Settlement and deforestation in Central America : a discussion of development issues

Few books or articles are based on detailed fieldwork specifically aimed at conducting data on settlement and deforestation. The issue that dominates the Central American literature is the conversion of tropical forest to pasture through the process of smallholder settlement. This phenomenon is widespread, affecting tropical forests throughout the region. The literature implicates several factors as responsible for driving the conversion of tropical forest to pasture. At a national policy level, beef cattle production for export has proven to be an attractive way to generate revenue for investment and to meet foreign debt obligations. In addition, U.S. commercial beef consumers have come to see Central America as an attractive source of inexpensive meat. Larger landholders are thus expanding their enterprises, which frequently leads to a highly speculative land market whereby poor farmers sell their land in order to acquire the cash needed to satisfy immediate consumption needs. To smallholders, ranching seems attractive because it is less labor-intensive than farming once pasture has been established. Unfortunately, the opportunities that ranching offers turn out to be illusory for most smallholders. While a small percentage of smallholders do succeed in making the transition from subsistence to small-scale capitalist ranchers, most exhaust their resources before they are able to establish pasture and acquire cattle. They frequently sell out to wealthier interests able to complete the conversion of land they have cleared of trees into pasture and move deeper into the forest. The authors state that the search for alternative forms of land use is hampered by a lack of technically feasible production options. The most basic need is to conduct detailed land capability surveys. Considerable land use survey work has been done, but not in a comprehensive way. A second shortcoming is that little attention has been given to developing sustainable production systems that can yield acceptable revenues within the constraints imposed by land use capabilities. Throughout Central America, national governments have tended to limit their support to ranching and conventional agriculture, with a heavy focus on production for export. Efforts by international agencies to promote environmentally appropriate land use have tended to produce equally conventional forestry projects. While less destructive than ranching, the authors believe that these projects accomplish nothing in terms of solving problems such as income and employment, labor scarcity, and tenure insecurity, which are closely related to the inability of settlers to establish themselves permanently in an area. At present, a settler who asks, "What can I do to earn a living if I don"t turn this land into pasture?" is unlikely to receive an answer. The authors propose that institutional support for Central American countries is needed at several levels. First, the agencies responsible for regulating land use need to be helped to acquire the skills necessary to assess land use potential. Second, this training needs to go beyond narrow technical training to sensitize personnel to the broader social and economic issues outlined above. At present, there are few people in positions of responsibility who understand that questions such as labor availability and land tenure are as central to successful development as soil properties or climate. The report also urges education of host governments and national populations about the economic importance of sustainable production. (Author abstract, modified)