Social and economic causes of deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon Basin : natives and colonists

The factors affecting the rate at which each group causes deforestation differ, however. This paper explores these differences in Peru"s Upper Huallaga Valley (the principal coca producing region in the world), focusing on the interrelationships between land availability, land tenure laws, and market forces on one hand, and agricultural intensification and deforestation on the other. The study concludes that the technological decisions of the two groups are guided by diverse sets of socioeconomic factors. In the case of the colonists, deforestation cannot be attributed solely to the characteristics of slash-and-burn agriculture. The effects of the illegality of coca, its high production costs, and above all the high income it generates eloquently demonstrate that structural variables such as agricultural prices are more important than legal land deeding in intensifying land use; in itself, a change in land tenure laws is insufficient to modify land use radically. Likewise in the case of indigenous groups, the availability of natural resources, while decidedly influencing the level of deforestation, is only one factor in a larger group of variables. In sum, deforestation does not originate with individuals or systems of extensive agriculture. It is rooted in a determinant class structure that corresponds to the model of regional and national accumulation. Agricultural systems and the destructive behavior of peasants is only an expression of a much more profound problem in the structure of society. (Author abstract, modified)