Journal ArticleDOI
Traditional resource-use systems and tropical deforestation in a multi-ethnic region in North-West Ecuador
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In this article, the authors compare the regional environmental impact of indigenous and non-indigenous households in North-west Ecuador, with emphasis on tropical deforestation, and find no significant differences in the recent deforestation associated with each group based on their cultural or ethnic background, although differences did exist in the past.Abstract:
There is general consensus that resource-use strategies of recent migrants in tropical rainforests result in extensive deforestation and other negative environmental impacts. Less agreement exists about the nature and extent of the impact of indigenous and long-standing migrant communities living in rainforests. It has often been argued that the high value these communities place on local resources results in environmental conservation in areas under their control, but this is being increasingly challenged. The aim of this study was to contribute to this debate by comparing the regional environmental impact of indigenous and non-indigenous households in North-west Ecuador, with emphasis on tropical deforestation. The basic premise was that long-term resource-use strategies and related decision-making processes should be discernible as characteristic land-use patterns. Three indigenous and non-indigenous populations coexist in the study region, and demographic, land-use and historical sources of information were used to evaluate their relationship to regional deforestation in the period 1983-93. No significant differences were found in the recent deforestation associated with each group based on their cultural or ethnic background, although differences did exist in the past. The need to differentiate between a given environmental impact and the decision-making process behind it was also evident. In North-west Ecuador, markets, factors of production, and access to and control of resources, are key for understanding the environmental impact of local communities. Low-impact resource-uses often result from low-return productive activities in forest environments with low labour opportunity costs, high discount rates for income generated through activities compromising food security, and from uncertainty about future conditions. Environmental policy-making and programme design need to recognize this relationship. Conservation will be possible only if the perceived benefit to local users is greater than that of resource transformation, both of which respond to the dominant environmental, economic and social conditions at a given time and place. Creating or fostering the appropriate conditions should be a key objective of both.read more
Citations
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What drives tropical deforestation?: a meta-analysis of proximate and underlying causes of deforestation based on subnational case study evidence
Helmut Geist,Eric F. Lambin +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyzed 152 studies of deforestation in different regions of varying size from around the tropics and analyzed them to assess how important different causes of deforestation really are.
Journal ArticleDOI
Dependence on forest resources and tropical deforestation in Ghana
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an analysis of the level of local dependence on forest resources and its implications for forest management in Ghana and outline the causes of continuing deforestation in the studied region from the perspective of the local residents and discusses what role they could play in addressing the problem.
Journal ArticleDOI
Environmental Determinants of Infectious Disease: A Framework for Tracking Causal Links and Guiding Public Health Research
Joseph N. S. Eisenberg,Manish A. Desai,Karen Levy,Sarah J. Bates,Song Liang,Kyra S. Naumoff,James C. Scott +6 more
TL;DR: A coupling of environmental and disease transmission processes provides a much-needed construct for furthering the understanding of both specific and general relationships between environmental change and infectious disease.
Journal ArticleDOI
Environmental change and infectious disease: how new roads affect the transmission of diarrheal pathogens in rural Ecuador
Joseph N. S. Eisenberg,William Cevallos,Karina Ponce,Karen Levy,Sarah J. Bates,James C. Scott,Alan Hubbard,Nadia Vieira,Pablo Endara,Mauricio Espinel,Gabriel Trueba,Lee W. Riley,James Trostle +12 more
TL;DR: The significant and consistent trends across viral, bacterial, and protozoan pathogens suggest the importance of considering a broad range of pathogens with differing epidemiological patterns when assessing the environmental impact of new roads.
Journal ArticleDOI
Indigenous Land Use in the Ecuadorian Amazon: A Cross-cultural and Multilevel Analysis
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used data from a regional-scale survey of five indigenous populations in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon to describe their agricultural land use practices and investigate the factors that affect those practices.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Environment, Development and Politics: Capital Accumulation and the Livestock Sector in Eastern Amazonia
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the frameworks used to analyze environmental questions in developing economies and how well these function in the particular case of livestock development in the Eastern Amazon Basin, arguing that, due to the peculiarities of the state subsidies available for ranching activities that spurred a frenzy of land speculation, the exchange rather than productive value of land became paramount.
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Journal ArticleDOI
Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java
Carolyn Trist,Nancy Lee Peluso +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java, the authors present a rich forests, poor people approach to resource control and resistance in Java.
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Government policies and deforestation in Brazil's Amazon region
TL;DR: The authors analyzes the impact of government policies on the magnitude and rate of deforestation in Brazil's Amazon region and concludes that efforts to slow or stop tropical deforestation through fiat only will be much less likely to succeed if the overall policy and regulatory frameworks give people incentives to do just the opposite.
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