COMMUNITY IN CONSERVATION

LATIN AMERICA

GENERAL

Aagesen, D (1998). “Indigenous resource rights and conservation of the monkey-puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana, Araucariaceae): A case study from southern Chile.” Economic Botany 52(2): 146-160.

Annis, S and P Hakim, Eds. (1988). Direct to the Poor: Grassroots Development in Latin America. Boulder, Colo, Rienner.

Fifteen previously published papers explore an approach to economic and social development labeled "grassroots development," which suggests that the best way to help poor people is to give money to the organizations that they themselves create and control. Papers focus on the idea of social energy; social energy and uncommon individuals; processes of collective action; organizations and making money; investing in culture; and the question of scale. Specific topics are the principle of conservation and mutation of social energy; a portrait of Ramon Aybar; blindness and vision in Jamaica; the Campesino-controlled tourism of Lake Titicaca; Indian colonization in Paraguay; community participation in rural water supply; conservation in the style of the Kuna Indians; a Bolivian guide to cooperatives; organizing the means of consumption in rural Colombia; the experience of worker self-management in Peru and Chile; cultural projects among Aymara and Quechua Indians; wandering on the boundaries of development; self-history and self-identity in Talamanca, Costa Rica; vertical integration in Bolivia; and small-scale development as large-scale policy. Contributors are mainly social scientists, anthropologists, public policy specialists, and urban planners. (Econlit)

Berger, SA (1997). “Environmentalism in Guatemala: when fish have ears.” Latin American Research Review 32(2): 99-117.

Blum, E (1993). “Making biodiversity conservation profitable: a case study of the Merck/INBIO agreement.” Environment 36(4): 17-46.

Brondizio, E, P Mausel, et al. (1998). Integrating biogeography, remote sensing, and human ecology in the study of land use/land cover dynamics in Amazonia. in Biogeography and Remote Sensing. K Lulla, Ed. Hong Kong, Geocarto.

Brondizio, ES, EF Moran, et al. (1994). “Land use change in the Amazon estuary: patterns of caboclo settlement and landscape management.” Human Ecology 22: 249-278.

Part of a special issue on recent advances in the regional analysis of indigenous land use and tropical deforestation. A study was conducted to examine land use change among three populations of the lower Amazon estuary at Marajo Island, Brazil. The method used combined spectral information and image classification with environmental and ethnographic data. Mechanized agriculture at one site has removed almost all the mature upland forest, and it is now dominated by secondary successional vegetation. The more traditional system of diversified land use at the second site reveals a subtle cycling of flooded forest to managed palm forest through time in response to the price of palm fruit and cycling in the use of fallow land. The third site, based on palm fruit extractivism, demonstrates minimal changes in land cover as a result of persistent specialization on management of flooded forest extraction. There is little evidence that the community with the greatest effect on forest cover is any better off economically than the other two. (Author)

Browder, J (1989). Fragile Lands of Latin America: Strategies for Sustainable Development. Boulder, Westview Press.

Bunker, SG (1981). The impact of deforestation on peasant communities. in Where Have all the Flowers Gone? Vol 13Ed. Williamsburg, College of William and Mary, Department of Anthropology. Third World Studies Publication.

Bunker, SG (1985). Underdeveloping the Amazon; Extraction, Unequal Exchange, and the Failure of the Modern State. Urbana, University of Illinois.

Burwell, T (1995). “Bootlegging on a desert mountain: the political ecology of Agave (Agave spp.) demographic change in the Sonora River Valley, Sonora, Mexico.” Human Ecology 23(3): 407-432.

Recent studies suggest that wild agave (Agave spp.) plants in Sonora, Mexico, are being over-harvested by mescal makers on communal lands. Using the conceptual framework of regional political ecology (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987), I discuss the ecological processes of agave depletion, and investigate the social, economic, and political contexts in which unsustainable harvest practices arise. Whereas all the mescal makers have knowledge of sustainable harvest methods, population growth, expansion of agriculture onto ecologically marginal lands, and increasing dependence on wild harvested products from communal lands created the socioeconomic context for increased demand for mescal income. The ideology of household autonomy, and the belief that the village has no right to internally regulate use of the commons, created the political context for rapid, unsustainable harvesting - a tragedy of the commons. However, recent cultural changes have caused a reversal of this trend, and some wild agave populations may be recovering. (Journal)

Cleary, D (1993). “After the frontier: problems with political economy in the modern Brazilian Amazon.” Journal of Latin American Studies 25(2): 331-350.

Colchester, M (1981). “Ecological modeling and indigenous systems of resource-use: some examples from south Venezuela.” Anthropologica 55: 51-72.

Colvin, JG (1994). “Ecotourism: a sustainable alternative.” NACLA Report on the Americas 28: 9.

Capirona, a small Quichua rain forest community in eastern Ecuador, has established one of the world's first communally based, indigenous operated ecotourism initiatives. The villagers specify careful conditions on the type and number of visitors in order to minimize damage to the environment and disruption to community life. Although unlikely to match the profitability of oil development, ecotourism, if it is controlled by indigenous peoples, may serve as one facet of a diversified, sustainable economy. (Wilsonweb)

Conklin, BA and LR Graham (1995). “Shifting middle ground: Amazonian Indians and eco-politics.” American Anthropologist 97(4): 695-710.

Over the past decade in Brazil, the convergence between international environmentalism and indigenous cultural survival concerns led to an unprecedented internationalization of local native struggles. The Indian-environmentalist alliance has benefited both parties, but recent events suggest that it may be unstable and may pose political risks for native people. The limitations of transnational

symbolic politics as a vehicle for indigenous activism reflect tensions and contradictions in outsiders' symbolic constructions of Indian identity. (SSCI)

Denevan, W (1992). “The pristine myth: the landscape of the Americas in 1492.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82(3): 369-385.

The myth persists that in 1492 the Americas were a sparsely populated wilderness, "a world of barely perceptible human disturbance." There is substantial evidence, however, that the Native American landscape of the early sixteenth century was a humanized landscape almost everywhere. Populations were large. Forest composition had been modified, grasslands had been created, wildlife disrupted, and erosion was severe in places. Earthworks, roads, fields, and settlements were ubiquitous. With Indian depopulation in the wake of Old World disease, the environment recovered in many areas. A good argument can be made that the human presence was less visible in 1750 than it was in 1492. (SSCI)

Descola, P (1996). In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology in Amazonia. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Downing, TE, S Hecht, et al., Eds. (1992). Development or Destruction? The Conversion of Tropical Forest to Pasture in Latin America. Boulder, Westview Press.

Fisher, WH (1994). “Megadevelopment, environmentalism, and resistance: the institutional context of Kayapo indigenous politics in Central Brazil.” Human Organization 53(3): 220-232.

Haney, EB and WG Haney (1978). “Social and ecological contradictions of community development and rural modernization in a Colombian peasant community.” Human Organization 37(3): 225-234.

Hill, J (1989). “Ritual production of environmental history among the Arawakan Wakuenai ff Venezuela.” Human Ecology 17(1): 1-25.

Holmberg, AR, HF Dobyns, et al. (1962). “Community and regional development: the joint Cornell-Peru experiment.” Human Organization 21(2): 107-124.

Johnson, A (1989). “How the Machiguenga manage resources: conservation or exploitation of nature?” Advances in Economic Botany 7: 213-222.

Keese, J (1998). “International NGOs and land use change in a southern highland region of Ecuador.” Human Ecology 26(3): 451-468.

Nongovernmental organizations are increasingly influencing resource management and land use in areas of small farm agriculture in Latin America. A field study of NGOs working in upper Canar, a region in the southern highlands of Ecuador, documents the changing human-environment relations ire an indigenous area and the influence of NGOs in the change process. Case studies of PLAN International and CARE indicate that the NGOs are helping marginalized producers shift land use away from traditional grains and tubers toward dairying and vegetables. Given current needs and resource constraints, the new land uses represent effective adaptive strategies. However the NGO work is having notable consequences for land use intensity and labor utilization patterns. (Journal)

Lopez-Zent, E (1998). “A creative perspective of environmental impacts by native Amazonian human populations.” Intercienca 23(4): 232-.

This paper explores a working hypothesis related to groups of human populations acting as disturbance agents in the Amazon. Three theoretical premises framing the main argument are presented (centered on concepts of environmental disturbance and eco-cultural process). However, more than theoretical, this paper is descriptive and its data come mostly from a non-exhaustive review of the human ecology literature. The cultural as well as biological heterogeneity of the Amazon is underlined. A brief overview of the possible human ways of life during the pre-European colonization period is also offered here. The basic idea is to illustrate human activities as potentially dynamic and central in the maintenance of the Amazonian ecosystem, including its richness and complexities. In support of this argument, the author selected seven examples to illustrate the ecological behavior of some contemporary Amazonian human groups such as Ka'apor, Siriono, Kayapo, Runa, Piaroa, Hoti, etc. Underlying the argument of this paper is the attempt to contrast two ideological perspectives about human-nature interactions: the viewpoint supported by the mainstream western belief than humans form a system apart from nature, and the standpoint vindicated by more ecologically attuned theories which considers humans to be a part of nature and thus together comprising a rather dynamic system. The first ideology, has usually conceived of human behavior toward nature as that of stewardship; thus, this anthropocentric view considers man as a cardinal element to ecosystem maintenance. The second ideology heralds a biocentric perspective, in which humans are equal to other species except that their behavior is still often perceived as damaging in general. The argument advanced here develops an ecocentric perspective, but even further, it elaborated a holistic vision of the human-nature relationship as art (in its literal meaning from Latin ars, ability, expertise, skill), that is creative, triggering ecological processes beyond those attempting to satisfy their needs. (Journal)

Nugent, D (1989). “Are we not [civilized] men? The formation and devolution of community in northern Mexico.” Journal of Historical Sociology 2(3): 206-239.

Obregon Salido, FJ and V Corral Verdugo (1997). “Systems of beliefs and environmental conservation behavior in a Mexican community.” Environment and Behavior 29: 213-235.

Part of a special issue on environmental psychology in Latin America. A study was conducted to examine three categories of beliefs austerity beliefs, conservation beliefs, and material waste beliefs related to consumption refuse practices in a sample of Mexican housewives. Their self reports of reuse and recycling practices were measured, and observations of reused/recycled items throughout the households were conducted. It was found that self reports of conservation behavior were best predicted by beliefs, but there were also significant correlations between observations of reuse/recycling and beliefs. Austerity beliefs were found to be better predictors of self reports of reuse, whereas conservation beliefs were significantly associated with observations of reuse. Self reports of recycling were associated more with materialistic and conservation beliefs, whereas the observed recycling was only predicted by materialistic beliefs. (Source)

Olsen, B (1997). “Environmentally sustainable development and tourism: lessons from Negril, Jamaica.” Human Organization 56(3): 285-293.

Posey, D and W Balee (1989). Resource Management in Amazonia: Indigenous and Folk Strategies. New York, New York Botanical Garden.

Price, M (1994). “Ecopolitics and environmental nongovernmental organizations in Latin America.” The Geographical Review 84(1): 42-59.

More than five hundred environmental nongovernmental organizations, most of them less than a decade old, operate in Latin America. Their popularity as vehicles of social change, the inability of governments to address environmental problems, new sources of international funding, and the idea of sustainable development have contributed to the proliferation of these organizations. Merits and limitations of this movement are assessed by case studies from Mexico and Venezuela. Conservation strategies have shifted from protectionist models to the politically popular notion of sustainable development. (Source)

Redford, K (1990). “The ecologically noble savage.” Cultural Survival Quarterly 15(1): 46-48.

Schmink, M (1992). Building institutions for sustainable development in Acre, Brazil. in Conservation of Neotropical Forests. J Redford and C Padoch, Ed. New York, Columbia University Press.

Schmink, M and C Wood (1992). Contested Frontiers in Amazonia. New York, Columbia University Press.

Schwartzmann, S (1992). Social movements and natural resource conservation in the Brazilian Amazon. in The Rainforest Harvest. S Counsell and T Rice, Ed. London, Friends of the Earth Trust.

Sheriden, T (1988). Where the Dove Calls: The Political Ecology of a Peasant-Corporate Community in Northwestern Mexico. Tucson, University of Arizona Press.

Southgate, D and HL Clark (1993). “Can conservation projects save biodiversity in South America?” Ambio 22: 163-166.

Stocks, A (1987). Resource management in an Amazon Varzea lake ecosystem: the Cocamilla Case. in The Question of The Commons. B McCay and J Acheson, Ed. Tucson, University of Arizona Press: 108-120.

Stonich, S (1993). I Am Destroying the Land: The Political Ecology of Poverty and Environmental Destruction in Honduras. Boulder, Westview Press.

Uquillas, JE (1989). Social impacts of modernization and public policy, and prospects for indigenous development in Ecuador's Amazonia. in Human Ecology of Tropical Land Settlement in Latin America. D Schumann and W Partridge, Ed. Boulder, Westview Press.

Utting, P (1994). “Social and political dimensions of environmental protection in Central America.” Development and Change 25(1): 231-259.

Wheat, S (1994). “Taming tourism.” The Geographical Magazine 66: 16-19.

The tourism industry, governments, and local communities must work together to counter the cultural and environmental damage that is occurring from the ever increasing number of tourists visiting environmentally rich countries. Ecotourism, the fastest growing sector in the tourism industry, represents a niche market for tourists who are interested in the environment and nature. The small Central American state of Belize is probably the world's most famous ecotourist destination. As its fragile natural environment is being threatened by mass tourism, a number of conservation initiatives are being encouraged. Community based projects have been introduced in areas such as southern Belize and Zimbabwe to overcome another hidden cost of tourism, the exploitation of local communities and indigenous populations. The World Travel and Tourism Council believes that voluntary codes of conduct are the best way to ensure environmental protection. (Source)