The stork, the plow, rural social structure and tropical deforestation in poor countries?

Abstract

Several authoritative sources attribute deforestation in poor countries to the actions of the rural poor. Others argue that this is tantamount to blaming the victim and directing attention away from the fundamental causes—inequality in landholding, tenure insecurity and landlessness—of deforestation. Unfortunately, there are no statistical tests of the impact of these rural political economy variables on deforestation. This paper uses a model of deforestation based on rural household labor allocation decisions to empirically assess how those decisions interact with the structure of rural political economy to determine the extent of deforestation in poor countries. Cross-country multiple regression equations suggest that policies to intensify smallholder agriculture can slow population movement to the agricultural frontier. But regression results also show that this outcome depends on the degree of equality in the distribution of landholdings and the extent of rural rootlessness. These findings have two important implications for public policy. First, they suggest that efforts to slow deforestation must start with an understanding of the behavior of the millions of small farmers who now deforest. Second, they suggest that political economy interpretations of deforestation need to taken more seriously by those trying to conserve forested areas.