Struggling with Honduran poverty: The environmental consequences of natural resource-based development and rural transformations

Abstract

Export growth through agricultural diversification has been the basis of development strategies in Central America since WW II. This article examines the impact of this strategy on inequality, impoverishment, and environmental degradation in southern Honduras. Analysis centers on the most important exports promoted in the region — cotton, cattle, and recently so-called nontraditionals — most significantly shrimp mariculture along the Gulf of Fonseca. The study demonstrates the systemic interconnections among the dynamics of agricultural development, patterns of capitalist accumulation, rural inequality and impoverishment and problems of environmental destruction. Conclusions point to the need for development policies to directly address the extremes of wealth and poverty in order to reverse environmental decline.