Family productive strategies, perceptions and deforestation in a context of forest transition: the case of Tena in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Authors

  • Susana Anda Basabe Pontificia Universidad Católica de Ecuador

    Master in Socio-Environmental Studies from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) and a graduate in Sociocultural Anthropology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE). FLACSO researcher, Quito-Ecuador. She has been a professor of Nutritional Anthropology and Ethnological Theories at PUCE. She has researched and published articles on alimentation of indigenous communities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and on ethnicity and oral memory of the Ecuadorian coast. She has been the coordinator of the journal Anthropology: Research Notebooks of the PUCE. She worked as a consultant for ALDHEA-Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in Ecuador, National Institute of Cultural Heritage (INPC) in Ecuador, ASI Foundation-Ministry of Public Health-IDRC in Ecuador, Unit and Cooperation for the Development of Peoples (UCODEP ) -PUCE, among other institutions. She is co-author of the article "Political and structural processes of deforestation in the Amazon: the case of Tena, Ecuador (2014)" in the magazine Espacio y Desarrollo (No. 29).
  • Sara Gómez de la Torre FLACSO Ecuador

    Master in Socio-Environmental Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences-Ecuador (2011), Bachelor of International Relations at the San Francisco de Quito University (2009). She worked as editor of Letras Verdes-Latin American Magazine of Socio-Environmental Studies and Eutopia, magazine of economic-territorial development of FLACSO-Ecuador. Researcher and consultant in Socio-environmental Studies, Interculturality, Development Projects, Local Development, International Relations, Social Sciences, Publishing, Communication. Her most recent publication is titled "Political and structural processes of deforestation in the Amazon: the case of Tena, Ecuador (2014)" in the magazine Espacio y Desarrollo (No. 29). She has also investigated education, environment and interculturality in the Galapagos Ecuador; deforestation and forest management in Cosanga, Tena, Macas and Coca, in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
  • Eduardo Bedoya Garland FLACSO Ecuador

    PhD from Binghamton University in New York. Invited Associate Professor in the Master of Socio-Environmental Studies at FLACSO, Quito, Ecuador; Professor in the Master of Environmental Development of Applied Geography of the Humanities department of the PUCP. He has been a professor in Political Ecology at the UNESCO Professorship at the University of Valencia (1996) and at other universities in Spain, such as the Rovira-Virgili in Tarragona (1996-1997), the Central University of Barcelona and the University of Lleida. In 2014, he obtained the Prometeo research and teaching grant from SENESCYT-Ecuador. He has researched and published articles and books on forced labor in Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru; deforestation in the Amazon regions in Ecuador and Peru, and coca-growing in Peru and Bolivia. He has been a consultant for the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, WWF in Lima, IUCN in Quito Ecuador, Institute for Development Anthropology in Binghamton-New York and other institutions.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18800/anthropologica.201701.007

Keywords:

Amazonia, Colonists, forest transition, deforestation, cultural perceptions

Abstract

This article explains how the family productive strategies of farmer settlers and their perceptions of the forest influence the rate of deforestation. This particular approach, based on the analysis of endogenous processes, seeks to contextualize and understand how farmers operate within a context of «forest transition», as a result of significant economic changes, market expansion and road infrastructure
development. Our central argument is that the farmers’ strategies in Tena, in relation to the rate of deforestation on their farms, are a result of the combination of a set of economic processes of survival in the short and medium term and of their mental or cultural perceptions of the forest. Such endogenous processes are
not only responses to external contexts but are also derived from demographic cycles and accumulation dynamics that occur within the families of producers.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Angelsen, Arild y Thomas K. Rudel (2013). Designing and Implementing Effective REDD+Policies: A Forest Transition Approach. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 7(1), Winter 2013, 91-113 https://doi.org/10.1093/reep/res022

Aramburú, Carlos y Eduardo Bedoya (1987). Poblamiento y uso de los recursos en la Amazonía Alta; el caso del Alto Huallaga. En Carlos Mora y Carlos Aramburú (eds.), Desarrollo amazónico: una perspectiva latinoamericana. Lima: Centro de Investigación y Promoción Amazónica (CIPA) e Instituto Andino de Estudios en Población y Desarrollo (INANDEP).

Barbieri, A. F., R. E. Bilsborrow y W. K. Pan (2005). Farm household lifecycles and land use in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Population and Environment, 27(1), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-005-0013-y

Bedoya, Eduardo (1995). The Social and Economic Causes of Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon basin: natives and colonists. En The Social Causes of Environmental Destruction in Latin America. Linking Levels of Analysis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Bedoya Garland, Eduardo y Lorien Klein (1996). Forty years of Political ecology in the Upper Peruvian Forest: The Case of Upper Huallaga. En Leslie E. Sponsel, Thomas Headland y Robert G. Bailey (eds.), Tropical Deforestation. The Human Dimension I (pp. 165-186). Nueva York: Columbia University Press.

Bedoya Garland, Eduardo, Sara Gómez de la Torre y Susana Anda (2015). «La ecología política de la deforestación en la Amazonía de Ecuador». Informe final para SENESCYT. Programa Prometeo. Quito Ecuador.

Bilsborrow, Richard (1994). Population, development and deforestation: Some recent evidence. En United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis (ed.), Population, Environment, and Development (pp. 117-134). Nueva York: United Nations Press.

Bilsborrow, Richard (1997). Population dynamics and deforestation in Latin America: Research findings and policy issues. Nidi Hostee Lecture Series, 4, La Haya.

Bilsborrow, R., A. Barbieri y W. Pan (2004). Changes in population and land use over time in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Acta Amazónica, 34, 635-647. https://doi. org/10.1590/S0044-59672004000400015

Boserup, Ester (1965). The Conditions of Agricultural Growth. The Economies of Agrarian Change under Population Pressure. Nueva York: Aldine.

Bryant, R. (1998). Power, Knowledge and Political Ecology in the Third World. Progress in Physical Geography, 22(1), 79-94. https://doi.org/10.1191/030913398674890974

Bryant, R. L. y S. Bailey (1997). Third world political ecology. Londres: Routledge

Deadman Peter, Derek Robinson, Emilio Moran y Eduardo Brondizio (2004). Colonist household decision making and land-use change, in the Amazon Rainforest: and agent-based simulation. Environment and Planning. B: Planning and Design, (31), 693-709.

Godoy, Ricardo, Kathleen O’Neill, Stephen Groff, Peter Kostishack, Adoni Cubas, Josephien Demmer, Kendra Mcsweeney y Johannes Overman (1997). Household determinants of deforestation by amerindians in Honduras. World Development, 25(6), 977-987. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(97)00007-7

Gómez de la Torre, Sara, Susana Anda y Eduardo Bedoya Garland (2017). Procesos políticos y estructurales de la deforestación en la Amazonía: el caso de Tena, Ecuador (2014). Espacio y Desarrollo, (29), 7-36.

Grijalva, J., Venus Arévalo, Charles Wood (2004). Expansión y trayectoria de la ganadería en la Amazonía. Publicación Miscelánea, 125. Quito: INIAP, Editorial Tecnigrava. INEC-Ecuador (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos) (2010). VII Censo de Población y VI de Vivienda. Quito.

INEC-Ecuador (Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos) (2001). VI Censo de Población y V de Vivienda. Quito.

Irvine, D. (1989) Succession Management and Resource Distribution in an Amazonia Rainforest. Advances in Economic Botany, 7, 223-237.

Lu, Flora, Clark Gray, Richard E. Bilsborrow, Carlos Mena, Christine M. Erlien, Jason Bremner, Alison Barbieri y Stephen J. Walsh (2010) Contrasting Colonist and Indigenous Impacts on Amazonian Forests. Conservation Biology. Research Note, 24(3), 881-885. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01463.x

Macdonald, Theodore (1997). De cazadores a ganaderos. Quito: Abya Yala.

ORDEPLAN-Ecuador (2012). Plan de Desarrollo y Ordenamiento Territorial Parroquia Ahuano. Ahuano, Tena. http://app.sni.gob.ec/visorseguimiento/DescargaGAD/ data/sigadplusdiagnostico/1560602670001_MODELO%20DE%20GESTION%20AHUANO_15-05-2015_17-29-45.pdf

Mather, Alexander. (1992). The forest transition. Area, (24), 367-379.

Pálsson, Gísli (2001). Relaciones humano-ambientales. Orientalismo, paternalismo y comunalismo. En Philippe Descola y Gísli Pálsson (eds.), Naturaleza y sociedad. Perspectivas antropológicas (pp. 80-100) México D. F.: Siglo XXI.

Perz, Stephen (2001). Household demographic factors as life cycle determinants of land use in the Amazon. Population Research and Policy Review, (20), 159-186.

Perz G. Stephen y David Skole (2003). Secondary Forest Expansion in the Brazilian Amazon and the Refinement of Forest Transition Theory. Society and Natural Resources, (16), 277-294. https://doi.org/10.1080/0894192039017885667

Perz, Stephen y Robert Walker (2002). Household Life Cycles and Secondary Forest Cover Among Small Farm Colonists in the Amazon. World Development, 30(6), 1009-1027. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(02)00024-4

Pfaff, A. y R. Walker (2010). Regional interdependence and forest «transitions»: Substitute deforestation limits the relevance of local reversals. Land Use Policy, 27(2), 119-129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2009.07.010

Pichón, Francisco (1996). Settler Agriculture and the Dynamics of Resource Allocation in Frontier Environments. Human Ecology, 24(3), 341-371. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/BF02169394

Pichón, Francisco (1997). Colonist land-allocation decisions, land use, and deforestation in the Ecuadorian Amazon frontier. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 45, 707-744. https://doi.org/10.1086/452305

Pichón, Francisco y Richard Bilsborrow (1999). Land Use Systems, Deforestation and Demographic Factors: Farm-Level evidence from Ecuador. En Richard Bilsborrow y Daniel Hogan (eds.), Population and Deforestation in the Humid Tropics (pp. 175-206). Lieja: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (USSP).

Rudel Thomas et al. (2002). A Tropical Forest Transition. Agriculture Change, Out Migration, and Secondary Forests in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Annals of the Association of the American Geographers, 92(1), 87-102. https://doi. org/10.1111/1467-8306.00281

Sierra, Rodrigo (2013). Patrones y factores de deforestación en el Ecuador Continental, 1990-2010. Quito: Conservación Internacional Ecuador. Forest Trend.

Trujillo, Jorge (1986). Los pueblos indígenas y la colonización en la Amazonía ecuatoriana. En Desarrollo amazónico: una perspectiva latinoamericana (pp. 427-452). Lima: CIPA-INANDEP.

Uquillas, Jorge (1984). Colonization and spontaneous settlement in the Ecuadorian Amazon. En Marianne Schmink y Charles Wood (eds.), Frontier expansion in Amazonia (pp. 261-284). Gainesville: University of Florida.

Uquillas, Jorge (1987). Colonización y asentamientos espontáneos en la Amazonía ecuatoriana. En Desarrollo amazónico: una perspectiva latinoamericana (pp. 359-383). Lima: CIPA-INANDEP.

Walker Robert y Alfredo Kingo Oyama Homma (1996). Land use and land cover dynamics in the Brazilian Amazon: an overview. Ecological Economics, (18), 67-80. https://doi.org/10.1016/0921-8009(96)00033-x

Downloads

Published

2017-08-01

How to Cite

Anda Basabe, S., Gómez de la Torre, S., & Bedoya Garland, E. (2017). Family productive strategies, perceptions and deforestation in a context of forest transition: the case of Tena in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Anthropologica Del Departamento De Ciencias Sociales, 35(38), 177–209. https://doi.org/10.18800/anthropologica.201701.007

Issue

Vol. 35 No. 38 (2017): Culture, politics and political ecology of water

Section

Anthropology and the political ecology of the Amazon deforestation

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.