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Landscape Typologies and their Political Ecologies

The New Rurality: Globalization, landscapes and the dynamics of forests lost and found Susanna B Hecht Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton School of Public Policy, UCLA.

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Landscape Typologies and their Political Ecologies

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  1. The New Rurality: Globalization, landscapes and the dynamics of forests lost and foundSusanna B HechtInstitute for Advanced Study, PrincetonSchool of Public Policy, UCLA

  2. All tropical landscapes are deeply linked to global dynamics in terms of their perceptions, ideologies, economies and histories: “Socially constructed” as well as biotic entities. • Reflect social relations, ideologies and political economies, and K flows that are both local and increasingly global. Its not just “demography”

  3. Primordial landscape of tropical forests: ends of the earth and beginnings of time Landscapes of modernization (agroindustrialization and global commodities: soy, maize, cane, tree plantations, oil palm, some cattle) Post modern (pre modern?). Critique of both Agroindus and primordial but within new productionist framework: landscapes based on claims of history, identity, traditional territoriality indigenous knowledge systems (native reserves, ejidos, quilombos, traditional peoples reserves Peasantries. Historical actors in making modern nation state, vilified as forest destroyers; lack resonance: (state historical interlocutor) “socially” ahistorical landscape; biotic entity. Set asides, Conservation biology, national and international conservation finance, Cap and trade, PES Linked in international commodity mkts: technological trend mills, huge beneficiaries from SAPs commodity mkts.(Reg Devt Transfer creds, mkts) Campaigns human rights, elaborated niche markets, indigenous knowledge, Varying degrees of essentialism about relations w/nature. Declining sector: deeply undermined by commodity sector, losing political ground to primordial/premodern Hybrid systems of production: increasingly emerging as complex factor, (poorly understood) in forest resurgence Landscape Typologies and their Political Ecologies

  4. Forest Resurgence: • A rose by any other name? Woodland succession, land abandonment, extension of agroforestry systems, reforestation, valorization of NTFPs: many dynamics • BUT we do know a few things 1. Really Widespread (Puerto Rico, Mexico, Ecuador, Honduras, Amazon basin, Peru, Colombia; greater Central America=33%) 2. Complex of factors that engender it (War, remittances, rural labor dynamics, mkts, agrarian reform, mkt failures, ecol problems) 3. Poorly studied: bias against evaluation of anthropogenic landscapes but significant: dynamic ecosystems, landscape diversity, livelihoods Theories: EKC Forest transition 4. almost a marker of globalized peasant economies.

  5. Forest cover history in the US

  6. 3D Image of El Salvador Landsat TM & SRTM DEM

  7. Malthus’ nightmare • El Salavdor: “Where nature is extinguished” • Mostly deforested by end 1970s • Small (2m Ha) • Anthropogenic landscapes (Biodiv elements not bad 350+ birds; but generally poorly collected.

  8. Table 1 compares the diversity of El Salvador with other countries in Central America. Table 1 Biotic Diversity in Central America (Number of species per 10,000 km2) Source: World Resources Institute (1996)

  9. Percent Tree Cover 0-10% 11-25% 26-40% 41-55% 56-70% 71-100% AVHRR 92-93 MODIS 00-01

  10. TABLE 1 ______________________________________________________________________________ Table 1: Percent tree cover change 1992(AVHRR) to 2001 (MODIS) _____________________________________________________________________________ percent woody cover 1992 2001 0-10percent 6.9 0.9 11-25percent 21.3 5.6 26-40percent 28.9 31.4 41-55percent 19.3 30.8 56-70percent 12.2 13.8 71-100percent 11.2 14.6 ______________________________________________________________________________ Source: Hecht & Saatchi, 2005.

  11. North 34% territory 19% pob.in ‘71 13% pob. in ‘00 0.7 0.7 1971 2000 Map 1 El Salvador: Population Distribution by Zones, 1971 -2000 (Millions of inhabitants) Southwest includes MASS 33% territory 53% pob. in ’71 67% pob. in ’00 4.1 Southeast 33% territory 28% pop. in ‘71 20% pop. in ‘00 1.2 1.0 1.9 MASS (3% Territory) 19% pob. in ’71 32% pob. in ’00 1971 2000 SOURCE: PRISMA, based on population census. 2000 1971

  12. Socio-Economic Forces & Land Use Change • The outcomes of regional and international economic integration • and trade liberalization on grain prices, and the volatility of • international coffee prices. “Shock Doctrine” • The impacts of El Salvador’s civil conflicts as they reflected • hemispheric cold war politics. These had effects on the agricultural • frontier, migration and agrarian reform. • The effects of structural adjustment policies on rural credit and • subsidies, and the implementation of decentralization programs. • The emergence of Int’l and Regional environmental politics

  13. Decline in relative prices of the agricultural sector, 1970-2000 (GDP agricultural price index / GDP price index, 1990=1) (National accounts Base 1990) • Source: PRISMA based on data from the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador

  14. El Salvador: Changes in the primary sources of foreign exchange, 1978 and 2000 * Coffee, cotton, sugar, shrimp. Note: The table does not include exports to Central America. Source: PRISMA (2002) based on data from the Central Reserve Bank of El Salvador

  15. El Salvador: Percentage of households that receive remittances by department

  16. Table Migration and remittances in Central America Country Net migration Remittances Remittances as Remittances Per 1000 US Millions % Direct Foreign GDP % Investment El Salvador 3.8 2,206 823.7 15.44 Guatemala 1.7 1,689 370.8 7.26 Honduras 2.0 770 394.0 11.68 Mexico 2.6 10,502 42 . 1.65 Nicaragua 1.3 759 573.7 36.71 ________________________________________________________________________

  17. New Rurality: Questions of Products; Questions of services • Modernization and Marxian dev’t has peasants disappearing which they seem to not have done; “Via campesina” forestal? • Huge shift of peasant question to ideological framework of post modernity (primordial people in a way: ethnicity inc) and its engagement w/global environmentalism, nativism, markets and finance systems • Peasants are still there and actually occupy sites of resurgence; Do so in a policy vacuum; largely self financed (Biased against for many reasons incl anthropogenic landscapes). Innovative and not “traditional sector” Policy issues” PES; (watershed, view sheds, habitat corridors, cap and trade, support innovation in other forms)

  18. Globalization and its malcontents • Globalization a major feature constructing modern rural and conservation landscapes: • Conservation strategies still catching up. Often enmired in imagined versions of the pristine: Blinding to many interesting and necessary forested systems. • Understanding social construction and political economies of landscapes helps design better options for each of the different systems: capture dynamisms that are so far fairly “invisible”. • Inhabited landscapes (and peasant landscapes increasingly have to be understood as sites of significant conservation opportunities, livelihoods, social justice. Landscapes of forest resurgence as emblematic of peasant systems. Forest creators rather than the demonized peasant pyrocmaniacs.

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