krippner 1997).

These government policies played a key role inprecipitating an agrarian crisis in Veracruz. First,low prices for cattle, lack of available land for ranchexpansion, subsidy elimination, and a nationaleconomic crisis that reduced by half Mexico City’sdemand for meat, together contributed to thehusbandry crisis of the 1980s (Montagut-Gonzalez1999). Second, deregulation of world coffee pricesin 1989 and state withdrawal from the industrycaused a world and national ‘coffee crisis’. After1989, coffee prices fell by fifty percent, and between1989 and 1993, the incomes of Mexican coffeegrowers dropped by 70 percent. Simultaneously,production and total output fell by 35 percent, andgrowers’ debts to INMECAFE and other lendingagencies skyrocketed.

Unsurprisingly, the husbandry and coffee criseshave fostered interest in alternative land use systemsand contributed to widespread land use/land coverchange. For instance, in Central Veracruz, wherecoffee cultivation is one of the dominant land-uses,

alternatives have included conversion of plantationsto sugar cane fields, pasture, organic farms, as well asland abandonment. For the most part, however,shaded coffee polycultures and monocultures arebeing replaced with unshaded monocultures.Given the importance of cloud forests in thecapture, storage, and filtration of water for theXalapa-Coatepec region and the proliferation ofplantations on steep slopes, the large-scale removalof trees from coffee farms will affect neighboringcloud forest ecosystems as well as agricultural fieldsdownslope.

Conclusion A synopsis of the past 500 years indicates that

cloud forest ecosystems in Central Veracruz havebeen subject to intense human disturbance sincecolonial times. Historically, the factors that haveprimarily influenced landscape evolution have beenhigh population densities, early establishment ofplantation agriculture and cattle ranching, Xalapa’slocation along a major route linking the Port ofVeracruz and Mexico City, global market forces, andgovernment land use policies. All have contributedto the significant disturbance, loss, andfragmentation of cloud forest ecosystems.

Furthermore, existing land tenure regimes,market dynamics, and government policies shapeand constrain possible visions for conservation andmanagement of tropical montane cloud forestfragments. Inequitable distribution of land, thebooms and busts of the cattle and coffee exportindustries, and agricultural industrialization havefueled migration of rural peoples to and escalatingpressure on forested lands (Halhead 1992). As aresult of these processes, little value has been placedon the goods and services provided by cloud forests.

On a positive note, local communities haverecently expressed their concern about the fate ofcloud forest fragments, which are unprotected andvulnerable to conversion as widespread replacementof shade coffee plantations with sugar cane fields(personal observation) and proposals to construct afederal highway through the region’s largest and


Alexandra Ponette

least disturbed fragments demonstrate. Conversionof steep, high-elevation cloud forest may haveserious consequences for urban areas and theproductivity of adjoining agroecosystems byincreasing soil exposure and runoff, slope instability,and altering temperature and moisture regimes.

Research studies aimed at conserving TMCFwill benefit from asking and answering the followingquestions: What products are extracted from TMCF?When and where are cloud forests most susceptibleto conversion? What are the effects of conversion onthe productivity of agricultural systems downslope?What are the alternatives? Cultivating plant speciescommonly removed from forests, improving thediversity and efficiency of agroecosystems,quantifying forest removal impacts on agriculturalproductivity, and creating financial incentives tomaintain patches and shaded coffee systems may helpin decreasing pressure on remnant forests.

Envisioning cloud forest conservation andmanagement in Central Veracruz requires bothhistorical context and an acute awareness of theimmediate goals and needs of inhabitingpopulations. History shows that the Xalapa-Coatepec landscape is highly dynamic in space andtime due to its strong links with the global market.Strategies to maintain tropical cloud forest mustincorporate management plans for fragments as wellas for surrounding agricultural areas. Researchersmust actively participate in a policy process thatadvances support for the traditional agriculturalsector and the protection of tropical cloud forestfragments.

ReferencesBarrera, N. and H. Rodríguez, eds. 1993. Desarrollo y

Medio Ambiente en Veracruz. FundaciónFriedrich Ebert, Mexico City.

Bruijnzeel, L.A. and J. Proctor. 1995. Hydrology andbiogeochemistry of tropical montane cloudforests: What do we really know? Pages 38-78 inTropical Montane Cloud Forests. Springer-Verlag, S. P. Churchill, H. Blaslev, E. Forero,and J.L. Luteyn, eds. New York.

Challenger, A. 1998. Utilizacion y Conservacion de losEcosistemas Terrestres de Mexico: Pasado,Presente, y Futuro. Comision Nacional para elConocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad,Mexico City.

Clark, T.W., M. Stevenson, K. Ziegelmayer, and M.Rutherford, eds. 2001. Species and EcosystemConservation: An Interdisciplinary Approach.Yale University Press, New Haven.

Conserva, M.E. and R. Byrne. 2002. Late Holocenevegetation change in the Sierra Madre Orientalof central Mexico. Quaternary Research 58:122-129.

Ginzberg, E. 1998. State agrarianism versus democraticagrarianism: Adalberto Tejeda's experiment inVeracruz: 1928-1932. Journal of LatinAmerican Studies 30: 341-372.

Halhead, V. 1992. Social dimensions of forestutilization in Mexico: Implications forintervention. Pages 159-169 in Developmentor Destruction: The Conversion of TropicalForest to Pasture in Latin America, T.E.Downing, S.B. Hecht, H.A. Pearson, and C.Garcia-Downing, eds. Westview Press, Boulder.

Hamilton, L.S., J.O. Juvik, and F.N. Scatena, editors.1995. Tropical Montane Cloud Forests.Springer-Verlag, New York.

Krippner, G. 1997. The politics of privatization inrural Mexico. Politics and Society 25: 4-33.

Montagut-González, R. 1999. Factors that contributedto the expansion of cattle ranching in Veracruz,Mexico. Mexican Studies 15: 101-130.

Nestel, D. 1995. Coffee in Mexico: Internationalmarket, agricultural landscape, and ecology.Ecological Economics 15: 165-178.

Peterson, A.A. and A.T. Peterson. 1992. Aztecexploitation of cloud forests: Tributes ofliquidambar resin and quetzal feathers. GlobalEcology and Biogeography Letters 2: 165-183.

Rzedowski, J. 1996. Analisis preliminar de la floravascular de los bosques mesofilos de montana deMexico. Acta Botanica Mexicana 35: 25-44.

Siemens, A.H. 1990. Between the Summit and theSea. University of British Columbia Press,Vancouver.



Sluyter, A. 1996. The ecological origins andconsequences of cattle ranching in sixteenth-century New Spain. Geographical Review 86:161-177.

Sluyter, A. 1999. The making of the myth inpostcolonial development: Material-conceptuallandscape transformation in sixteenth-centuryVeracruz. Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers 89: 377-401.

Sluyter, A. 2002. Colonialism and Landscape:

Postcolonial Theory and Applications.Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., NewYork.

Vogelmann, H.W. 1973. Fog precipitation in thecloud forests of Eastern Mexico. Bioscience 23:96-100.

Whitmore, T.M. and B.L. Turner III. 1992.Landscapes of cultivation in Mesoamerica onthe eve of the conquest. Annals of theAssociation of American Geographers 82: 402-425.


Alexandra Ponette

“Bullfrog”In The Natural History ofCarolina, Florida, and the BahamaIslands. By Mark Catesby.London, 1731-43. Beinecke RareBook and Manuscript Library, YaleUniversity.


“The Coffee Tree: The Instrument”In The manner of making of coffee, tea, and chocolate: as it is used in most parts of Europe, Asia,Africa, and America: with their vertues. By Philippe Sylvestre. W. Crook, London, 1685. BeineckeRare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Ethnobotany, the study of relationships betweenpeople and plants, is a lifestyle for wanderers and adiscipline for wonderers, but it also offers some ofthe most promising, powerful, and practicalrationales for the conservation of cultural andbiological diversity. Ethnobotanical literature rangesfrom adventure tales, to practical manuals for plantuse and conservation, to theory-bound academicwriting. I went to Borneo inspired by all three.From June to November 2002, I worked with theRungus-Dusun ethnic group of northernmost Sabah(see map 1) to document and study their plantknowledge.1

In this essay I focus the ethnobotanical lens onjust one of the 500 plants and mushrooms I studiedin Sabah. By illuminating the mythical, practical,and theoretical forms of local Rungus knowledgeabout Amorphophallus lambii I reflect on the oftenoverlooked complexity in the processes and purposesof indigenous knowledge. Ethnobotanists and otherprofessionals working with knowledge systems other

than their own must recognize and understand thiscomplexity if we expect to effectively targetprevention and mitigation of social andenvironmental degradation in a way that empowerstraditional knowledge holders.

Forms of Rungus Plant KnowledgeOne evening in my second month of fieldwork

in rural Sabah, Malaysia, as I practiced my Rungusspeaking skills with some sunset village visitors, Ibegan to notice the strong smell of sewage. Mydistraction grew with the strength of the stench, andI checked the bottoms of my shoes, glanced aroundfor signs of a dead animal, and made a trip to ensurethe toilet was still intact. Unable to stand it anylonger, I finally apologized and asked, “what is thatsmell?” Neither my embarrassment nor my guests’

hearty laughter could becontained any longer.Sordin2 had brought themaja-raja flower to showme, and as a joke, had setit under my house. Wewere breathing in the fecalaroma of its huge fleshyspadix enveloped by acharacteristic floppy spathe(see photo 1). In what Ihad soon learned was histypical style, Sordinlaunched into a detailedbut silly tale about themaja-raja, shedding somelight on the origin of itsname, but otherwiseserving simply to entertain.


Three Forms of Amorphophallus lambii and Three Forms of Rungus-DusunPlant Expert Knowledge

Betony Lee Jones, MESc 2004

Photo 1: Maja Rajainflorescence.

Map 1: Kudat Peninsula of Sabah, Malaysia.

Weeks earlier, we had encountered the fruitingstalk of maja-raja – an eighteen-inch mottled shaftwith a saffron-colored knob-covered head, standingerect from the leafy forest floor (see photo 2). Mytemptation to collect the Dr. Seuss-like stalk wascurtailed by an urgent warning. Backing away indeference, I inquired about the majestic structure.It has no leaves and no use, another Runguscolleague, Mostip, told me, but if you touch maja-raja, your skin will itch.

Maja-raja is not a rare plant in the forests of theKudat peninsula in Malaysian Borneo. Over sixmonths of fieldwork, I encountered the mysterious

plant at least a dozentimes, and Mostipseemed to be right: neverdid leaves accompany thefruits or flowers.

Whereas maja-rajawith its golden crownand putrid smell reignedover the forest floor,sogkong was among themost inconspicuous ofthe plants we collected.We never found theherbaceous plant inflower, and when my

Rungus colleagues told me that it never flowers orfruits, I settled for the sterile specimen (see photo 3).Of the 475 plants we collected, there were 15 whosefruits and flowers were never seen by the plantexperts with whom I worked. These plants wereeither very rare, cultivated through vegetativepropagation, or were trees or climbers that floweredhigh up in the canopy.

Sordin and Mostip, two locally-renowned plantexperts, did not say they had never seen the fruits andflowers of s o g k o n g, they said it p r o d u c e d n o n e .S o g k o n g is a relatively common lowland plant.Mostip said the very young shoots can be eaten as avegetable, but because the leaves are very irritating tothe skin, few use the plant this way. Sordin told methat if you pull the plant up with the tuber, it is a

sign that you’ll become wealthy. He also said that inthe past, if young men wanted white patches on theirskin, they would lash themselves with the stem, whichis itself mottled with white patches. Mostip relayedthe practical use and Sordin knew the mythicalinformation about s o g k o n g , but neither could explainhow it reproduces without fruits and flowers.

Then another plant expert, Litab, the villageheadman, shared his hypothesis about sogkong’sreproduction. He suspected that sogkong and maja-raja represented different stages of the same plant.His rationale was three-parted: first, both thefruiting stalk of maja-raja and the mature leaves ofsogkong irritate the skin in the same way; second,although they are never seen together, one willappear where the other had grown months earlier;finally, his hypothesis made sense of the anatomicalabsences of both plants: sogkong was maja-raja’sother half. All three men knew that sogkong has atuber, and all three said it is related to taro (they arein the same family, Araceae), but neither Sordin norMostip agreed with Litab’s theory that sogkong andmaja-raja were the same plant.

Months later, scientific knowledge confirmedLitab’s theory. In the Linnean classification system



Photo 2: Maja Rajainfrutescence.

Photo 3: Sogkong.

m a j a - r a j a and s o g k o n g r e p r e s e n tdifferent phases of the life cycle ofAmorphophallus lambii ( A r a c e a e ) .All A m p o r p h o p h a l l u s species have adormancy period in nature that maytake place in two parts of the species’growing cycle. When the leaf diesdown after a regular growing season,the tuber rests for three to sevenmonths, after which a new leafemerges. When the plant is matureenough to flower, the resting periodis considerably shorter, h o w e v e r asecond period of dormancy sets inafter flowering and fruiting. Becauseof this, the fruiting plants ofAmorphophallus lambii and all otherAsian Amorphophallus species are n e v e r f o u n dwith leaves.

Given the complexity of the Amorphophalluslife-cycle, Litab’s knowledge is certainly impressive.But while this anecdote points to the wealth ofaccurate indigenous knowledge about tropicalecosystems, it does not specify how that knowledgecan be tapped. Furthermore, scientific verificationof Litab’s knowledge does not make the other typesof botanical knowledge less valid. For example,Mostip was the only local expert who knew that theyoung parts could be eaten, and Sordin was the onlyone who remembered the myths associated with thisplant. The biology, the uses, and the stories ofAmorphophallus and plants in general are equallyimportant components of the Rungus expertknowledge system.

Who, then, are the plant experts and how dothey develop such different relationships withAmorphophallus and other plants? How is expertplant knowledge generated and transmitted? Youdon’t arrive at wildly different destinations bytraveling the same path. It is not just details thatrender Sordin, Mostip, and Litab’s bodies of plantknowledge different; rather, it is fundamentalthought processes, modes of inquiry, and patterns ofmemory registration that lead to their different

conclusions, and this makes the Rungus indigenousknowledge system as epistemologically complex asour own.

Attentiveness to the multiple forms ofindigenous expert knowledge is the first step towardprotecting the full knowledge systems and theirprocesses rather than specific isolated information.‘Folklore’ is not an appropriate synonym for‘indigenous knowledge’, as the lore only appears inmythical knowledge. Likewise, indigenousknowledge is not necessarily transmitted orally;practical indigenous knowledge is more effectivelyshown, not spoken.

When asked how they acquired their wealth ofplant knowledge, all three experts say that theknowledge was passed on from their related elders.They know more about the forest than otherpeople, they say, because they were curiouschildren and asked many questions. This alonemakes the point that the transmission of botanicalknowledge is not a passive activity for the learners;however, it does not neatly explain the process ofknowledge transmission. Even though these menrefuse to claim agency in the generation of plantknowledge by telling me that it is age-oldinformation, passed on through family lineages, myobservations and active participation in theprocesses of knowledge generation and transmission


Betony Lee Jones

Table 1: Comparative profiles of three Rungus botanical experts.

contradicted this simple explanation. Instead, theacquisition of plant knowledge, particularlyregarding the classification and ecology of plants, isa carefully iterative, on-going, and collaborativeprocess. Ideas are continually clarified andreconfigured to accommodate new observations,experimental results, and inconsistencies.

A final point is that even among a cohort ofmiddle-aged male Rungus plant experts, significantvariation in knowledge exists. Rather thanattributing this variation to mildly different lifehistories and experiences (see table 1), I suggest itresults in part from the diverse ways each of thesemen engages with their environment andinformation about it.

Forms of Ethnobotanical KnowledgeThe Rungus explanations of the morphological

peculiarity of maja-raja and sogkong parallel theattempts of outside ethnobotanists to make sense ofthe confusing variation of indigenous knowledgesystems. In both cases, some people create stories,others have patience only for practical informationwith utilitarian value, and still others try to envelopcomplexity with simpler, more robust theoreticalexplanations. The heterogenous literature onethnobotany and indigenous knowledge takes severalforms embodying these three different ways ofknowing – mythical, practical, and theoretical – thatparallel Sordin, Mostip, and Litab’s Amorphophallusknowledge.

MythIn the process of knowledge generation, myth is

the form and the phase responsible for inspiration,reproduction, intimacy, creativity, and meaning.One form of literature on indigenous knowledge isthe mythical adventure or mystery story.

As soon as I heard his name, I almost droppedthe glass jar. I had been about to give a plantlesson to the best-known Maya medicine man inCentral America. Great and terrible storiescirculated about this old Maya doctor-priest.Some spoke of near-miraculous healings, cureddiseases, and numerous saved lives clutchedfrom death’s bony hand…

The above excerpt is from Rosita Arvigo’s book,Sastun: My Apprenticeship With a Mayan Healer(1994: 7), a tale that inspired many youngethnobotanists to pursue the field academically.Mark Plotkin’s Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice(1994), popular news magazine articles about PaulCox’s work in Samoa (e.g. Hallowell 1997), andNational Public Radio stories featuring WadeDavis’s journeys through the tropics (Chadwick1998) serve the same purpose: they are dramatizedand personalized ethnobotanical narratives that havespread awareness of the value of indigenousknowledge and have inspired many forms ofinvestigation.

Writers who rely on narratives and myths todescribe and explain indigenous knowledge mayexhibit less concern for empirical truth than for theperpetuation of the political story contained within.Brosius (1997, 1999) highlights how Westernenvironmentalists constructed Penan knowledgeabout, and relationship to, their local ecosystem inSarawak, Malaysia. This indigenous group has beenheld up as an icon for environmental activism inpart to create a high-profile campaign againstdestruction of biocultural diversity worldwide.

But myth is far more than a useful tool inideological struggles. Because mythical knowledge islocal and contextual, it supplies the historical andcultural framework necessary for the creation ofmore analytical levels of knowledge, grantingknowledge holders insight into the present byproviding perspectives of the past. This richerconceptualization of the present allows for greaterself-determinate explorations of alternativeexplanations and more complex levels of analysis ofevents and phenomena (Dove 1999). Mythicalknowledge also serves as a rhetorical device forconveying culturally-specific meaning and value.

UtilityUtilitarian knowledge is universally valuable

because it is easily consumed and measured. It is anasset that can be lost, saved, discovered, andextracted from the context in which it was created.



For this reason, the Western/outside world has oftenelevated it above other forms of knowledge. Theways in which we discuss the loss or disappearanceof traditional knowledge, and our attempts toprotect it, reflect the ways in which usefulknowledge has become commodified and privatized.

Practitioners have articulated the demand forglobally appropriate and practical protocols forassessing, understanding, using, and savingindigenous knowledge for conservation, sustainabledevelopment, or bioprospecting purposes. TheAmerican Association for the Advancement ofScience has published a handbook “designed tomake intellectual property protection issues andoptions more understandable to traditionalknowledge holders…and professionals working withlocal and indigenous communities” (Hansen andVanFleet 2003). Abundant examples of similarhandbooks have resulted from the Convention onBiological Diversity and the World TradeOrganization Agreement on Trade RelatedIntellectual Property (TRIPs).

We might ask ourselves, what is the impetus forprotecting this cultural knowledge diversity? Ifbiocultural diversity is preserved ex situ in itstranslocal, utilitarian form, then it becomes inputfor a global scientific or economic system that seeksto use and control it. Utilitarian information, suchas medicinal plant or wild food preparation, ispowerful, not in a knowledge-based context,3 butbecause it can be easily mobilized, extracted, andreconfigured for generic use, and is amenable toneo-classical economics. Utilitarian knowledge thenbecomes an asset that, if not actively managed andconserved, will be lost, and when actively managedand conserved is inevitably modified.

TheoryIndigenous knowledge literature also takes a

theoretical form, particularly prolific in academiccircles where definitions are discussed and discourseis created. For example, numerous scholars theorizeabout and attempt to demonstrate the utility oradaptive nature of different societies’ mythical

complexes, using robust evolutionary principles tomake sense of the perpetuation of myth inindigenous knowledge systems. Explanations aboutthe ecological rationality of sacred cattle (Harris1966) or bird augury (Dove 1996) provide twoexamples of this academic genre of indigenousknowledge literature.

Theory is fundamental to knowledge generationbecause it allows for more syncretic conceptualanalysis; the creation of ideas, vocabulary, anddiscourse, and ultimately sense-making. Anunderstanding of the epistemological origins andprocesses of dynamic knowledge systems is moreempowering, validating, and legitimating than arecord of the knowledge as data or information, butthis understanding alone lacks the economic valuethat attracts funding necessary to do the research inthe first place. Furthermore, this understanding,though empowering, is not intrinsically useful;neither is it accessible to a wide audience the waymyth and lore is.

It is necessary to see and understand the trendsof our thinking and data collection so that we canconsciously improve them. Theory is the necessaryfoundation for participating in the discussion anddecisions about what the issues and concepts are,and how to fix or manipulate them toward differentends. Only in evaluating our work do we have theperspective to do as Litab did – toss out oldparadigms and make room for new and moreappropriate ones. Recognizing the role of theory inour own knowledge system should encourageacceptance of complex conceptual understanding inindigenous knowledge systems.

ConclusionIn her introduction to the book Ethnoecology:

Situated Knowledge, Located Lives, VirginiaNazarea defines ethnobotany as “a serious attempttoward the understanding of a local point of viewabout a realm of experience” (1999: 3). She writes:

We have been distracted long enough, ourenergies diverted toward deciphering orimagining regularities and uniformities when infact the irregularities and variations are infinitely


Betony Lee Jones

more powerful and relevant. We have beenforcing our ideas and those of our informantsand collaborators into paradigmaticmonocultures—into some form ofhypercoherence—when in fact it is thevariability, in our concepts as well as in theirsthat constitutes the challenge (1999: viii).The point is not to make myth consistent with

the tenets of global science or market economics bydemonstrating the utility of it, or to make alltheoretical conjectures practical,4 but rather torecognize the distinct forms of inquiry and phases ofknowledge generation.

Mythical, practical, and theoretical knowledgehave different roots and different uses, but they areall authentic. To say they are authentic, however,does not make these forms of knowledgecommensurable, nor does it imply that they areequally arbitrary, relative, socially constructed, andpolitical interpretations. When indigenousknowledge holders are portrayed as icons of theenvironmental movement, myths and rituals such asSordin’s, passed on through oral tradition, becomethe most powerful forms of knowledge. Whenindigenous knowledge is considered as a resourcethat can be tapped to contribute to translocalscientific knowledge for sustainable development,environmental management, drug discovery, orother entrepreneurial ventures, Litab’s and Mostip’sknowledge become the commodities because theirunderstanding is scientifically accurate and thereforetranslocally applicable. In elevating one form ofknowledge over another, however, we simplify andrestrict the epistemological complexity of theindigenous knowledge system. Agarwal writes:

Indigenous knowledge research thereforeappears to contribute to the accumulation ofexotic ethnographic documentation anddatabases which are sterile and undynamic froma development perspective, even potentiallydisempowering people by representing theirknowledge in ways inaccessible to them andbeyond their control and perhaps infringingtheir intellectual property rights (1995: 234).Such simplification reiterates and reinforces the

very political problems and power imbalances thatthe literature on indigenous peoples and knowledge

systems has been at pains to illuminate (Sillitoe1998; Baviskar 2000).

The more proficient we become atunderstanding different forms of knowledge in ourown system, the more adept we will be atappreciating different forms of indigenousknowledge – an appreciation of endogenousknowledge and resource management systems that,as Sillitoe (1998) points out, is vital to facilitatingeffective interventions. Efforts at bioculturalconservation will be more likely to succeed not onlyif the mythological and technological worth ofindigenous knowledge is successfully established, butif the epistemological complexity of indigenousknowledge systems is realized. This requiresmaintenance of peoples’ capacity to both reasonthrough and emotionally experience theconservation and development decisions that theyadopt, something that happens not throughdisembodied preservation and stagnation of practicalindigenous knowledge but through maintenance ofthe processes by which knowledge is generated.

If Amorphophallu lambii were threatened, likeindigenous knowledge systems are, and we soughtonly to protect the leaves because they are edible, orthe fruiting form because it inspires funny tales, wewould fail in our efforts to save it. Each of its formsrepresents a fundamental phase of its life-cycle. Ifwe see the entire plant for one of its three forms, wedo not even begin to appreciate its fascinatingcomplexity. If I had ignored Sordin’s practical jokewith the stinky flower, or if I had failed to ask Litababout maja-raja’s reproduction, I would have leftBorneo with inadequate respect for Rungus plantknowledge.

AcknowledgementsThis essay emerged from ethnobotanical

research, the success of which I attribute to thepersistent dedication and support of many people.First and foremost, I thank the Rungus communityand plant experts in Muttungung, Sabah, for thededication, flexibility, wisdom, insights, and sensesof humor that made this research both feasible and



fun. Thanks also to George and Laura Appell fortheir vision of biocultural protection and for invitingme to take part in this important research. I wish toexpress considerable appreciation to the editors ofthe 2004 TRI bulletin for their patience, persistence,and perceptive comments and to Peter Taylor andthe spring 2003 F&ES 759 class for engaging,stimulating, and reflective conversation aboutknowledge generation and collaborative processes.Finally, this research was made possible by generousfunding from the Firebird Foundation, the TropicalResources Institute, the Agrarian Studies Program,and the Council for Southeast Asian Studies at YaleUniversity.

Notes1I primarily use the term indigenous knowledge

throughout this essay when referring to expert andtraditional knowledge about the local northernSabah ecosystem.

2Names have been changed.3In fact, utilitarian knowledge is more often

skills than concepts (see Sillitoe 1998: 229) andmight not even be considered knowledge.

4The last sentence of Sillitoe’s (1998) generallywell-received paper states: “We shall be assessed, inthe spirit of the age, against the reliability andusefulness of the information we collect” (235).

ReferencesAgarwal, A. 1995. Dismantling the divide between

indigenous and scientific knowledge.Development and Change 26: 443-439.

Arvigo, R. 1994. Sastun: My Apprenticeship with aMayan Healer. Harper Collins Publishers, NewYork.

Baviskar, A. 2000. Claims to knowledge, claims tocontrol: Environmental conflict in the greatHimalayan National Park, India. Pages 101-119in Indigenous Knowledge and itsTransformations, R. Ellen, P. Parkes, and A.Bicker, eds. Harwood Academic Publishers,Canada.

Brosius, J. P. 1997. Endangered forest, endangeredpeople: Environmentalist representations ofindigenous knowledge. Human Ecology 25: 47-69.

Brosius, J. P. 1999. Locations and representations:Writing in the political present in Sarawak, EastMalaysia. Identities - Global Studies in Cultureand Power 6: 345-386.

Chadwick, A. November 7, 1998. Shamans. In WeeklyEdition. National Public Radio.

Dove, M. 1996. Process versus product in Borneanaugury: A traditional knowledge system'ssolution to the problem of knowing. Pages 557-596 in Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture,and Domestication, R. Ellen and K. Fukui, eds.Berg Publishers, Washington D.C.

Dove, M. 1999. The agronomy of memory and thememory of agronomy: Ritual conservation ofarchaic cultigens in contemporary farmingsystems. Pages 45-70 in Ethnoecology: SituatedKnowledge, Located Lives, V. Nazarea, ed.University of Arizona Press, Tucson, Arizona.

Hallowell, C. October 1, 1997. The Plant Hunter.Time Magazine.

Hansen, S., and J. VanFleet. 2003. TraditionalKnowledge and Intellectual Property: AHandbook on Issues and Options forTraditional Knowledge Holders in Protectingtheir Intellectual Property and MaintainingBiological Diversity. American Association forthe Advancement of Science, Washington D.C.

Harris, M. 1966. The cultural ecology of India's sacredcattle. Current Anthropology 7: 51-61.

Nazarea, V. 1999. Ethnoecology: Situated Knowledge,Located Lives. University of Arizona Press,Tucson, Arizona.

Plotkin, M. 1994. Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice.Penguin Books, New York.

Sillitoe, P. 1998. The development of indigenousknowledge: A new applied anthropology.Current Anthropology 39: 223-252.


Betony Lee Jones


“Life History of a Cockroach on a Flowering Pineapple Plant”In Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium. By Maria Sibylla Merian, Amsterdam 1705. Beinecke Rare Book andManuscript Library, Yale University.

IntroductionThis paper presents ethnographic research

without reference to place. My original draftdocumented an ethnic minority’s emergingenvironmental struggle against an encroachingnational government after a recent ceasefireagreement.2 Upon revision, I decided that fullydisclosing where I was, what I was doing, and theinformation on local resistance could potentiallyharm my informants, their movement, and myresearch agenda, were the original version to catchthe eye of the wrong government official.Employing this experimental ethnographic style bynot referring to place acts as one example of thedistinct challenges a researcher encounters whenworking within a site of terror. In this essay I willexplore some of these challenges of methodology,ethics, and representation.

My research examines the environmental effectsof shifted political alliances among local ethnicminority leaders, cross-border businessmen, andlocal/national government officials after a ceasefireagreement was brokered between the ethnicminority political organization and the nationalmilitary dictatorship.3

I borrow from the disciplines of politicalecology and anthropology of violence to understandhow these shifting political, commercial, andmilitary boundaries map onto natural resourceflows. The situation studied here shows a counter-intuitive relationship between ceasefires, theresulting ‘peace’, and environmental degradation.Ostensible peace, I assert, has paradoxically pavedthe path for ecological destruction and ‘violentdevelopment’.4

Political Economy of Ceasefire ConcessionsMy research site is located along a violent

national border area lying within resource-richCountry A. This nation is controlled by a militarydictatorship and is adjacent to Country B, apolitically strong nation with high economic growthand friendly diplomatic relations with A’s militarydictatorship. Both Country A’s endogenousmilitarized conflict and Country B’s strong influenceon its neighbor are inextricably linked to theprocesses of ‘violent development’.

The relatively long border has been incorporatedinto Country B’s economic development plans,especially since a recent logging ban and theinception of a national campaign to develop its poorland-locked provinces, one of which borders countryA.5 Country B is seeking to realize economic gains,while addressing national and internationalenvironmental concerns, by relocating the ecologicaland social costs of development across nationalborders. Thus, cross-border development becomesrealized through clear-cutting forests and extractingvaluable minerals from Country A’s ethnic minoritystate. This situation also provides expedientemployment and investment opportunities forunemployed loggers as well as for logging andinfrastructure companies from Country B. None ofthese activities benefit the local ethnic minority asthey are marginalized from any economic activity inresource extraction. The timber, once past bordercheck-points, becomes distributed to Country B’smajor urban centers to be sold for the boomingdomestic market and to feed global timber demand.

The national government in Country A appliedcoercive economic measures in the early 1990s to


Ethnographies of Territorialized Terror: Research Within Violent Environments1

Kevin Woods, MESc 2004

persuade the ethnic minority into a ceasefireagreement, largely by granting logging and miningconcessions to the ethnic minority business elites atthe expense of local ethnic minority control.6 Forexample, prior to the ceasefire, mineral extractionfunded the ethnic minority insurgency. However,after the ceasefire agreement, the nationalgovernment gained territorial control over themineral mines and subsequently sold extractionrights to wealthy businessmen across borders whileexcluding the local ethnic minority. This, in turn,shifted the ethnic minority’s principle incomegeneration activity to selling timber to cross-borderbusinessmen, since their remaining territorial claimswere still relatively abundant with valuable tropicaltimber. This alteration of the ethnic insurgenteconomy, which has led to drastic increases in thedeforestation rate, reflects a re-territorialization bythe national military government following theceasefire agreement.

In Country A, I assert, the national militaryregime’s desire to establish ceasefire agreements withthe multitude of ethnic minorities comprising thenation is a sub-text to its project of violent nation-state building. Absolute control of national territoryenables the national government to liquidate thenatural resources contained within the newlyacquired territory, in order to access foreigncurrency needed for perpetuation of its authoritariancontrol through arms purchase and expansion of themilitary.

The national government attempts to justifyand legitimize its seemingly apolitical resourceexploitation by claiming that development willreplace the now deforested landscape.7 However,the ethnic minority often complained to me aboutthe relative lack of promised development inexchange for heavy natural resource extraction. Oneethnic minority source commented, “[t]hedevelopment in our state is not for our people. It isfor the leaders on both sides.” By “both sides,” theinformant meant not only the elites of both theethnic majority and minority in Country A, but alsobusiness leaders in Country B. Another ethnic

minority informant lamented, “[b]ut no benefitsfrom the agreement have come to our community.It is put under the development program, butdevelopment for whom?” Ceasefire loggingconcessions represent ‘structural violence’ in whichviolence has been transformed from physical forceinto territorialized mining and logging concessions.As such, any natural resource extraction anddevelopment projects brought into the ethnicminority state by the national military regimeremain bound to ‘violent development’.

Modified Methodologies to MatchTransformed Violence

Conducting research within a region of politicalunrest necessarily shaped my research methodology,the data that I collected and what I am able topublish. Ethnographic methodologies oftenartificially separate the culture of political violencefrom the research data extracted. The AmericanAnthropology Association’s (AAA) “Code of Ethics”and “Principles of Professional Responsibility”assume violence is “symptomatic of some socialpathogen that is to be circumvented whilemaneuvering about the field” (Kovats-Bernat 2003:212). But violence is an underlying attributeembedded within social interactions that evadesmethodological isolation and subsequent removalfrom analysis. Research methodology, therefore,must recognize that violence should not just be“treated as a surface effect of (its) origin” but ratherbe seen as a “condition of its own reproduction”(Feldman 1991: 20).

Violence manifests in different forms fordifferent people within various political, economic,and social structures. This characteristic is exactlywhat enables violence to be transformed from civilwar violence to ceasefire structural violence. DavidKeen describes the transition from conflict torelative peace as “representing a realignment ofpolitical interests and a readjustment of economicstrategies rather than a clean break from violence toconsent, from theft to production, or fromrepression to democracy” (2001: 38-9). Keen


Ethnographies of Territorialized Terror: Research within Violent Environments

succinctly captures the idea of ‘violent development’in declaring that “violence has its roots in thepolitical and economic processes of ‘peace’,” andsuggesting that we look for “the violence inherent inthe development and political consolidation of‘peace-time’” (1997: 67).

Violence is an inseparable aspect of culture, andcannot be dissected out in order to examine a ‘pure’specimen or culture. Therefore, just as my researchmethodology cannot be isolated from violentconditions, development promised by a militaryregime cannot be separated from the repression thatis its genesis. For the ethnic minority state, theceasefires have facilitated further entrenchedstructural violence into ethnic minority territory,increasing ethnic disparity and ecologicaldestruction. Violence and development, in thiscontext, can be understood as mutually related andoverlapping processes. Peace accomplished throughnon-democratic, non-participatory methods forcedby economic coercion results in further instability,penetration of structural violence, and thus non-sustainable peace. Critically lacking is any attemptby the national government to address the sources ofdissent that originally triggered the conflict.

Dilemmas of Ethnographic Representation inConflict Areas

Conducting research on an emerging ethno-ecological movement raises serious issues ofethnographic representation. The ethnographermust take into account how the ‘subjects’ becomeportrayed and therefore articulated in the media,how this may influence the course of the movement,and the intended and unintended consequences of‘for whom’ and ‘about whom’ the ethnographerwrites (Brosius 1999a, 1999b; Dove 1999).

Conducting research in violent places challengespositivistic anthropological methodological notionsof researcher control and ethnographic authority atthe field site. Violent environments dictate that thefield, and therefore the techniques to acquire data,remain elastic, unpredictable, and beyond thecontrol of the ethnographer who must, for instance,

rely upon local trackers for protection. In this way,the “premise that ethnographers inescapably exercisetextual and social authority over the people theystudy” becomes blurred (Pierce 1999: 94).

Research in conflict areas may also include, attimes, acts of deception, misrepresentation, andclandestine research, with the researcher invokingmultiple identities dependent on varying fieldcircumstances. Jennifer Pierce, an anthropologistinterested in the complex operations of gender andpower in the field, uses the term outlaw to describethe ethnographer’s shifting position in the field. Sheclaims that the “outlaw position is a multiple anddiscontinuous identity whose movement betweenpositions proves to be a critical advantage inuncovering the ‘regimes of power’” (1999: 96). Byinterviewing both ethnic minority elites andsubordinates, I was able to better understand theexternal and internal ethnic politics of the strugglefor independence.

While Michael Dove persuasively argues that“we need to worry less about the unintendedconsequences of our study of local organizations andmovements, and to worry more about the intendedconsequences of our relative lack of study of centralinstitutions of power” (1999: 225), conflict areaspresent a particularly complex situation in thisregard, given the potential for and severity of the“unintended consequences”. Engaging with a newlyemerging social struggle embedded within a violentenvironment in a foreign country quickly becomesfraught with dilemmas, which is why in fear ofharming either my informants or myself I decidednot to refer to my research site by name in thispaper. The problem with this decision, however, isthat in doing so I negate the possibility for positiveoutcomes from my published writing, to the extentthat empowerment of the ethnic minority remains acentral objective of my work.

Even if fear of violent reaction to my work werenot a consideration, my representation of the ethnicminority and their struggle could become a sourceof conflict (although this may be exaggerating thepossible effects my own student research may have


Kevin Woods

on the conflict). It may be problematic to provideinformation about a struggle within contestedterritories, even with the intention of empoweringthe oppressed, when it could in fact lead toinforming the oppressive party on the weaknesses ofthe oppressed.

Working in a landscape of ‘violent development’has necessitated a deliberate shift from the notion ofethnographer as ‘detached’ observer. In order tobetter represent the power imbalance manifested inpolitical and economic inequities between thegoverning dictatorship and the ethnic minority, Ifeel it is important to establish an overtly partisanposition as I analyze and write up the results of myresearch. Thus I criticize state development projectsthat jeopardize local ethnic minority livelihoods andecological integrity, but I choose not toproblematize the ethnic minority struggle in mypublished writing. In keeping with providing asupportive representation, I am critical only of thoseethnic minority leaders that conspire with thecurrent government. This does not mean to implythat the ethnic minority does not exhibit similarpower struggles or is in itself monolithic. I do not,however, delineate the internal ethnic minoritypower struggles, their own violent tendencies, orweakening in the movement from the post-ceasefireinternalization of violence, since this detracts fromtheir solidarity and therefore strength.

Ethnographic Methodology Carved out ofSafe Spaces

My own fieldwork was dramatically modified asa result of doing research within ethnic conflictareas. In order to conduct research on this topic Itook on the identity of a tourist when dealing withgovernment authorities. While I never deceived myinterviewees of my real identity and intentions, Ihave known people to employ alternativemethodological tactics in order to extractinformation from others who they feel might giveinformation to government authorities or would notprovide information given the researcher’s trueidentity. These tactics include having business cards

displaying different identities to be used dependingon the situation, such as a prospective financialinvestor in the logging industry.

In two major urban capitals of Country A myinformants repeatedly notified me that they wereunder surveillance, and that we could only meetbriefly so as not to alert military intelligence. Iremained vigilant when traveling to interviews tomake sure I was not being followed and stayed inhotels that I had been informed were not owned by,or on the radar of, the national military. I kept mycoded contact information on my person at alltimes, and hid scribbled English interview noteswithout reference to time, location, or informant. Idid not take any pictures of any informants or thelocation of interviews.8 Also, none of the interviewswere audio taped for fear of confiscation.

In Country A, the national government largelyrestricts the movement of foreigners to a few urbantowns, with some possibility to adventure into thecountryside with a hired driver and vehicle. Thenational military refused foreigners entry intoterritory aggressively controlled by ethnic minorityinsurgent groups. However, ethnic insurgent groupsrecently placated through ceasefire agreementsusually permit foreigners to visit the major urbanregional centers. In the particular ethnic state whereI conducted my research, I was only permitted tovisit three towns, one of which remained beyondreach due to monsoon rains. This of courseconstrained my data collection by limiting myinterviews to relatively educated, urban, non-farmersliving within locales directly under national militarycontrol. The only political leaders to whom I hadinterview access were ethnic leaders granted freedomby the national military to travel between nationaland ethnic-minority-controlled territory.

At times, these constraints perversely facilitatedmy research. Military personnel not only restrict themovement of people, but also monitor packagescrossing borders. For this reason, I oftenvolunteered to deliver packages for work friendswithin and outside Country A when traveling to andfrom the ethnic minority state. This served to put



me into contact with senior ethnic minority leaders,since it not only provided them information fromfriends outside, but also showed them that I waswilling to help.

Within these constricted elements, I strove tomaneuver within locally appropriate andappropriated avenues by relying more heavily on the“local ethic” (Kovats-Bernat 2002). Operatingwithin local spaces carved out from the militarizedenvironment becomes a daily practice as local peoplecreate elaborate systems of avoidance. For example,in the ethnic minority state there has been adisplacement of politics into the religious spherewhere they operate a relatively strong grassrootsresistance. These inner religious circles greatlysupported my research endeavors by leading me intotheir sacred spaces, even though this restricted myinterviewees to ethnic religious leaders and theiryouth supporters.

Another way I was able to get access to thecountryside was by legally traveling on public pick-up trucks and riverboats between towns accessible toforeign tourists. Although I was not allowed towander around when traveling between theseforeigner-permitted towns, I was able to roughlyassess tree cover and general species composition,government reforestation efforts (such as fruit andvaluable hardwoods plantations), infrastructureprojects (such as roads and bridges), and locationand quantity of ethnic-minority- and national-military-controlled road check points (which infersrelative power, often shared, over specific territory).This limited visual access provided a generalunderstanding of the degree of national governmentpenetration into areas that had formerly been underthe sole control of the ethnic minority, and itsconsequential effect on land use and ecologicalintegrity. For example, all along transportationroutes secured by the national military, such as therailway, swaths of forest have been clear-cut on bothsides, often replaced by a few unmanaged valuablehardwood trees and national religious temples.

ConclusionAs resources become relatively scarce in stable,

developed regions, there is an increasing demand forraw materials from less-developed countries thathave retained the majority of their natural resources.However, I believe that as more countries becomeindustrialized in the 21st century, natural resourcerepositories which the ‘global North’ has relied uponwill become increasingly scarce in the ‘global South’.This, in turn, will lead industrialized countries toseek these valuable capital inputs from new regionsnot as yet well-integrated into global naturalresource extraction networks. As my case studyillustrates, conflict areas are likely to be among thesesource regions, since they have not previously hadthe political stability, institutional capacity, orinfrastructural development conducive to resourceextraction.

Targeting violent territories for natural resourceextraction often aggravates violence by providingfunding mechanisms to fuel the conflict. Ethnicterritories, which become valuable to outsiders fortheir rich natural resources, often encourage nationaland transnational actors to, at worst, conquer theterritory through warfare or, at best, introducecoercive economic measures to gain access to theterritory. However, as this article has outlined,extracting natural resources from conflict areas doesnot bring sustainable peace or economic well-beingto the indigenous people. Instead, the intrusionperpetuates the conflict by not addressing theunderlying cause of the violence.

This case study, despite the absence ofreferences to place, can elucidate the ways in which‘peace for development’ has failed by exacerbatingethnic disparity and ecological violence. Research insuch sites is valuable in that greater understanding ofthe dynamics of these violent spaces can contributeto theoretical perspectives on the links betweenconflict, development, and conservation, which mayprovide lessons for more progressive peacefulsolutions. Methodology, however, mustcorrespondingly adapt in order to follow these newpaths that researchers are traveling.


Kevin Woods

Notes1I borrow the term “violent environments”

from Nancy Peluso and Michael Watts’ editedvolume Violent Environments (2001).

2 Since I cannot refer to the name of the ethnicminority, I will refer to them simply as ‘ethnicminority’, whereas I will refer to the ethnic majorityruling the military government as ‘ethnic or nationalmajority’. Although I will treat these categories as asingle grouping, I do not mean to imply that thesegroups represent a monolithic entity. I apologize forany confusion or difficulty in reading that this maybear on the reader.

3 The “cross-border businessmen” refer to thosebusinessmen facilitating trading of resources acrossthe border, whether they belong to the ethnicminority and/or majority within the country theresearch was conducted in (Country A), or from thebordering country (Country B). “Local/nationalgovernment officials” refer to officials representingthe ethnic minority state, as well as the nationalgovernment of Country A and B.

4 By ‘violent development’ I mean the deliberatetransformation of brute violent force (e.g., warfare,forced labor, rape, etc.) into ‘structural violence’, orviolence which manifests within political andeconomic structures. The ceasefire resourceextraction concessions offered to outsiders by thegovernment represent an example. Another can beseen in the construction of the only bridge crossingthe major river from A’s still-hostile ethnic minoritystate to Country B. While government officialsclaimed this bridge construction to be a gracioussymbol of the ‘modern development’ promised inthe ceasefire’s wake, to ethnic residents the bridgerepresents a potent political symbol of dominationover their territory, natural resource wealth, andreligious devotion. A shrine dedicated to thegovernment’s declared national religion stands nearthe bridge entrance, which witnesses heavy traffic oftimber and minerals being transported out of theethnic minority state across the national border.

5Due to extreme discrepancy in developmentand economic achievement between Country B’s

relatively wealthy east provinces and the isolatedpoor western provinces, attention has shifted totarget western border towns, such as along theborder where I did my research, granting specialeconomic privileges to encourage borderdevelopment.

6The national military dictatorship, known forits human rights abuses, and the ethnic minorityliving in the far northern periphery of Country A,have been engaged in civil war over issues ofdemocratic representation and ethnic sovereignty formany decades.

7See Ferguson (1994) for an account of howdevelopment initiatives, despite their purportedlyapolitical promise of modernity and povertyalleviation, remain ideological displays for othermasked political intentions.

8However, a digital camera proved useful inother settings because the memory card can be easilyconcealed to safely hide all photos recorded.

ReferencesBrosius, J.P. 1999a. Green dots, pink hearts:

Displacing politics from the Malaysian rainforest. American Anthropologist 101(1): 36-57.

Brosius, J.P. 1999b. Analyses and interventions:Anthropological engagements withenvironmentalism. Current Anthropology40(3): 277-288.

Dove, M. 1999. Writing for, versus about, theethnographic other: Issues of engagement andreflexivity in working with a tribal NGO inIndonesia. Identities 6: 225-253.

Feldman, A. 1991. Formations of Violence: TheNarrative of the Body and Political Terror inNorthern Ireland. University of Chicago Press,Chicago.

Ferguson, J. 1994. The Anti-Politics Machine:‘Development’, Depoliticization, andBureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis,University of Minnesota Press.

Keen, D. 1997. A rational kind of madness. OxfordDevelopment Studies 25(1).

Keen, D. 2001. Incentives and disincentives for



violence. Pages 19-42 in Greed and Grievance:Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, Berdal andMalone, eds. International DevelopmentResearch Centre, Ottawa.

Kovats-Bernat, J.C. 2002. Negotiating dangerousfields: Pragmatic strategies for fieldwork amidviolence and terror. American Anthropologist104(1): 208-222.

Peluso, N. and M. Watts, eds. 2001. ViolentEnvironments. Cornell University Press, Ithaca,New York.

Pierce, J. 1999. Reflections on fieldwork in a complexorganization: Lawyers, ethnographers, authority,and lethal weapons. Pages 94-110 in StudyingElites Using Qualitative Methods, R. Imberand J. Imber, eds. Sage Publications, London.


Kevin Woods

“Map of Waterways near Tescuco Lake, Mexico”In Extracto de los Autos de Diligencias. By Auirre Cuevas and Jospeh Espinora, Mexico, 1848. Latin American Map Collection,Beineke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Yale University.


“Vine Branch”In The Anatomy of Plants. By Nehemiah Grew, 1682. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Introduction Agroforestry and access to local forests play vital

roles in the livelihood strategies and landmanagement techniques of smallholder farmers inmountainous areas of Africa. By understanding howsmallholders use and view on-farm and off-farmtrees, agroforestry and forestry initiatives can bebetter developed to benefit the smallholder. Inaddition to providing products to smallholders, treesplay an important role in the conservation ofagricultural landscapes and the maintenance ofbiodiversity (Schoeneberger and Ruark 2003). Abetter understanding of how on-farm trees aremanaged and used by smallholders is thus not onlyapplicable to poverty alleviation endeavors, but alsoto conservation efforts. Such information isespecially timely since currently the nation of Kenyais re-structuring its forest management policies to bemore responsive to local households’ concerns.

In this study I investigate tree managementstrategies and forest use of smallholder farmers inMeru District, Kenya. I pay special attention towhy farmers plant and harvest trees on their land;what role tree utilization plays in their livelihoodstrategy, and its relation to smallholder farmers’ useof forest resources.

Background and Site DescriptionMeru Central District1 serves as an importantagricultural center in the production of food andcash crops for the nation of Kenya. Located on thefertile northeastern slopes of Mt. Kenya, the districttraverses four agroecological zones. Within thishighly heterogeneous environment, annual rainfallranges from 35-80 inches in the high altitude areasto 15-30 inches at low altitudes, with greatvariability from year to year (Bernard 1969). The

area’s economy is dominated by small landholders(Bernard 1969; Dolan 2001), who are involved inthe production of a multitude of export crops aswell as goods for regional and national agriculturalmarkets. The large variety of agriculturalopportunities for small farmers in Meru has resultedin a high demand for land in the region.

In addition to agriculture, Meru contains forestreserves historically managed by the District ForestOffice. One of these reserves is Imenti Forest,which is broken into two sections by the Meru-Nanyuki highway running through it. The higheraltitude section primarily consists of timberplantations owned by the district but managed bydifferent private interests such as regional teafactories, local sawmills, and Kenya’s telephone andelectricity companies. Local farmers are oftenallowed to cultivate small plots in the plantationsafter the trees are harvested, in exchange forreplanting tree seedlings after three years ofagriculture on their plots. This system is known asthe shamba system and is similar to the Indonesiantaungya system. On the eastern side of the highway,“Lower Imenti” is native forest2 managed informallyby the forest department and local communities.Lower Imenti is reliant on natural regeneration andserves as a source of forest products and grazingareas for surrounding smallholder farmers.

In July of 2000, management of Imenti Forestwas transferred from Meru District Forestry Officeto the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), and theKenyan Department of Natural Resources placed acomplete ban on all cutting and entering of nationalforest reserves in Kenya, including Imenti Forest.3The closure of national forest reserves was inreaction to rampant destruction of Kenya’s foreststhat occurred from 1995 to 2000 (Vanleeuwe et al.


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Robin Barr, MEM 2004

2003). Kenya Wildlife Service did aerial surveyingof Imenti Forest in 1999 and found a high level ofdestruction due to illegal logging, charcoal burning,clearing of trees for cultivation, and grazing (seemap 1). Meru District is currently in the process ofreviewing rules governing management and access tothe forest in light of recent local and nationalchanges in leadership.

Methods Findings are

based on field researchI conducted with afour person inter-disciplinary team inMeru Central District,Kenya from Junethrough August 2003.I used semi-structuredinterviews with localleaders, key infor-mants, and groupinterviews with self-

help organizations to understand how forest reservesare managed. Interviews were performed primarilyin the Kimeru language with the assistance of atranslator. In addition, we performed a randomsurvey of 40 households living within one kilometerof Imenti Forest to investigate tree planting andharvesting practices, household use of the forest, andchanges in forest use and tree management afterforest closure. I used open-ended questions in thesurvey and allowed myself to probe in unusual cases,



Figure 1: Responses to open ended questions on why people had planted certain trees in the last fiveyears.

Map 1: Map of degradation of Imenti Forest based on aerial surveys done by Kenya Wildlife Service, February-June 1999(Vanleeuwe et al. 2003).

such as households that had planted an unusuallyhigh or low number of trees.

ResultsReasons for planting trees

Open-ended questions regarding why peopleplanted trees on their farms usually rendered alaundry list of potential uses for trees with timberand fuelwood on the top, but no firm plan as tohow the specific trees planted would be used (see fig.1). Although farmers rarely had distinct harvestinguses planned, they were relying on on-goingproducts and services from the trees, such asfuelwood, fruits, and fodder, as well as cultural andenvironmental services including boundarydelineation, shade, wind protection, and increasedon-farm moisture.

Ongoing discussions with households revealed atrend in decision-making in on-farm tree

management that changed over time and wasgenerally linked with the age of the household.Younger families were more concerned with spaceavailability for trees on their farms than olderfamilies. Older families were often more concernedwith the labor involved in planting, weeding andwatering tree seedlings than younger families.

Harvesting practicesThe most common reason given for harvesting a

tree was timber for building purposes on one’s ownfarm (see fig. 2A and B). Often this involved aparent needing to build a child’s home, or an elderlyhousehold building an income-generating or labor-saving structure. Such structures included rentalhouses, zero-grazing units,4 chicken coups, and cowsheds. Tree harvesting among younger familiestypically occurred during the process of clearingadditional land for crop-planting or was done togenerate fast cash through charcoal production.

Tree harvesting was also commonly associatedwith changes in land use and ownership. Forexample, subdivision of land usually involvedclearing trees from new areas for planting. Absenteelandowners who rent out their land often had toclear sections of the property of trees so that thoserenting might have space to cultivate.

Uses of the forestThe most common uses of the forest before

closure were fuelwood gathering and grazing (see fig.3). Younger families seemed to rely on the forest forproducts more than older families and women usedthe forest more than men. This gender difference islargely due to the difference in tree use by men andwomen in Meru District. Men are primarilyinvolved in uses of trees for construction or sale,while women use trees in an on-going manner forfuelwood, fruits, and fodder.

Since fuelwood is the most common use of theforest, women’s activities were affected most byforest closure. Two women, in particular, reportedthat the forest closure had made them unable tocook beans for their families, due to the largeramount of fuelwood that beans required.Additionally, younger women were affected more


Robin Barr

Figures 2A & 2B: The Pie Chart in A (above)depicts the reasons given for harvesting each tree in thelast five years. The columns in B (below) show howthose trees harvested for on-farm use were used by theowner.

than older women, as most older women got theirfuelwood from on-farm trees. Two older womenpointed out that this was a luxury they did not havewhen their family was young.

Discussion: Agroforestry Life StrategyObserved

The study revealed a culture of treemanagement in Meru that was largely intertwinedwith local perceptions of household lifecycles. Thiswas a finding that was not predicted during surveydesign, thus the numerical sections of the surveywere not designed to test for it. Rather, open-endedquestions regarding on-farm tree management,planning, and decision-making revealed thathousehold strategies were justified by farmers basedon their own predictions of household trajectories inregard to labor availability, space availability, andresource demand. To better understand this, I willbriefly discuss the household life stages as I observedthem and as they were explained to me in Meru,and the role that on-farm and off-farm treemanagement practices played in these stages.

Inheritance and land restructureWhen a young couple inherits land, tasks of

delineating and establishing land boundaries,building a house, and preparing the land forcultivation are the top priority. This involvesclearing trees in fields that will be used for cropcultivation and planting trees along the new

boundary lines fordelineation. It also involvesplanting fruit and foddertrees. Since young couplesusually are lacking in capitalbut rich in labor, they tendto put a strong focus oncrops as their main initialsource of food and income,and rely on the forest forwood products. Shade fromtrees is believed to reduce theproductivity of crops, somost mid-field trees arecleared from the newproperty. Harvested trees

can be used for construction, gathered for fuelwood,or sold for start-up money.

The task of planting trees along the boundariesof the homestead is a labor-intensive, multi-yearprocess. Seedlings of trees for boundary delineationare purchased and planted in large numbers sincemany planted seedlings reportedly “dry up” in thefirst year. Subsequent years involve replantingseedlings to replace those that have died. Theapproach to establishing fruit trees is different.Women are most concerned with fruit trees on theproperty and will brainstorm with their familieswhich trees they want based on household fruitpreferences. A woman will most often plant a seedfrom purchased fruit in a place that is either near thehouse or in a section she knows is fertile. Specialattention, such as individual weeding, watering, andfertilizing, will be given to young fruit trees so thatmost will survive. This is because a single, well-tended fruit tree can usually provide plenty of fruitfor a household, while many trees are needed tomeet the household’s boundary-delineation andfuelwood needs.

Land management: household diversificationand income generation

As household members continue to managetheir land, they begin to build up capital andbecome more efficient farm managers. As thisincrease in stability and efficiency takes place,farmers are better equipped to devote more of their



Figure 3: Uses of the forest before closure and the number of people who reported using theforest in this way.

land to trees. Meru farmers perceive trees as sourcesnot only of on-farm products (which reduces thelabor requirements involved in going to the forest)but also as insurance and something that improvesthe overall quality of their land through moistureretention, wind control, temperature stabilization,and erosion control.5 They also further increase thefinancial stability of the household since their salecan provide a single large payment of cash to thehome. For example, one elderly couple reportedharvesting their trees to raise money for unexpectedhospital fees. Another man reported harvesting histrees to sell as charcoal during a drought year whenthe family was in need of cash due to crop failures.In contrast, one man who did not own trees on hisland reported having to illegally harvest trees in theforest to pay for school fees. This was a practice heregretted but felt necessary, and he was able torelinquish it when state schools became free in 2000.

Aging households and on-farm treemanagement

As a household grows older, children becomeadults and start their own households, causing bothexpenses and labor availability to lessen. The abilityof women to go to the forest is greatly reduced withage. The size of one’s property also diminishes as theland is subdivided and passed on to children. Forthese reasons, elderly households will look for low-labor methods of making money and food from asmall amount of land. Trees provide one viable wayto do this. Elderly households that have a ‘micro-forest’ of timber trees can give other cropland tochildren, while retaining their trees. These trees canbe used as secure, near-by sources of fuelwood andfodder, as well as timber. The elderly householdsinterviewed used their timber to build shops, rentalhouses, chicken coops, or zero-grazing units. Shopsand rental houses provide a regular income for elderlyhouseholds to live on. Chicken coops and zero-grazing units provide low-labor, high-return methodsof livestock management, but usually require largeinitial investments in terms of construction materials,which most young households cannot afford. Thesale of timber trees can also provide capital for elderlyhouseholds to invest in other money-making ventures.

Dynamic factors in household life cycles andagroforestry

The relationship between agroforestry strategiesand household life cycles among Meru farmers is adynamic process that is influenced by changingpolicies, technologies, and societal transitions. Themajor changes affecting tree management strategiesthat I observed in Meru District, Kenya involved theintroduction of new, faster growing varieties of trees,a rise in the number of absentee landlords,fluctuating tree markets, and the recent ban onaccessing Imenti Forest. The study also revealedthat subdivision of inherited land is affectinghousehold tree planting practices. Many peoplereported clearing trees when they inherited the plotand then, despite escalating demand for treeproducts, not replanting them because their landwas too small now and they needed it all for crops.

Conclusion In this study of smallholder agroforestry

strategies, I found that the life stage of a householdplays an important role in determining the on-farmtree planting and harvesting activities in MeruDistrict. The implications of this are that forestpolicies unevenly affect different segments of thepopulation. A continuation of the forest ban willput increased strain on young families who arealready under multiple stresses due to the decreasingsizes of agricultural plots in Meru, expenses inproviding for young children, and health concernssuch as HIV/AIDS. This study can contribute tothe prevention of rural-to-urban migration of youngfamilies by providing insight for policy makers onthe subsistence strategies and risks of younghouseholds regarding forest and on-farm treemanagement.

Another important point to be drawn from thisstudy is that the lifetime of a household involves afluctuation in on-farm tree management andreliance on forest resources. This creates a dynamiclandscape with temporal and spatial diversity wherefarm livelihood strategies fluctuate on an individualhousehold basis, but also respond differently tochanging policies and economic conditions. Treesfrom forests and farms play complimentary roles


Robin Barr

throughout the household lifetime. This confirmsthe notion that on-farm trees and local forestscannot be managed as separate entities on thelandscape, but must be understood as servingdifferent and complimentary roles in fluctuatinghousehold strategies (Croll and Parkin 1992).

Notes1The paper focuses on Meru District, Kenya,

not to be confused with Mt. Meru in Tanzania, orthe Wameru of Tanzania.

2The term “native forest” refers to a forestcomprised primarily of native tree species.

3Letter from Minister Nyenze dated 14 July2000; Legal Notice 93 of 24 July 2000; Ref. No.MENR 04/1A.

4A zero-grazing unit is a concrete stall (or seriesof stalls) for cattle that is designed to aid in thecollection of manure. Zero-grazing units are usuallyaccompanied by the on-farm planting of napier grassto feed the cows. This saves labor since on-farmfodder does not have to be carried far, cows do nothave to be herded to the forest for grazing, andmanure for farming is easily collected.

5Note that these are environmental servicesdiscussed by farmers and have not necessarily beenproven scientifically to be the case in Meru.

ReferencesBernard, F.E. 1969. Recent agricultural change east of

Mount Kenya. Papers in International Studies,Africa Series No. 4. Ohio University Center forInternational Studies Africa Program. Athens,Ohio.

Croll, E. and D. Parkin. 1992. Bush Base, ForestFarm: Culture, Environment and Development.Routledge, London.

Dolan, C. S. 2001. The ‘good wife’: Struggles overresources in the Kenyan horticultural sector.Journal of Development Studies 37(3): 39-68.

Schoeneberger, M.M. and G.A. Ruark. 2003.Agroforestry—Helping Sustainable ForestManagement. Paper delivered to the UNFFIntersessional Experts Meeting on the Role ofPlanted Forests in Sustainable ForestManagement, 24-30 March, 2003. NewZealand.

Vanleeuwe, H., B. Woodley, C. Lambrechts, and M.Gachanja. 2003. Changes in the state ofconservation of Mt. Kenya Forests: 1999-2002.Interim Report to Kenya Wildlife Service,February 2003. Kul Graphics Ltd.


Agroforestry Strategies over a LifetimeTitle of article

“The Mockingbird”:In Parley's panorama, or, Curiosities of nature andart, history and biography. By Samuel GriswoldGoodrich. E. Nebhut & Brothers, Georgia, 1861.Yale Collection of American Literature, BeineckeRare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

IntroductionEvery 75 out of 100 people in Nepal are

farmers and the majority are involved in theagriculture market system. Whether in a small haatstreet market or as part of the greater globaleconomy, farmers have to face the uncertainties andcomplexities contingent on the market system. In apolitically and economically faltering nation likeNepal, what does it mean to be a small farmer? Theforces that determine the lives of farmers in this tinylandlocked nation between India and China, aptlyreferred to as “yam between boulders,” extend wellbeyond its borders. How do the farmers in Nepalsurvive in the face of these forces, forces which theyhave no power to alter?

The HaatRangeli glows in an amalgamation of colors as

the sun begins to wane in the early dusk. Rangtranslated into English means colors, and colors arethe first thing that strike me in this small town.Rangali lies in a flat strip of plain called Terai thatlines the southern border of mostly mountainousNepal. Brilliant red, yellow, and blue saris ofwomen, pure green color of vegetation and brightbut gaudily painted shutters in Rangeli create aunique collage of colors.

Every afternoon a small muddy street cornercomes alive with hundreds of bustling localshurrying to get their goods into the street market,called haat, at the right time. “Right time,” peoplesay, means the “right price.” You can get everythinghere: from local fresh vegetables to Indian “Fair andLovely” cosmetic cream and cheap Chinese electricalgoods. Compared to my hometown, Katmandu,

everything seems very cheap, especially the freshgreen vegetables. But there isn’t enough of a marketin Rangeli for all the vegetables produced here andpeople have to look beyond the haat. Biratnagar,the second biggest city, is just 22 kilometers away,but with a lot of competition it is difficult to get the“right price” there too.

A quaint little town on the Indian border,Rangeli is not the sort of place where one goes forno apparent reason. “Why would you want to go toRangeli,” lots of people have asked me. There was atime when Rangeli was the major trade pointbetween India and Nepal. But after the Mahendrahighway was built,1 and Biratnagar became the tradecenter, Rangeli has become just a colorful town nearthe great city, a place where peri-urban farmers tryhard to survive in the urban market. Rangeli isobscure but it is far from the most rural place inNepal. I find it hard to describe Rangeli insuperlatives: it is poor but not the poorest; it isremote but not the remotest. It just is, strugglingeveryday, receiving scant attention: one of thosevillages where poor farmers work to grow food sevendays a week, twelve months a year, and sometimescannot afford to eat what they grow.

The ResearchI went to Rangeli hoping to understand what it

means to be a farmer there and in places like it. Ihoped to get acquainted with farmers’ lives, theirdreams and expectations, their involvement in themarket economy, and how it has affected them.Both Rangeli and Biratnagar share an open borderwith India. The flow of Indian products and Indianpolicies has a major impact on almost all of the


Haat Colors

Raji Dhital, MESc 2004

market decisions made by its tiny land-lockedneighbor, Nepal. Rangeli provided a perfectlocation for me to study the farmers’ positions in thecomplex system of agriculture marketing from thestreet market haat to the urban markets. I wantedto know their relationship to urban consumers andwhether farmers are the beneficiaries or the victimsof the agricultural market system.

Though I am Nepalese, I am from Katmanduand this part of Terai is entirely new to me. Yetafter spending a year in the U.S.A., I feel greatwarmth and familiarity in the colors that Rangeliinfuse in me. On a sultry July morning I feelcomfort in the earth radiating beneath me as I rushto keep my first appointment with the small farmersin a little teashop.

The FarmersAt seven in the morning the teashop is already

brimming with activity. The aroma of strong teawafts from a dusty teapot steaming on a big earthenstove. A young girl with bright eyes rushes back andforth with big cauldrons full of chickpeas. Dark-skinned farmers are clustered in a semicircle on thewooden benches that creak every time someone sitsdown. The farmers are getting ready for yet anotherlaborious day, but they always seem ready to have anextra cup of tea and talk. “Do you have some timeto talk to me?” I ask. “Are you working for thegovernment?” they ask. Luckily, I am not, nor am Ia development worker.

I say I am just a student without any paycheckswaiting for me at the end of the day. “Like us, laborin the field twenty-four hours a day and no money,”someone reciprocates. We have a common ground.Vishwanath Mandal seems to be the most talkativeone; his wit and wisdom pleases us all. “What is themost important thing for a farmer?” he asks,answering immediately. “Grains. People think theycan just buy them, but we actually produce them.”“What about vegetable farmers, I heard that theymake more money?” I question. “Money isimportant for farmers but so is grain; we can neverafford to buy them if we don’t grow them.” His

sentences carry a profound meaning. Poor farmers,all over the world, hold subsistence crops sacrosanct.In this part of the world, the majority of farmersplant rice and wheat as subsistence crops, some ofwhich they sell in the market. Small farmers mostlyplant vegetables for commercial purposes and a fewbig farmers plant jute and sugarcane.

The NepalisAs the morning ripens, two landlords also join

the teashop. The difference in status is visible aschairs are pulled out hastily for them and somefarmers stand to make room for them. The farmersrefer to them as Nepali, from up in the hills.Steaming tea arrives swiftly before Nepali landlordsask, and probably they won’t pay for it either. Ifind it disturbing that the farmers from the plains,themselves referred to as Madhesi, distancethemselves even further from their country and theirlandlords by calling the latter Nepali and notPahadi, the correct word for people from the hills.

The Madhesi, literally meaning people from thelowlands, comprise an immigrant Indian populationthat migrated to Nepal in the beginning of thetwentieth century. They still share strong culturaland social ties with India. The majority of thelowland region’s eleven million people are strugglingbelow the poverty level. Very few Madhesi hold ahigh government or military post; they are stillconsidered somewhat uncouth and uncivilized bythe Nepali elites. Madhesi-Nepali social relationsextend one step beyond the regular conflictsbetween the richer and the poorer. They are poorand Madhesi.

The discomfort written visibly on their faces,Madhesi in the teashop now fidget with their foodand look towards the Nepali whenever I ask aquestion. “Why don’t you ask them, they own lotsof land,” Vishwanath says. “Vishwanath, if she isasking you, you must answer her,” one of thelandlords says before adding, to me, “What is it thatyou want to know?” His condescending tonereminds me of other Nepali landlords I met the daybefore. “Nobody can give you more detailed data


Haat Colors

than us,” they prophesized, “what can these Madhesipossibly tell you that we don’t?” That is preciselywhat I want to know. And the Madhesi, it turnsout, have a lot to say.

VishwanathVishwanath, to my gratitude, is very

forthcoming. Clad in checked mens’ lungi2 andlong shirt, he looks like a typical middle-agedMadhesi. His eyes are exceptionally light in colorbut alert. “I didn’t know that you were following usto the fields too,” he says showing his caffeine-stained teeth, as we head off together after theMadhesi breakfast: tea, chickpeas and roasted rice.His Nepali is heavily accented and I can’t speakMaithili, the language Madhesi speak. With a fewHindi words here and there, however, we manage toget along just fine. He is ready to answer myquestions and makes me think of others that cannotbe answered easily. Remarks that farmers casuallymake, like “How will we survive if we don’tproduce?,” hold deeper meaning. I know it is notonly they, but we too, in far away Katmandu, whocan’t survive if they don’t produce. But the ruralurban gap in this tiny nation is so wide thatKathmandu residents get further and further awayfrom the problems that farmers like Vishwanath faceto feed themselves and us.

The Problems“Ah, ask me what is not the problem?

Everything is so expensive. Money is a sizableproblem. Hunger is a big problem, and this life isthe biggest one,” Vishwanath says. “Tell me aboutyour life then,” I encourage. Like the vast majorityof farmers in Nepal, who own less than a hectare,Vishwanath owns just 0.66 hectares (1 biga) of landand sharecrops another biga from a big farmer. Thedisparity of landholding in Terai and elsewhere inNepal is huge; roughly 30 percent of the householdsown 70 percent of the land, with the richest 2percent owning about 18 percent. Concentrationsof land in the hands of a few elite, and severeexploitation of the farmers through labor

expropriation, have long been characteristic ofNepalese political economy (Central Bureau ofStatistics Nepal 2000; Karki 2002). Various state-led grants and land tenures have ensured semi-feudalagrarian relations that still determine landlessnessand agricultural underdevelopment. Landconstitutes not only the predominant source ofincome but is also a symbol of significant socialstatus and power in Nepal. The small size oflandholdings pose a series of problems forsubsistence farmers like Vishwanath, who arewithout any other skills and job opportunities,limiting their chances of raising themselves in theclass hierarchy.

Money MattersVishwanath plants rice and wheat, the major

subsistence crops in his little piece of land, and somelentils and vegetables. He would like to plant morevegetables for commercial reasons but doesn’t havethe means to do so. Without any kind ofgovernment subsidy or support, even plantingsubsistence crops is very expensive for the Madhesihere. “A farmer needs to invest in labor, fertilizers,pesticides, irrigation pumps and also in seeds forvegetable farming,” Vishwanath says, “andeverything costs money.” Farming patterns aretraditional and very labor intensive and traditional.Irrigation facilities are almost non-existent. Mostpeople have to pump ground water by electric pumpfor irrigation, a substantial cost to small farmers. “Ihave to rent a machine for Rs. 80 per hour,”3

Vishwanath says, and “I need around ten hours for acrop.” Ironically, electricity for irrigation is the onlything that is subsidized by the government.

Vishwanath meets all production costs throughloans, either from a bank with 18 percent annualinterest or from the landowners or middlemen, wholend at the rate of 3-5 percent monthly interest. Inspite of the higher interest, Vishwanath preferstaking loans from the landowners, because they aremore flexible and there is little delay. Oftentimesrepayment involves fixing the price of the crop evenbefore harvesting. These conditions distance


Raji Dhital

farmers from the market economy and greatly favorsthe middlemen. After the hard work of one season,when Vishwanath harvests the crop, he divides itinto three parts: for the middlemen as loanrepayment, for the landowner as rent, and the littlesurplus that is left for his family. “I have a family offive and the grains last only for six to eight months.After that I have to buy the same rice for a muchhigher price. I feel like I am paying for the rice Ilabored to grow, but there is no way out.Sometimes I can’t afford to eat what I grow.” ForVishwanath, stuck with his little piece of land, highproduction investment, and unfair pricingmechanism, the agricultural market is unable toprovide the means to break the debt and povertycycle. He takes all the production risks without anyform of insurance.

Natural disasters make these risks worse. Iwitnessed Rangeli being flooded in what farmersdescribed as the worst flood in seven years. Tensefaces watched with worry as their mud huts, newlyplanted seedlings, and newly caught fish submergedin water. Farmers scurried to find a relative’s houseto spend a night, as their own houses lay inside theflood. The colorful town had a look of a smearedpainting as the downpour threatened to wash all itscolors away. Will Vishwanath endure heavy lossesbecause of the flood? Luckily, he says, the plantingseason had just started and very few farmers hadactually planted the seedlings. Farmers were savedthis year but it was a close call. Farmers’ ownperseverance, sense of community, and closenetwork are all that are keeping them alive throughthe bad and good times.

Good times are when the production is highand farmers have a surplus to sell in the market,their only source of income. But with very lowresources to invest on production, impoverishedfarmers like Vishwanath have no power to controlthe price of their product, which is in the hands ofmiddlemen and a few wealthy businessmen.

The MarketMy conversation with these wealthy

businessmen however reveals that the mostinfluential factor in determining the price is theIndian market. Agriculture in India enjoys bettergovernment subsidies and thus Indian farmers canafford to sell their products at a lower price thanNepali farmers. Indians have unrestricted marketaccess to Nepal, so Nepalese domestic markets haveto compete with the heavily subsidized productsfrom India. Rising as the hegemonic economicpower in South Asia, India controls Nepal bycontrolling all its trade entry points and water ports.Nepal, limited by its land-locked geography,economy, and chaotic politics, has little power tonegotiate the terms and conditions set by its giantneighbor. The state heads of Nepal, eager toappease their big neighbor, have signed andcontinue to sign treaties that undermine Nepalesemarket autonomy.

Without adequate support for infrastructure,like irrigation or farming technologies, Nepalifarmers have a hard time competing with importsfrom India, Bangladesh and other countries. Whilethe state is busy contemplating agreements that willgive it access to world trade, it is vulnerable andpowerless Vishwanath in Rangeli and hundreds likehim who stand to lose. Already, they feel they arebeing pushed towards an unfair market competitionwhere someone else’s victory is predetermined.Without giving adequate support to farmers so thatthe benefits from the market system are equitablydistributed, going further into the ‘free market’could devastate the Nepalese economy andagricultural production.

The PoliticsThere have been few instances of peasants’

collective movements in Nepalese history; however,peasants have been a strong part of national politicalmovements. From 1960 to 1990, Nepal had anautocratic single party system known as Panchayat.In 1990 the people’s revolution saw the emergenceof a democracy with a constitutional monarch,which ruled Nepal for twelve years until overthrownin 2002 by the King, who assumed all executive


Haat Colors

powers. Farmers in Rangeli voice strongdissatisfaction with both democracy and itssuccessor. “Government will do nothing for us,”says Vishwanath. “People come to us only whenthey are campaigning for elections. There is no gov-ernment for the poor.” I ask what he thinks aboutthe present king’s action. “I have heard that it isunconstitutional,” he says. “Is that good or bad?” Ipress on. “For me,” he replies, “I don’t care who isin power as long as the poor are not getting poorer.”

The poor are getting poorer however, andpessimism regarding the political parties in powerruns high. The previous democratic government hasreceived a lot of flak for its mismanagement,inefficiency and corruption. “The twelve year ruin”is what one old farmer I meet calls the period. Theold people even go as far as to reminisce the days ofthe autocratic Panchayat system, recalling fondly thepetty bureaucrats called JTAs, an acronym for JuniorTechnical Assistants. “Earlier the JTAs used tocome, talk and distribute things but now no onesees his face,” they complain.

I have a hard time trying to find him too. Afterthe third attempt I am finally able to meet with thepresent JTA. A proud educated young man,politically favored and supported by some of thebigger farmers, his indifference towards smallfarmers matches theirs towards him. “Ah,” saysVishwantah disparagingly, “the JTA comes to ourfields and asks for the biggest eggplant to show forthe demonstration project for the AsianDevelopment Bank.” This gives me a glimpse at thegap between the “agriculture development projects”and the farmers.

It was the Asian Development Bank that coaxedthe Nepali government into scrapping subsidies forthe shallow tubewells used for irrigation, during thesigning of the Second Program Loan under the 20-year Agriculture Perspective Plan. This has hit hardthe small farmers, who are left without any access toother irrigation projects and deep tubewells.

The ChemicalsIn the past few years government and non-

government organizations have offered limitedtraining regarding fertilizer application andintegrated pesticide management. These have givena sense of authority to farmers like Vishwanath, andhe has tremendous confidence in his ability to applythe right amount of fertilizers and pesticides to hisfield. However, no soil testing has been done forthis area. Without any soil tests, both the JTA andfarmers claim to “know” how much fertilizer shouldbe applied. My own observations indicate that,rather than knowledge, it is the money farmers canafford to pay that determines the amount offertilizers and pesticides used. And what is theresult? Soils of Rangeli have a sad story to tell ofincreasing compactness and declining productivity.Though Nepal is still the country that uses thelowest amount of fertilizers in South Asia andperhaps in the world, concerns are emerging.Pesticide poisoning in people due to consumption ofheavy pesticide residues in vegetables is increasing.4

Laboratories to check pesticide residues cannotbe easily found, though some laboratories have beenestablished for the promotion of soil testing. Butfor Vishwanath, the ride to the nearest laboratory inJhumka is a waste of money and the loss of precioustime to tend his fields; all for something he claimshe “knows”.

Without any alternatives, the cut in fertilizersubsidies in the early nineties has led to cheapfertilizers of unknown quality being smuggled fromIndia to the doorstep of Nepalese farmers. Farmersthemselves doubt the quality, but it is hard for manyto resist the cheap temptation. Smuggling variousgoods through Rangeli provides such a good incomethat Indian smugglers recently donated money forroad construction in Rangeli when the Nepalesegovernment failed to come up with funds. Roadprojects often make headlines for their power tomiraculously link rural people to marketopportunities. True maybe, but this incidence inRangeli shows whose interests these roads serve here.The deal between Indian smugglers and Nepaligovernment would be laughable had it not reflectedsuch government failure.


Raji Dhital

The MaoistsI get tremendously disturbed by the older

farmers romanticizing the autocratic Panchayat era;for me this is proof of how democratic leaders havemiserably failed the people in my own country.Furthermore, at the other end of the spectrum thereis the Maoist revolution. Nepal has been strugglingfor the last seven years with a Maoist insurgency,which has left over seven thousand people dead.Most recruited to the Maoist’s ‘people’s army’ comefrom the poor, lower class families of peasants, notmuch different from the farmers that I am talkingto, not much different from Vishwanath with hislight eyes and stained teeth.

Terai region has been relatively free fromMaoist activities, since the flat plains do not provideeasy hideouts for guerillas, though some flatlandslike Bardia are ravaged by the violence. However, asthe civil war continues, the plains are getting morevulnerable. Many jokes are made about becoming aMaoist. I flinch when a young Madhesi laughs anempty laugh and says, “There is no hope. Maybewe should all become Maoists now. I hear they payyou Rs. 100 a day.” Said in jest, chances of thisyoung man being a Maoist are probably nil, but Iam left chilled with the very real words: “no hope,”“Maoists,” “Rs. 100 a day.” You read of at least adozen Maoists getting killed in ‘encounters’everyday. But yet jokes like this are made. Againand again. And political ideologies aside, Rangelicould also turn into the recruiting ground for theso-called people’s army of Maoists like the Terairegions of Bardia. The youth in every poorcommunity look for a way out.

MigrationMore often than not, the way out leads out of

the country. An exodus occurs from the Terai ofNepal to nearby Punjab, Hariyana, Calcutta, Pune,and further to the Middle East, Malaysia, and NorthKorea. India alone absorbs almost 90 percent ofthese cheap laborers. “Will you send your son toIndia too?” I ask Vishwanath during ourconversation. “Well, maybe when he is older.” He

is not opposed to the idea. The labor conditions forsuch migrants are hideous, but a desire to break freefrom the poverty cycle drives hundreds of youngmen to different parts of the world. And it is therural remittance from such places, especially India,that sustains many rural villages. Sociologists andeconomists argue that these remittances create abackflow of economy that perpetuates the povertycycle in Nepal.5 Indeed, with a constant supply ofcheap laborers, India has nothing to lose andeverything to gain from the poverty it helps toperpetuate in Nepal.

For Vishwanath though, there are always storiesabout someone making it big. “If you get lucky, hesays, you can even afford to build a house inKathmandu.” Yes, that is a lucrative dream. Almost90 percent of the approximately 200 farmers Italked to dream of a rich urban life, although somemake it a point to say that if you are rich enough,villages are a great place to live too. None of themwant their children to end up as farmers, it is toohard a life. But for almost every dream, there is anopposite reality. What is the use of wishingotherwise? “A farmer’s son will most probably befarmer,” Vishwanath says; “little chance that he willbe a doctor, and that is the reality.”

RealitiesMy interactions with Vishwanath and other

farmers make it clear that there are layers of complexforces that affect their daily lives: local prejudice,land allocation, decisions of the state, the politicalquagmire, the global forces of capitalism and marketcompetition. As a farmer of Rangeli, Vishwanath inhis own way is trying to resist these forces, lookingfor ways out and most of all holding on to what ismost important to him: to keep producingsubsistence crops. He knows that he cannot putboth his feet fully in the market, though it isimportant to him.

I cannot come out of Rangeli without beingimpressed by the perseverance and faith of thefarmers, even in the face of hardship. I also cannotleave without a sense of trepidation for what the


Haat Colors

future holds for Vishwanath and his children. Asmy rickshaw moves towards the Rangeli bus stop,confusion and sadness fill me. Now I knowsomething of what it means to be a farmer inRangeli, to be stuck in a cycle of poverty no matterhow hard you work. I struggle not to lose my hopeand my faith as I pass through houses that Isurveyed, teashops where I showed up early in themorning to catch the farmers, the bridge that is stillbroken by the flood not so long ago, and finally thestreet market haat.

Haat Again I can’t resist getting off the rickshaw and

walking around the haat. The myriad colors andthe waft of aromatic tea energize my numbed senses.Do I sense a trace of hope here? Probably I do,because in the far corner I can hear Vishwanathnaming a price, his own price for his eggplants andtomatoes. Aren’t there lessons to learn here? As Iwatch Vishwanatah, bustling and bargaining,connecting directly with consumers, I realize howempowering it is for him to be in the markets; fairmarkets where he gets to fix the price. There are noeasy answers as to what will give Vishwanath morecontrol over what he produces, how he produces,and how he markets his produce. No ideologiesborrowed from either the West or East can help touplift the farmers if the markets beyond borders andbusinessmen beyond the villages govern thedecisions, control the agricultural inputs, or dictatethe market policies. Perhaps the Nepalese statecould start by learning something from Vishwanath:being self-sufficient first, rather than committing tothe global market system, where it has nonegotiating power. It could start by investing insmall traditional farmers, in better-facilitated loans,in better technologies, management, andinstitutional practices, rather than by emphasizingcheap imports. Bilateral and global markets canwait; first let us strengthen and expand our haat.

Notes1Construction of Mahendra Highwa officially

started in 1962; it was completed in 1991.2Lungi is similar to a wrap, but worn by men

too. It is a common outfit in Terai and is typicallyworn by Madeshi elsewhere.

3Nepal uses the Indian Rupee. Rs. 44 equaledapproximately $1 in January 2004.

4Many newspapers have recently publishednews about pesticide poisoning in Nepal. See e.g.“13 people die of diarrhea in Bara” (Kantipuronline, October 25, 2003); “Pesticides’ ill effects”(The Rising Nepal, January 14, 2003); “Farmers useexcessive amounts of pesticides in Makwanpur”(The Kathmandu Post, June 16, 2003).

5A number of authors have written about thenegative feedback of remittance economy in Nepal.See e.g. Blaikie et al. 1980, 2002; Shrestha 1985;Seddon, Adhikari, and Gurung 2002.

ReferencesBlaikie, P., J. Cameron, and D. Seddon. 1980. Nepal

in Crisis: Growth and Stagnation at thePeriphery. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Blaikie, P., J. Cameron, and D. Seddon. 2002.Understanding 20 years of change in west-central Nepal. World Development 30 (7):1255-1270.

Karki, A. 2002. Movements from below: Land rightsmovements in Nepal. Inter-Asia CulturalStudies 3(2): 201-217.

Shrestha, N.R. 1985. The political economy ofeconomic underdevelopment and externalmigration in Nepal. Political GeographyQuarterly 4(4): 289-306.

Seddon, D., J. Adhikari, and G. Gurung. 2002.Foreign labor migration and the remittanceeconomy of Nepal. Critical Asian Studies.34(1): 19-40.


Raji Dhital


“Butterflies (Table V)”In Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descriptio. By Albert Seba, Amsterdam, 1734-65. Beinecke RareBook and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

IntroductionOne of the underlying causes of Mexico’s

current deforestation is the far reaching effects of thecurrent neoliberal economic development model,embodied in policies such as the North AmericanFree Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (e.g., Klooster1997, 2003; Bray et al. 2003). NAFTA promotesthe tenets of economic efficiency and increasedproductivity through free trade and by openingpreviously domestic sectors to foreign investmentand influence. Although not immediately obvious,these international changes trickle down and havefar-reaching impacts, even at the village level, formember countries. The local effects of internationalreforms on forest management and communitystructure are the focus of my research in San JuanNuevo Parangaricutiro.1

The indigenous Purepechan community ofNuevo Parangaricutiro, in the state of Michoacan,Mexico, communally owns and sustainably manages8,449 hectares of pine-oak forest under ForestStewardship Council principles (FSC 1996Certificate SW-FM/COC-101). This community-owned forest enterprise provides timber and forestproducts for domestic and international markets andhas been acknowledged as a major success in termsof “scale and level of maturity” (Bray et al. 2003:673). However, this success has not been withoutits difficulties, such as those presented by majormacroeconomic events like Mexico’s signing ofNAFTA.

BackgroundPolitical context

Political and economic reforms in Mexico began

in earnest during the 1980s. External institutionspromulgated neoliberal economic developmentpolicies designed to stimulate Mexico’s recoveryfrom heavy debts accrued during the late 1970s. In1982, President Miguel de la Madrid, workingunder structural adjustment stipulations from theInternational Monetary Fund and the World Bank,pushed Mexico towards joining the GeneralAgreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); thisagreement allowed currency to leave the country andremoved price ceilings on many goods. The neweconomic model departed from national ideologystemming from the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) that had aimed to boost domestic productionmore equitably, distribute land among ruraldwellers, and build domestic capacity in a diversityof sectors such as forestry.

Among the reforms embraced under the free-market-dominated development model, PresidentCarlos Salinas (1988-1994) amended Mexico’sagrarian reform law, Article 27 of the Constitution,a centerpiece of the Mexican Revolution. Theamendment allows communally owned land, ejidos,to be privatized. Previously, property regime changewas only possible by government expropriation.Land privatization occurred at the same time thatSalinas aggressively pursued liberal economicreforms, which included free market strategies likejoining NAFTA, cutting the amount of governmentsubsidies to farmers, and beginning a rural‘modernization’ program.

NAFTA and concurrent reforms to landdistribution and government rural aid programshave led many rural communities to experiencedramatic increases in deforestation.2 Forested land


Community Responses to International Reforms: A Case Study of NuevoSan Juan Parangaricutiro, Michoacan, Mexico

Sarah Davidson, MESc 2004

in Mexico is now both losing profitability anddecreasing in area. Agricultural promotion was thefocus of Salinas’ policy changes in the negotiation ofNAFTA, and as a consequence much forested landwas converted to agricultural cultivation. Thusforest communities felt the greatest effect of federaldecisions to embrace trade liberalization through aprocess closed to citizen participation.3

From 1970 to 1990, agricultural land usenationally increased 39 percent. In Michoacan,among the eight states with the highest deforestationrate, agricultural production increased by 29percent. The Purepechan highlands, the focus ofthis study, are losing 1,800 hectares/year,approximately two percent of their forests annually,to agricultural conversion (World Bank 1995; AtlasForestal del Estado de Michoacan 2001).

Competition from foreign investors adds to thestruggles faced by forest owners, who are alreadycompeting with other productive sectors such asmanufacturing or commercial agriculture. Forexample, Mexico’s wood export trade has decreasedwhile its imports from the United States haveincreased. Between 1989 and 1995, exports fromthe United States to Mexico were 3.5 times greaterthan Mexican imports to the United States (Lyke1996). International traders, especially in theagricultural sector, are able to capitalize on adiversity of existing subsidies that correct neitherdistributional failures nor market externalities.Multinational corporations are able to attainsubsidies as below-cost U.S. farm producers, asrecipients of direct export subsidies, and as Mexicanimporters (Carlsen 2003). For example, themultinational agribusiness corporation Cargillreceives the majority of subsidies in Sinaloa,Mexico’s most heavily subsidized state (Carlsen2003).

Nuevo Parangaricutiro as a case studyWhile the Nuevo Parangaricutiro community

had anticipated that benefits would flow fromNAFTA opening U.S. markets to Mexicanagricultural and forest goods, instead they have

found themselves both competing with U.S.companies in the domestic market and barred fromselling to the United States. But although thecurrent package of neoliberal reforms is creatingdifficulties for many forest dwelling communities(Brown 1997; Bray et al. 2003; Klooster 2001,2003), a confluence of community-initiatedadaptations, government support4 and ties tocultural tradition have equipped NuevoParangaricutiro with the unique capacity to confrontthese changes.

Unlike many neighboring forest communities inthe Meseta Purepecha, Nuevo Parangaricutiro is notexperiencing deforestation. Nor has the communityfollowed another common path in Michoacan, theworld’s primary exporter of avocados, and convertedforest lands to avocado orchards. The community’sforest activities, as explained below, are diverse andemploy approximately 75 percent of the population(Gobierno del Estado de Michoacan y Centro deInvestigacion y Desarollo del Estado de Michoacan2002).

Nuevo Parangaricutiro figures prominently inacademic literature on international development(e.g., Klooster 1997; Klooster et al. 2001; Bray et al.2003). The World Bank (1995) described NuevoParangaricutiro as an exemplar for communityforestry, placing villagers in the spotlight andsuggesting that other communities should followtheir example. While I would not suggest that thesame adaptations or developments provide a generalprescription for all community forests, or forproblems of deforestation throughout Mexico,Nuevo Parangaricutiro does provide a glimpse intohow one community has successfully confronted andnegotiated the land use and land ownership conflictsthat occur throughout Mexico and that areattributed to macroeconomic policies.5

Historical perspectiveIn understanding the specific effects that

NAFTA has had on Nuevo Parangaricutiro overthe last decade, it is helpful to begin by looking atthe community’s recent history. During the 1970s,


Community Responses to International Reforms: A Case Study of Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro, Michoacan, Mexico

the community belonged to the Union of Ejidosand Indigenous Forest Communities of the MesetaTarasca (Union de Ejidos y ComunidadesIndigenas Forestales de la Meseta Tarasca), anorganization that helped the community reacquirecommunal title from the various small privateproperty owners of land that had been shifted fromcommunal into private property. This earlyorganization, however, was “not born of thecommunity; it was born of the government whofinanced and facilitated everything, and it diedbecause it didn’t come from the community”(interview with community leader, July 2003). Ineffect, the centralized organization did not allow forenough community-initiated direction. By the1980s, losing forest and money, the communityhad suspended its activities with the Union.

In 1981, the community’s highest authority, theGeneral Assembly, voted to invite a villager whoowned a sawmill in Cheran, a near-by village, to setup business and marketing offices and to negotiate adeal with the major paper company in the state.6The sawmill owner was able to provide the necessaryequipment, including the mill, tow truck andcaterpillar tractor, for the community to begincommunity-based forestry operations.

Research Objectives and MethodsTo understand Michoacan’s community forests

in their contemporary setting, the followingobjectives guided my research: (1) to gain anunderstanding of how Nuevo Parangaricutiromanages its resources and organizes itself, as well aswhat obstacles the community perceives aschallenging; (2) to document land use and landownership patterns, and (3) to understand if andhow NAFTA trade reforms have influenced NuevoParangaricutiro’s forest industry productivity andland-use decisions.

Through interviews with key informants in thecommunity forestry enterprise, I examined whatimpacts, if any, had been felt in response to therecent neoliberal economic reforms embodied inNAFTA. For example, have sales and profits

changed and how have changes in the Forest Lawbeen received? In addition, participant observationafter business hours, during celebrations andthrough everyday activities enhanced myunderstanding of communal organizing structures.Finally, I drew out perceptions of NuevoParangaricutiro and the community forestrymanagement plan (Programas de Manejo/EstudiosDasonomicos) held by government officials in theState Forestry Commission (COFOM) and theSecretary of Environment and Natural Resources(SEMERNAT) in Michaocan’s capitol, Morelia.

Results: Factors Contributing to CommunityForestry Viability

During my research, five variables emerged ascritical factors to Nuevo Parangaricutiro’s success asa community forestry enterprise. These are: (1)vertical integration, (2) diversification, (3) strongtraditional organization, (4) profit-sharing and (5)procurement of legal, communal title to the land. Iwill briefly discuss each of these below. The mainNAFTA-related influences that surfaced werestagnant lumber prices, competition with the foreignplantation-forest industry, and increasedcompetition to sell forest products, such asfurniture, on the domestic market.7 The followingsketch of Nuevo Parangaricutiro’s internalcomplexities provides a glimpse into localcommunity dynamics that are simultaneously at playwith effects of NAFTA’s macro-scale reforms.

The first and perhaps primary enabler of NuevoParangaricutiro’s success is that authority anddecision-making power over each element of theforestry enterprise remain invested in thecommunity. In development literature, this strategyis termed vertical integration. The community haspurposefully constructed, over the last two decades,a complex and adaptive structure to oversee itsforestry operations.

In 1981, the community began taking controlover its own activities by acquiring a sawmill andthus ending the historical practice of governmentconcessions and external unions that impoverished


Sarah Davidson

many small forest communities. Eventually,community members also gained the right from thegovernment to manage their forest using their owntrained staff, who had apprenticed under past forestengineers and often had received some sort oftechnical training in forestry.

A second factor contributing to success is thediversification of community activities beyondforestry and agriculture over the last several decades.Eighteen different programs, each with its own staffpaid for by the enterprise’s profits, add to the widesafety net that the community has woven for itself.This is not to say that forestry is not a crucialelement to community stability, as over 70 percentof employment is derived from forest relatedactivities. However, the community sells muchmore than just timber. This is especially importantbecause the price-per-board-foot has remainedstagnant since 2000, a year after competing importsentered the market. In 2003, the communitysuspended exporting wood to the U.S. altogetherbecause of a non-negotiable price cap imposed byU.S. buyers.

Recent diversified activities, funded partially bythe federal PRODEFOR program,8 include anecotourism project associated with the Paricutinvolcano, a white tailed deer protected area, and newmountain biking trails, all of which attract bothdomestic and international visitors. The roughly15-year-old furniture factory is growing, and islooking into continuing education in order to makeeven higher quality products for niche markets.Villagers may also take a course given in thecommunity to learn more about constructiontechniques, although the furniture made today ismore or less the same as that made historically in thecommunity, thus captilizing on a previous skill.Despite the factory’s success, current profits areundergoing a decline due to imports of cheaperfurniture from Central America and other countries.Meanwhile, transportation costs and duties add toexporting costs, making it unviable to sell furnitureon the international market.

The third factor in the success of Nuevo

Parangaricutiro is the strength of the community’sorganizing structure based on traditional andindigenous roots. The General Assembly, the highestlegitimate decision-making body in the community,has origins that date back to pre-colonization.9 TheAssembly is open to every comunero and respectivefamily members; its monthly meetings have rununinterrupted since 1983.

Like any governance structure, NuevoParangaricutiro does have internal disputes, andsome villagers claim that a select few individualshave undue authority. The General Assembly electsthree members to the town commissioners(Comisario de Bienes Comunales) and, as part of itsresponsibilities, attends to grievances among thecomuneros.10

A fourth element of Nuevo Parangaricutiro’ssuccess stems from its profit-sharing structure. Thefirst year that the community organized its forestryenterprise, it divided profits among each comunero.By the second year, the community elected toreinvest profits into the enterprise. Every year since,the community has again chosen to reinvestwhatever profits are made, leading to the expansionof its enterprise, including the establishment of acapacity-building office and the aforementionedecotourism ventures and furniture constructioncourses.

The final factor in Nuevo Parangaricutiro’ssuccess as a community forestry enterprise is theclarification of property ownership. Although therehave been inter- and intra-community conflicts overproperty ownership, residents now share communaltitle to 18,000 hectares. The title has disentangledthem, at least legally, from disputes with neighborsor individuals within the community overownership, management and rights to the trees.Moreover, while individuals have title to parcels,passed down from a comunero to his male andfemale children, all extractive activities arecoordinated by the professional forester and thecommunity as a whole decides how land can be used,designating certain areas for farming or for forestry.

Land in Nuevo Parangaricutiro is designated



strictly to comuneros. For example, if a womanfrom outside the community marries a comunero,their children may be property-holding comuneros.However, if a man from outside the communitymarries a woman from the community, theirchildren may not be property-holding comuneros.So, while population pressures have resulted incomplaints that not every comunero has a largeenough plot, access is restricted to ward off anyfurther pressure on land resources.

Discussion: Market Efficiency versusCommunity-Directed Development

For the forestry sector, accommodating theNAFTA changes and recent Mexicanadministrations may mean shifting to “moderntechnologies” (World Bank 1995: xiii) such asautomated sawmills that employ fewer people but“increase efficiency and productivity” (Victor andAusubel 2000). Switching to less labor-intensiveproduction under this model would decrease laborcosts but would simultaneously increaseunemployment in the forest sector. This wouldhave a significant impact in Nuevo Parangaricutiro,where over half of the population is employed inforestry-related jobs.

The Mexican administration has long pushedindustrialization with an emphasis on foodproduction and inexpensive raw materials as thebasis for rural development. Such policies haveencouraged urban migration and unsustainablenatural resource extraction, such as the high-gradingthat occurred in forests under the silviculture systemprescribed as state policy from 1960 to 1980 (Segurapers. comm.).11

While much development literature validatescommunities’ roles in the development process (e.g.,Brown 1997; McDonald 2001; Caruthers 2001),critics counter that the communal systems have noteffectively stimulated development (e.g., Schwedeland Haley 1992; Wood 1993; Bergsten 1996). Forinstance, the recent Article 27 tenurial changes tocommunal ejido ownership structures allowprivatization explicitly in order to reverse the

“unproductive and impoverishing” aspects of ruralcommunities.12 President Vicente Fox’s currentadministration states that its goals are to create a“new rural culture” that is more “aggressive” andthat converts “farmers, peasants, (and) producersinto entrepreneurs” (Reforma 2000:8A, cited inMcDonald 2001).

The underlying notions of efficiency andmarket-oriented growth inherent in theseproscriptions of the World Bank and the nationalgovernment are so central as to be seemingly beyonddebate, forming the “very framework within whichargumentation takes place” (Ferguson 1994, xiii).Moreover, James Scott has noted the conceptualsimplifications made by macro-level institutionsfocused on the big picture at the expense ofparticularity, drawing attention to the way in whichsuch abstractions can “privilege attention to a singleoutcome” (1998: 262-3). Such simplifications tendto disregard forms of organization such ascommunity forestry enterprises, where individualsdo not hold individual land titles or even receivedirect profits. The indigenous knowledge that isingrained in the practice of certain activities such asfarming or forestry are often ignored,misunderstood, or unnoticed (Scott 1998).

A growing body of literature describes theability of small, rural communities to manage theirresources and meet community needs withoutrecourse to neo-liberal industrial practices (e.g.,Brown 1997; Klooster 2002; Bray et al. 2003).This literature also emphasizes the importance ofthe socio-political, cultural, and even linguisticdiversity found within ejido and indigenouscommunity systems. The significance of thisuniqueness and variety is often glossed over ormerely alluded to in the more economic or strictlypolitical frameworks used to address rurall i v e l i h o o d s .1 3 Conversely, however, Mexico’s ruraldevelopment problems will not be adequatelyaddressed by treating community as a separateentity able to exist apart from regional, national,and international realities. It is only when we moveaway from envisioning communities as “an organic


Sarah Davidson

whole” or “as standing in opposition to marketsand states” that we will find “ways to negotiatedifferences within communities, interactions acrossthem, and relations with actors outside specificcommunities” (Agrawal 1997: 2, 36).

As the attention to community forestry grows,appreciation is also growing for alternativedevelopment models. What is ‘efficient’ and“successful,” we see from Nuevo Parangaricutiro’sexample, differs among the various actors andinterests from the local to global level. Thiscommunity exhibits considerable flexibility in itsorganizational and administrative development inorder to meet its objective to be a profitable locally-based enterprise. Nuevo Parangaricutiro’s adoptionof a promising new silvicultural treatment – theMetodo de Desarrollo Silvocola (MDS), which hasbeen viewed with suspicion by other communities –is an example of its ability to decide on proactivechanges in local practice.14 This adaptive ability isjuxtaposed with a number of enduring traditions,such as commons property management, traditionalcelebrations and festivals, and even shared duties liketaking turns sweeping common spaces. Thecombination of adaptation and maintenance ofcertain traditions is key to understanding this rural,indigenous community’s dynamic forms ofresistance and accommodation to the neoliberaldevelopment model.

Notes1I will refer to the community as Nuevo

Parangaricutiro from here on, since San Juan is theconsequence of a Spanish re-naming in the 16thcentury and not how villagers refer to themselves;likewise, Purepechans are commonly referred to asTarascans, but this is also a Spanish re-namingconsidered insulting today.

2Including Nuevo Parangaricutiro’s neighbor,Angahuan.

3For example, the ‘rural revitalization’ programPROCAMPO intended to ease farmers’ transitionsafter NAFTA-related reforms, but resulted infarmers clearing additional forests to increase their

agricultural holdings and thus access to governmentaid.

4Because nearly 80 percent of forest belongs tocommunities, with the remainder on private land orprotected areas, studying community interactionsand management is crucial to any attempt tounderstand Mexican forest management. Severalnew government programs aimed at community andejido forests, namely the Project for Conservationand Sustainable Management of Natural Resources(PROCYMAF) and the Project for ForestDevelopment (PRODEFOR), began under the1997 Forest Law.(www.conafor.gob.mx/programas_nacionales_forestales; PROCYMAF, Elaboracion de Programas deManejo Forestale, Terminos de Referencia Estandar,2003). However, the Plantations DevelopmentProgram (PRODEPLAN), also started in 1997,originally had ten times the budget of communityforestry programs. Although the gap has sincenarrowed significantly, the disproportion reveals acontinuing federal bias for commercial plantationsover community-run operations (Klooster 2003).

5Michoacan’s forest perturbation is attributed toa variety of factors, such as land conversion toagriculture and cattle use (e.g., McDonald 1999,2001), illegal logging by rural dwellers (e.g., AtlasForestal 2001), conflicts among forest owners(Purnell 1999) and forest fire and health problemsrelated to mismanagement (Atlas Forestal 2001). Adocument produced by the National Institute ofSolidarity and Social Development (SEDESOL)states that Michoacan needs to resolve agrarian landdisputes (Instituto Nacional de Solidaridad ySEDESOL 1997).

6Interestingly, this paper company has sincebeen bought by the U.S. company Kimberley Clark.

7The community’s avocado orchards areexperiencing similar difficulties, with barredentrance into the U.S. market and competitiondomestically with the newly arrived U.S. avocadocompanies Calavo, Mission, West Pack, and Fresh.

8PRODEFOR, established under the 1997Forest Law, targets sustainable development of



ejidos and communities. PRODEFOR coordinateswith state governments to provide technicalmanagement and other forms of aid, and oneexplicit “objective” is to help ejidos andcommunities diversify production activities(www.conafor.gob.mx/programas_nacionales_forestales).

9For further discussion of NuevoParangaricutiro’s history see Moheno (1985: 1-187).

10In this case, a comunero is a man ofPurepechan lineage, traced through the father, andwho has communal title in Nuevo Parangaricutiro.

11See Note 14 for a description of the state’ssilvicultural policy.

12Quoted in The Backgrounder, Oct 1, 1992(quoted in Meyer and Sherman 1995: 698).

13See Haenn (1999), Brown (1997), McDonald(1999, 2001) for discussion of this problem seeSchwedel and Haley (1992), Wood (1993), Bergsten(1996), World Bank (1995), Keipi (1999), Victorand Ausubel (2000) for examples.

14Using small clear cuts, seed trees, progressivecuts for natural pine regeneration, and collectingdebris in such a way as to encourage seed contactwith the soil while reducing fire hazard, the MDSsystem does not transform pine-oak forests into oak-dominated forests as do the older and more acceptedsystems used by many forest communities (Klooster1997; Segura, pers. comm., November 2003). Bothrural communities and silviculturalists in Mexicohave resisted the change. Communities cite distrustof the more intensive MDS treatment, which resultsvisually in a forest that corresponds to perceptions ofdegradation. Silviculturalists and producers,meanwhile, prefer the older system (MetidoMexican de Bosques y Irreguliers, MOBI), whichallows extraction of the biggest and highest qualitytrees; the older MOBI system is used in 57 percentof Mexico’s forests (Segura pers.comm.).

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank the following people and

institutions for providing much appreciated support:Amity Doolittle and Sheila Olmstead for advising,Tropical Resources Institute, the Coca-Cola World

Fund, the Program in Agrarian Studies and TheCouncil on Latin American and Iberian Studies’Tinker field grant. I also wish to thank thecommunity members of Nuevo San JuanParangaricutiro for allowing me to participate intheir daily lives and work. Special thanks to theSenoras Erlinda and Maclovia for opening theirhome and acting as my family during my stay, andto Basilio Velazquez Gutierrez for making a placefor me at the sawmill and helping with logisticsthroughout the summer.

ReferencesAgrawal, A. 1997. Community in conservation:

Beyond enchantment and disenchantment.CDF Discussion Paper, Conservation andDevelopment Forum: 1-66.

Atlas Forestal del Estado de Michoacan. 2001.Comision Forestal de Michoacan (COFOM).

Bergsten, F. 1996. Globalizing free trade. ForeignAffairs, 75 (3) 105-120.

Bray, D., L. Merino-Pérez, P. Negreros-Castillo, G.Segura-Warnholtz, J. Torres-Rojo, and H.Vester. 2003. Mexico's community-managedforests as a global model for sustainablelandscapes. Conservation Biology 17(3): 672-677.

Brown, P. 1997. Institutions, inequalities, and theimpact of agrarian reform on rural Mexicancommunities. Human Organization 56: 102-110.

Carlsen, L. 2003. The Mexican Farmers’ Movement:Exposing the Myths of Free Trade. AmericasProgram Policy Report. InterhemisphericResource Center, Silver City, New Mexico.

Carruthers, D.V. 2001. The politics and ecology ofindigenous folk art in Mexico. HumanOrganization 60(4): 356-366.

Comision Nacional Forestal. “Programas NacionalForestal.” www.conafor.gob.mx/programas-_nacionales_forestales, retrieved January 2004.

Community Forest Project (PROCYMAF). 2003.Elaboración de Programas de Manejo Forestal,Terminos de Referencia Estandar.


Sarah Davidson

Comunidad Indígena de Nuevo San JuanParangaricutiro. 1998. Programa de ManejoForestal. Dirección Técnica Forestal de laComunidad Indígena de Nuevo San JuanParangaricutiro y Secretaria de MedioAmbiente y Recursos Naturales,SEMARNAT.

Instituto Nacional de Solidaridad y SEDESOL. 1997.El Municipio en la Consulta Nacional sobreDerechos y Participación Indígena.

Ferguson, J. 1994. The Anti-Politics Machine:“Development,” Depoliticization, andBureaucratic Power in Lesotho. University ofMinnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Gobierno del Estado de Michoacan y Centro deInvestigaciones y Desarrollo del Estado deMichoacan. 1996-2002. Lineamiento para laElaboración del Plan de Desarrollo Municipial:Nuevo Parangaricutiro.

Haenn, N. 1999. The power of environmentalknowledge: Ethnoecology and environmentalconflicts in Mexican conservation. HumanEcology 27: 477-491.

Keipi, K. 1999. Future directions for policy andfinancing. Pages 231-236 in Forest ResourcePolicy in Latin America, K. Keipi, ed. Inter-American Development Bank, WashingtonD.C.

Klooster, D.L. 1997. Conflict in the commons:Commercial forestry and conservation inMexican indigenous communities. Ph.Ddissertation, University of California-LosAngeles.

---. 2002. Towards adaptive community forestmanagement: Integrating local forest knowledgewith scientific forestry. Economic Geography78(1): 43-70.

---. 2003. Campesinos and Mexican forest policyduring the 20th century. Latin AmericanResearch Review (38)2: 94-127.

Klooster, D. Allieri, A. Calise, M. Couffignal, B.Sharbono, S. Yeo and G. Segura. 2000.Working with communities to strengthen forestmanagement in Mexico. Pages 103-112 in

Thinking Out Loud II: Innovative Case Studieson Participatory Instruments, M. Anderson, ed.Latin America and the Caribbean Civil SocietyTeam, World Bank, Washington D.C.Available at http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/-lac/lacinfoclient.nsf/0/3234722f17da8dd785256ab70063b856/$FILE/TOL2.pdf

Lyke J. 1996. Forest product certification revisited: Anupdate. Journal of Forestry 94(10): 16-20.

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In January 2004 some 80,000 people convergedon Mumbai, India, for the fourth annual WorldSocial Forum, the first to be held outside its originalvenue in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Since its inception in2000, spurred in part by the 1999 WTO protests inSeattle, the WSF has emerged as a touchstone for‘global civil society’, broadly writ.

If this massive gathering had a central goal itwas, as articulated in the Forum charter, to provide“an open meeting place for…groups and movementsof civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism andto domination of the world by capital and any formof imperialism, and are committed to building aplanetary society directed towards fruitfulrelationships among humankind and between it andthe Earth.”1

During five overwhelming days, groups andindividuals articulated their respective struggles and

visions through ariotous array of venuesand media: streettheater and speeches,workshops and artinstallations,documentaries,banners, dances,graffiti. Within theofficial schedule,emblazoned with theWSF’s lofty slogan,“Another World IsPossible,” one couldfind literally thousandsof workshops andpanels on topics thatranged from plantationlabor struggles in Sri

Lanka to democracy and the WTO, from corporateeco-crime to caste discrimination. Among theoptions was a series of workshops organized in partby Nikhil Anand MESc ’04, who formed, alongwith Carishma Gokhale MESc ’05 and AndreaJohnson MESc ’05, an F&ES delegation to theWorld Social Forum.

The workshops, co-organized by F&ES, theDelhi-based Center for Equity Studies, and FederalUniversity of Rio de Janerio, were entitled “SocialMovements and the Scholar: Three dialoguesexploring the academic-activist dynamic.”Throughout these sessions, participants from bothsides of this ‘divide’ discussed the tensions andopportunities inherent in negotiating what can beboth a fruitful and a contentious relationship. Forthis piece I have compiled just a few of the manypoints raised.

“Taking sides”: Truth and Ethics Prof. Sharit Bhowmik, Department of

Sociology, University of Mumbai (SB): Right frommy beginnings as a PhD student studying teaplantation labor in northern India, I have believedthat getting involved and not taking a neutral standwas really important if one is going to enrich one’sresearch, that so-called ‘value-free research’ has nomeaning at all. What is neutrality in research?

Kanokrat Lertchoosakul, Faculty of PoliticalScience, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand (KL):In the postcolonial or developing countries that havea long history of political struggle like in Thailand,many academics were a part of the struggle andliberation movement. So it’s very hard to say thatyou have to identify or draw the line between youand the social movements. Academics have playedactive roles as strategic advisors, as legal support.


Social Movements and the Scholar: Discussions at the 2004 World Social Forum

Compiled by Andrea Johnson, MESc 2005

Social movements createdspaces at the WSF for a richvariety of forms of expression.

For example, many activists and grassroots people inthe current anti-dam and land movements havebeen put in jail, and academics have had to play alegal role to guarantee that those people will not beharmed.

Victor Munnik, Earthlife Johannesburg,Nuclear Energy Costs the Earth campaign (VM): InSouth Africa I’ve been engaged in research on a civilsociety water caucus group whose steeringcommittee I’m on. One of the choices I had tomake right from the start on this research was that ifsomething that would harm the caucus came out inthe research, or something that was not strategic toreveal, I would cut it out.

As a second example, we have to rely a lot onacademics to provide knowledge to our anti-nuclearcampaign. We had an academic who’s part of ourcampaign give us a training on the political historyof nukes in South Africa, where basically so-calledpeaceful nukes were a cover to make weapons ofmass destruction. This was such a stunning historythat we asked this academic to write it up, and thepoint I want to bring to you is that we specificallywant this history as part of the media and advocacycampaign. So we asked the writer for certainemphases, to show the light on certain points. Ithink it would be academic to say that is adistortion, but it is a sort of a sharpening and afocusing and a making it effective for use incampaigning. So it’s very partisan, but my messageto you is that partisan is right and can work.

Mashile Phalane, Earthlife Johannesburg (MP):It’s very important if you are academics to alignyourself with who you are working with. If you aredoing work on hawkers here in India, see yourself asa hawker and as part of that movement, so that youare able to get more and richer information – andwork and feel and explain that research. There’s nouse if you just write research but you don’t havefeelings for it.

Adam Habib, Human Sciences ResearchCouncil (AH): I’ve been an academic for a longtime, but I’ve also been an activist. Every time I’min a discussion about this relationship, on the onehand you get a set of people who say that academicsrequire a large degree of independence to meet

academic responsibilities. Conversely there is theconstant slagging off that academics get fromactivists precisely on the grounds that they tend touse social movements in a way that benefits theirnarrow academic interests, and then don’t transmit alot of the benefits back.

Now I think the criticism of academics is to alarge extent deserved. But often in this discussionwhat people do is start quoting Edward Said,suggesting that we should be looking towards therole of the “public intellectual,” the one speaks thetruth to power. This needs to be qualified. Becausepower is not only state power. You also have powerlocated in social movements. You have powerlocated in collectives outside the state.Fundamentalist organizations exert an enormousamount of power. And it’s important, if you wantto be a public intellectual or an academic, to remainrelatively independent so that you can speak thetruth as much to state power as to the elites ofmovements, collectives, organizations.

Arguing for relative independence doesn’t meanthat you mustn’t be engaged. You can surely beengaged, but you can be critical and reflective and,however difficult this is, raise the difficult questionsthat need to be raised.

Dr. Shekhar Singh, Center for Equity Studies(moderator) (SS): Working with activists whilebeing primarily an academic, at least in India, I havefound that the fundamental difference was thatwhereas social movements and activists had a loyaltyto a cause, the good academics had a loyalty to thetruth. Now sometimes the cause and the truth wenttogether. But sometimes they didn’t. Sometimesthere was this strategic discomfort that if thisparticular truth came out, in this particular manner,it would harm the cause; and it’s always a verydifficult debate. I’ve always felt personally that inthe long term sticking with the truth always helps,even if in the short term it seems to go against thecause.

VM: I’d like to bring us back to why we are inMumbai at the moment. What is peace practice?How do we build an alternative world? There’s apersonal practice of personal responsibility, thisapplies to academics and activists and everybody.



And then there’s a responsibility towards thepolitical economy in which you find yourself –because you’re not going to work like ReneDescartes sitting and thinking about it. What doesthis mean? First of all, academics have to be goodacademics. We cannot simply use the word “truth,”as if there hasn’t been 20 or 30 years of debate thattruth is constructed, that truth is part of strugglesabout identity, about representation – I’ve reallybeen shocked about academics ignoring their owninheritance as academics. Feminist methodology hasdealt with these questions in a very profound wayand we should not refuse that heritage.

Professor Lakshmi Lingam, Woman’s StudiesUnit, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai(LL): Very clearly I think researchers need ethicalguidelines within which to work with socialmovements, such as the guidelines that medicalresearchers and psychologists have for working withtheir ‘subjects’. Something that will help us to askfrom the first moment of a partnership: what is itwe want when we do research together? What willthe research be used for, and how we are going totake it forward as part of knowledge building?What are the basic principles and parameters?Privacy, informed consent, confidentiality,authorship, revealing funding: let’s have all that onthe board. If we need each other, and if we have a‘larger enemy’, we need to come together.

Making Research RelevantSB: A researcher’s views about social

movements, and the way society functions, can bevery much an ivory tower outlook; we tend to lookat things in a very broad-based way. On the otherhand, I’ve found that people working at thegrassroots also tend to be a bit myopic. The nexusbetween the two becomes very important andmutually enriching.

It is also necessary to make our researchrelevant. For example, one must realize that there isa lot of funding for studies on the poor – poverty,though it may be demeaning for the poor, cantherefore be profitable for social scientists. Now theresearcher has to ask: does my work have any impacton lives or is basically an academic exercise? And if

the latter, then be honest about it, and let’s not taxthe patience and also the resources of these peoplejust to give them false impressions that our workwill matter. It might matter to me, because it mightlead to a promotion or better projects in the future,but to what extent it is valuable, if my researchcannot go back to help the people in theirunderstanding and their critique?

KL: I have found that research conducted orinitiated by the academic him/herself, particularlywhen s/he determines what questions are asked, ismeaningless for the social movements. It may besignificant in policy making for the elite and rulingclass, but it’s very hard to find any research paperthat benefits, enhances, and empowers themovement. But in the research and mapping we arepromoting in Thailand now, the grassroots peopledesign and conduct the research, and academics playonly a supporting role in conceptualizing andimplementing it. This research from the people hasbecome very significant material for the anti-dammovement. Also, the process of struggle andresearch has enhanced their ability to speak in thesame language as politicians and academics.

But I still find it’s very important for academicsto work on research that puts critical issues andcomments to the social movements themselves.Because it’s true that movements sometimes lack thecritical culture, and there’s a lot of romanticizingamong academics and people at the grassroots level.Sometimes they really need just writing andanalytical and critical research in order to realize thatbeing participatory and being radical will not alwayslead to success.

AH: There’s what I call the romanticization ofparticipatory methodology. Now I don’t thinkparticipatory methodology is wrong – in particularcontexts it’s very very relevant, but methodologyneeds to be chosen in part by what you’reresearching. Some of the best research I’ve seenfrankly is largely reflective work based on secondarystudies. ‘Blue-sky’ ivory tower research can havefundamental impacts 20 or 30 or 40 years down theline. Let’s be honest, academics tend to treatparticipatory methods as “things that NGOresearchers do.” And NGOs tend to think other


Andrea Johnson

forms of research methodology areinappropriate. I think we need toget out of these homogenousdichotomies that say, “this one isgood, that one is bad.”

SS: As mentioned, academicsneed to raise questions for activists:is this really what you want to do?Is this really getting you anywhere?Is this really consistent? What is thelarger picture within which you areworking? As academics weshouldn’t be apologetic all thetime, thinking we are not reallyworth our salt unless we aresupporting some social movementor another in a direct way.

Engaging OutwardsAH: The problem with the

academy is it speaks mainly to peers. Academicswrite for journals in which mainly PhDs andprofessors read, and then they comment and theyreflect on it. That peer review mechanism is anintegral component of the academy, but it seems tome that it’s incumbent upon members of theacademy that you also reflect and are able totranslate some of your work into a more populardiscourse – be that the World Social Forum, themass media, or some other public forum throughwhich to engage the broader world.

SS: But there is a similar problem among socialactivist groups. They only speak to the converted.If I’m to organize a meeting on environmentalprotection today, 90 percent of the people whowould come would be people who already believe inenvironmental protection. And so both have aproblem to address: how does one develop a stylewhich can reach out to those people whom youreally want to reach out to?

Conclusion: Building Bridges?Nikhil Anand, student, Yale School of Forestry

and Environmental Studies: We’ve been talking alot about the ways in which social scientists andactivists can build bridges between each other, butI’m having a problem with the categories of scientist

and activist, as many have pointed out before.Much of the social sciences emerges out of ahistorical engagement with colonialism, and thelanguage and tools of the discipline have a politicalproject. Conversely, much of activism is reallybuilding up from the social sciences and socialtheory. Is it possible for us to imagine knowledgebeing produced and accepted and shared betweendifferent categories of people? Is it possible toactually imagine the categories dissolved altogether,so that we can have ways in which people can talkabout their experiences and be equally appreciatedand acknowledged as valid, whether they arescientists or activists or movements?

LL: Perhaps we can think of both aspossibilities, and think about dissolving as a largergoal but dealing with it – building bridges – as ashort-term goal. Ultimately, a classroom is as muchan arena for activism as anywhere else.

Notes1. For more on the WSF, please see

http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/home.asp,http://www.wsfindia.org/, or J. Sen, A. Anand, A.Escobar, and P. Waterman, eds. 2003. The WorldSocial Forum: Challenging Empires. VivekaFoundation, New Delhi, India (available in partonline through www.choike.org).



Critiques of the linkage between U.S. economic and political imperialism, as exemplifiedin its most militarized form by the war on Iraq, were pervasive at the Forum.

We are pleased to announce the recipients of TRI funds for the summer of 2004. There are four sources offunding for tropical research this year at F&ES: the Tropical Resources Institute Endowed Fellowship, the WorldAgroforestry Fellowship, PRORENA, and the Compton Foundation Fellowships.

TRI Summer Endowed Fellowships are designed to support Master’s and Doctoral students interested inconducting research in the tropics. This year we funded 19 Master’s students and 2 Doctoral students working in18 different countries.

The 2004 research fellows and the country of their research are:Nicole Ardoin, Galapagos; Cristina Balboa, Indonesia; Victoria Critchley, Australia; Laura Cuoco, Ecuador; IsaoEndo, Bangladesh; Brett Galimidi, South Africa; Alicia Gray, Peru; Carishma Gokhale, Belize; SharifaGulamhussein, Hawaii; Po-Yi Hung, Taiwan; Thu Ba Huyhn, Vietnam; Yasuko Iiyama, Indonesia; AndreaJohnson, Peru; Alder Keleman, Mexico; David Kneas, Ecuador; Lisa Patel, Guatemala; Kaisone Phensopha, LaosPDR; Angela Quiros, Philippines; Rebecca Reider, India; Seth Shames, Israel; Aaron Welch, Belize.

PRORENA, based in Panama, is a joint initiative of the Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS) at theSmithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Tropical Resources Institute at the Yale School of Forestry andEnvironmental Studies. PRORENA (Native Species Reforestation Project) is a highly collaborative research,education, and outreach program aimed at developing viable strategies for restoring diverse, native tropical forests.This year Jeremy Goetz will be joining the PRORENA team.

The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) has dedicated research funds for Ellen Brown to pursue research onthe interface of agroforestry and conservation, exploring the integration of natural resource management in bufferzones of protected areas.

Compton Foundation's Fellowship Program aims to contribute to the capacity of developing countries,especially in Central America and Sub-Saharan Africa, to improve policies and programs relating to peace,population, sustainable development and the environment. The Foundation strives to accomplish this goal bysupporting outstanding graduate students who are committed to careers in the program areas of interest to theFoundation within the developing world. This year’s recipients and their home countries are Amina Soud,Kenya; Dora Cudjoe, Ghana; Tendro Ramaharitra, Madagascar; Rafael Bernardi, Uruguay; Alvaro RedondoBrenes, Costa Rico; and Cesar Moran Cahusac, Peru.

Announcing theTRI 2004 Fellows



Unnumbered plate from Trees, Mammals, & Reptiles of North Carolina. By John Brickwil, Dublin, 1743. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Yale Tropical Resources InstituteYale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies205 Prospect StreetNew Haven, CT 06511U.S.A.

Non-Profit Org.U.S. Postage

PAIDNew Haven, CTPermit No. 470

Tropical ResourcesThe Bulletin of the Tropical ResourcesInstitute is a student-edited bulletin whereMaster’s and PhD candidates from the YaleSchool of Forestry and EnvironmentalStudies publish the results of their TRI-funded independent research.

Director Dr. Lisa M. Curran

Program DirectorDr. Amity Doolittle

EditorsVictoria Critchley (MESc 2005)Andrea Johnson (MESc 2005)

LayoutJudy Karbowski-Hall

Tropical Resources InstituteThe mission of the Tropical ResourcesInstitute is to provide a forum to supportand connect the initiatives of the Yalecommunity in developing applied research,partnerships, and programs in the tropics.We support projects and research that aimto develop practical solutions to issuesrelating to conservation and management oftropical resources.

Yale School of Forestry and EnvironmentalStudies

205 Prospect StreetNew Haven, Connecticut 06511United States of America

www.yale.edu/tri

TRI Steering CommitteeMark Ashton, Graeme Berlyn, WilliamBurch, Carol Carpenter, Timothy Clark, LisaCurran, Amity Doolittle, Michael Dove,Florencia Montagnini

©2004 by Yale Tropical Resources InstituteCover design ©2004 by MetaGlyfix

tropical resources23 growth of big-leaf mahogany (swietenia macrophylla king) in natural forests in...

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