Thinking Politically about Sustainable Development in the Tropical Forests of Latin America

Thinking Politically about Sustainable Development in the Tropical Forests of Latin America

Eduardo Silva

ABSTRACT

This article examines a number of factors which facilitate the adoption and success, of policies and projects to promote grassroots sustainable development - that is, the sustainable, multiple use of forests at the community level, including aspects of local self-reliance and control of economic resources. I will argue that the extractive reserve legislation in Brazil and community forestry projects in Mexico and Peru depended on the formation of pro-grassroots development coalitions. The exact make-up of those coalitions depended on three factors: (1) the initial disposition of key governmental and dominant class actors to such policies; (2) the intensity of local conflicts and the extent of community organization; and (3) the involvement of international actors. The cases suggest that in the absence of serious government or upper class opposition, the adoption and durability of such policies and projects can be promoted by the formation of a coalition of organized communities, domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs), some allied government agencies, and support from international actors. However, when key government agencies and socio-economic tlites are fundamentally opposed to sustainable development initiatives at the grassroots level, much higher levels of community organization, conflict, and domestic and international support appear to be necessary.

The debate over the fate of tropical forests has mostly concentrated on uncovering the causes of deforestation in order to advance policy prescriptions that might halt the destruction. The causes identified and the prescriptions put forward have differed, largely in accordance with the different implicit and explicit definitions of development - with or without the adjective ‘sustainable’ - and the role of international actors in the development process. Yet, although opinions over the correctness of diag- noses and solutions often diverge, the discussion in general has suffered from a common shortcoming: few studies have explored the factors that impel, or compel, Latin American governments to adopt those policy prescriptions.

To contribute to that discussion, this article examines conditions that seem conducive to the adoption of policies, programmes, and projects that favour sustainable development at the grassroots in tropical forests. In this context, these are defined as measures that encourage the sustainable, multiple use

This research was partially funded by the University of Missouri-St Louis and the Center for International Studies of the University of Missouri-St Louis. I would like to thank Andrew Hurrell, Dennis Judd, and the reviewers of Development and Change for helpful comments. Remaining errors of fact and interpretation are, of course, my responsibility.

Derdoprnenf and Change Vol. 25 (1994). 697-721. 6 Institute of Social Studies 1994. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Rd, Oxford OX4 IJF, UK.

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of forests at the community level, with an emphasis on technologies that promote local self-reliance and control of economic resources as a means to foster a more equitable distribution of wealth. Specifically, the article compares the political conditions that led to the establishment of extractive reserves in Brazil and community forestry programmes in Mexico and Peru, and argues that their success depended on the formation of pro-grassroots development coalitions. Moreover, the composition of these coalitions depended on the initial disposition of governmental actors to such policies, the intensity of local conflicts, the position of dominant societal interests, and the extent of community organization.’ In the absence of intense opposition from governments and dominant elites, the case studies suggest that the adoption and durability of such programmes depends on the existence of a coalition of organized communities, domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs), some allied government agencies and Clite groups, and support from an international actor. When governments and dominant elites close ranks in opposition to sustainable development initiatives at the grassroots level, however, much higher levels of community organization, conflict, and domestic and international support appear to be necessary.

These arguments are developed over four sections. I first contend that the concept of sustainable development itself is highly politicized: it is therefore useful to distinguish between competing conceptualizations of the term and the resulting policy prescriptions. The second section then develops a political economy approach to the problem in the belief that this is best suited for teasing out some of the conditions favourable to the adoption of programmes that promote grassroots development. Following the case studies, a concluding section examines the broader implications of the comparative exercise, and the significance of the cases in showing how different combinations of factors can affect outcomes.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: THE POLICY CONSEQUENCES OF RIVAL DEFINITIONS

Although the concept of sustainable development is controversial, the debate over environmental policy, programmes and projects has clustered around two distinct definitions that share a central core. At the most general level, the development studies field posits a strong relationship between economic development, poverty and the environment. Poor economic performance increases poverty which aggravates environmental degradation (Ascher and Healy, 1990; Inter-American Development Bank, 1991; World Bank, 1992). The well-documented effects of poverty on environmental degradation gave

1. For recent analyses in a similar vein, see Friedmann and Rangan (1993) and Ghai and Vivian (1 992).

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birth to the concept of sustainable development, first popularized by the Bruntland Commission (1987). The report stressed the need for a style of economic development capable of meeting the basic needs of a developing country’s population, while maintaining its stock of natural resources so as not to rob future generations of their use (Global Tomorrow Coalition, 1989).

For policy and programmatic purposes, development economists have broken the concept of sustainable development down into three interrelated components: a healthy, growing economy (which may necessitate structural adjustment); a commitment to social equity (or meeting basic needs); and protection of the environment (Weaver and O’Keefe, 1991).2 This definition raises two immediate difficulties. First, the terms are too general: as a result. careful attention must be paid to their specific content as this will heavily colour policy prescriptions. Second, fulfilling all three terms, no matter how defined, is problematic because of inherent distributional - and therefore political - tensions between them.

Environmental policies, programmes and projects - including those related to the forest - have tended to cluster around two distinct conceptualizations of the relationship between economic growth, equity and environment. The dominant view within the policy establishment, shared by governments and multilateral institutions, reduces equity and environmental considerations to economic growth (World Bank, 1992). In the current climate of economic orthodoxy, developing countries aiming for rapid growth must undertake structural economic adjustment in order to build market economies and integrate them into world markets. From this perspective the environmental consequences of economic development are considered to be unfortunate side-effects that must be ameliorated. Conse- quently, the solution is limited to the addition of technologies capable of mitigating the environmental impact of industrial processes, rather than finding substitute processes or alternative methods of production (Commoner, 1990; Hurtubia, 1991; Redclift and Goodman, 199 1).

If this mainstream definition of sustainable development reduces alternatives to environmental degradation to the requirements of economic growth, social equity concerns and their link to the environment receive even less direct attention. At its core, the mainstream approach argues that aggregate economic growth brought about by structural reforms will improve national income (and therefore housing, education, and wealth), and that rising income levels will allow people to become concerned about environmental degradation.

~~

2 There is, of course, quite a debate over whether it is possible to have economic growth and be able to protect the environment. For this, see Herman Daly (1991). There are also a number of more eco-centred definitions based on concepts such as through-puts, steady states, and carrying capacity.

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These views inspire a wide range of policy prescriptions for tropical forests and urban areas. Multilateral lending institutions now require the addition of ‘environmental’ safeguards to large-scale development projects in mining, energy and agriculture that will provide employment and national income to pay back onerous international 10ans.~ Water and air pollution, as well as refuse and sewage treatment, have also been high on the agenda (Inter-American Development Bank, 1991; Le Prestre, 1989; Nielson and Stern, forthcoming; World Bank, 1991). In related efforts, a number of studies have advocated the promotion of private property rights over communal ownership, elimination of government subsidies that make deforestation profitable, reducing the role of the state to minimize the impact of bureaucratic incompetence, and then strengthening institutional ‘capacities’ in sharply reduced spheres of state action (Hardin, 1968; Mahar, 1989; Repetto, 1988).

An alternative, more critical approach to sustainable development takes each of the terms - economic growth, social equity and environment - into account in its own right, and then seeks to find reinforcing linkages between them. Most of the studies in this vein begin by implicitly or explicitly questioning the orthodox view of economic development (Redclift and Goodman, 1991).4 They argue that even with technological fixes and a more realistic economic accounting of environmental lo~ses ,~ rapid economic growth on the periphery (and in the centre) will be ultimately self-defeating in terms of environmental and human sustainability. As a result, a number of more ecologically-centred values infuse this alternative approach to economic development. Its proponents conclude that development efforts should be more decentralized, should look for alternative products and production methods, favour smaller-scale over large-scale enterprise, and take participation seriously by concentrating on grassroots development (Browder, 1989; Commoner, 1990; Friedmann and Rangan, 1993; Ghai, 1994; Ghai and Vivian, 1992; Max-Neef, 1991).

Equally important, this more critical approach to sustainable development builds on the assumption that environmental problems in developing nations - especially for the impoverished in rural areas - are connected to livelihoods (Redclift, 1986). Thus, the struggle over the environment is inextricably linked to the larger issues of social, economic and cultural self-determination, which requires that vulnerable populations be offered alternatives to exclusive reliance on the market. This is particularly true for people who are not yet fully integrated into market economies, or who are

3. For critical assessments of these projects and what they represent in the context of North-South relations, see Rich (1985 and 1990) and Goodman and Hall (1990).

4. For similar types of analyses in the Central American context, see Annis (1992), Carriere (1991) and Utting (1993).

5. For environmental cost accounting see World Resources Institute (1991).

Thinking Politically about Sustainable Development 70 1

at the lower end of the socio-economic scale. In the forest these include dispossessed or displaced small-scale subsistence farmers, Indian communities, and other communities, families, and individuals who derive their living from multiple extractive activities.

From this perspective then, environmental concerns, social equity, and economic development for the rural poor are given equal weight conceptually - not reduced to one or another term - and then linked. It is a more holistic approach, since the linkage requires explicit recognition of the fact that the ecological impact of human activities cuts across economic activities, and across social, economic and political boundaries. This has led to an emphasis on grassroots development, technologies that mimic natural processes, and projects that promote local self-reliance and control over resources in order to achieve a more equitable distribution of wealth.

These concerns have inspired studies and policy prescriptions that more directly address the fate of economically and socially underprivileged groups in the forest. They start from the assumption that forests are multiple use zones that can and do provide their inhabitants with a living. These studies model small-scale sustainable development projects - which often refine native forest dweller techniques or mimic natural processes - that link communities to markets. The hope is that governments or other institutions will adopt them on a larger scale. Such projects include, among others, agroforestry, community forestry, wood harvesting, the ranching of native fauna, extractive reserves and ecotourism (Anderson, 1990; Browder, 1989; Ghai, 1994; Gradwohl and Greenberg, 1988; Posey, 1985).

This article shares many of these assumptions, hence its focus on extractive reserves and community forestry projects. Moreover, the evidence it presents reinforces persistent findings that grassroots development programmes falter in the absence of local participation. The cases studied suggest that projects and policies work best when small rural communities participate with strong autonomous organization in planning and execution, rather than simply as the managers of projects designed by first world specialists. Such participation gives more drive and cohesion to the effort, as well as increased control over the resources generated. This enhances the opportunities for greater equity and offers a chance for rural projects to survive the encounter with the market which, in turn, takes population pressure off urban areas. It also builds strong secondary associations in rural civil society, a necessary condition for the consolidation and deepening of democracy in developing countries. Increasing secondary association organization at the community level is also crucial for the creation of denser horizontal linkages between such communities, which would reinforce alternative approaches to sustainable development (Bunker, 1985; Friedmann and Rangan, 1993).

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EXPLAINING THE PUBLIC POLICY OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

This paper takes as its point of departure the alternative approach to sustainable development in tropical forests. Most other studies from this and the dominant approach share a common shortcoming. They concentrate on diagnosis and policy prescription - a crucial step - but they stop short of addressing the conditions under which their policy prescriptions might become public policy (Hurrell, 1991). If they do venture that far, they are usually limited to invocations of the need for political will to carry out policy reforms (Goldsworthy, 1988). This suggests a technocratic conception of policy-making and politics (Galjart, 1993; Galjart and P. Silva, forthcoming). Such a view implicitly assumes that once technically correct policy prescriptions have been found, change only requires public authorities to muster the courage to challenge established interests and drive through reforms. This approach fails to consider the fact that policy-makers are only relatively autonomous from society (Evans, 1992). Policies that lead to unsustainable development and inequitable distribution of wealth are supported by powerful coalitions that share a common set of values and interests. Public authorities know that they ignore these coalitions at their own peril. This implies that governments usually challenge those interests only when alternative coalitions of value, interests and power support them (Goldsworthy, 1988; Silva, 1993).

Framing the problem this way suggests that a political economy approach with a strong international dimension may be the most useful starting point for uncovering the conditions under which public officials adopt policies of sustainable development which favour grassroots development. In this context, ‘political economy’ is very broadly defined. It is used to refer to a set of questions regarding the interaction of social groups, the state and the economy (Smith, 1989). In this study those questions are: what are the characteristics of the regional economy; how do they define social groups potentially open to these kinds of alternative projects; and which groups oppose such efforts? What is their relationship to state institutions? Are relevant government actors opposed to, in favour of, or indifferent to such projects? What is the role of international multilateral and governmental institutions, as well as international non-governmental organizations? Answering these questions reveals the constellation of interest groups that might support or oppose grassroots development policy initiatives; in this case, a wide range of dominant and subordinate rural social groups as well as state, international and non-governmental actors (Schmink and Wood, 1984, 1987).

From this perspective, policies change according to the configuration of shifting alliances with varying power resources. Social groups and institutional actors join forces on the basis of shared interests. The relative


power of these coalitions depends on a number of factors, such as the importance of the issue area; the economic strength of social groups (Gourevitch, 1986); the amount of state support those groups can count on (Bratton, 1990; Miliband, 1969); the capacity of any of the actors to inflict political costs on the government (e.g., social disruption which may either act as a veto power or have a catalytic function); a group’s organizational capability, particularly in the case of underprivileged groups (Bunker, 1985; Eckstein, 1989). From this discussion, it should be clear that the state - or government-is not viewed as a unitary, monolithic actor. Rather, it is conceived as a series of authoritative institutions occupied by people with agendas: it is an instrumental view of the state. Thus, cohesive government action may occur when the heads of important government agencies across many functional sectors agree on general policy. In federal republics such as Brazil and Mexico the position is strengthened when state governments concur. But government institutions may also be less cohesive, more internally divided on how to deal with a given policy issue: in other words, both federal agencies and state governments may be working at cross purposes. This condition offers political space for societal actors to appeal to government organizations for help in their cause, or to play one government agency against another. Lastly, one must also keep in mind that Latin American societies are heavily penetrated by and dependent on external actors. This means that a source of international support for domestic actors is often crucial for the relative power of competing coalitions (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979; Haggard, 1990; Hurrell, forthcoming).

THREE CASE STUDIES

Based on the evidence of three case studies, the following section seeks to disentangle actors, interests and power resources in order to uncover alliances that can turn grassroots sustainable development projects into reality. The analysis considers the influence of three factors on coalitional dynamics. The first factor is the initial position of key governmental actors and policy-makers towards such programmes, be it resistance, co-operation or relative indifference. Government resistance occurs when the most powerful agencies at both the national and state or provincial level uniformly pursue environmentally unfriendly development strategies, and when they systematically repress subordinate social groups in favour of dominant ones. Conversely, co-operation between relevant state actors and grassroots sustainable development coalitions is more likely when the government is less unified - that is, when some important ministries or governorships are more accommodating to environmentalism. Indifference, in this case, implies that most relevant government actors simply have not considered the matter, and are perfectly content to let outsiders pay for some project or another.

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The second factor to be examined is the extent of local social conflict and the degree of organization at the grassroots. The assumption is that conflict with dominant groups may lead to grassroots organization, which is essential if subordinate social groups are to act -that is, form coalitions. The third and final factor to take into account is the degree and type of involvement of international actors. The criteria for case selection and the response of socio-economic elites will be discussed during the exposition of the cases themselves.

Extractive Reserves in Brazil

Of the Amazon basin nations, Brazil has most captured the imagination of the world. It has done so not only because it outstrips other countries in terms of the sheer area covered by its tropical forests, but also because it has one of the highest levels of deforestation (Fearnside, 1990). In our compar- ison, Brazil represents the polar end of a spectrum in terms of two unfavourable conditions: the opposition of government actors to sustainable development at the grassroots, and the power of the dominant social groups arrayed against such measures. In the face of such powerful resistance, the coalition of Brazilian social actors in favour of extractive reserves required extensive international support. Thus, Brazil is also at the end of the spectrum with respect to the sheer size, power and complexity of the alliance that partially overcame the forces resisting grassroots development efforts.

Throughout the nation’s history, the development policies of the Brazilian government have decisively shaped the regional economy and social groups of Amazonia (Cockburn and Hecht, 1988). The rubber boom in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries introduced rubber tappers, rubber barons, merchants and small-scale placer miners into the area, alongside the indigenous population, while river dwellers began subsistence activities. After the rubber boom these people stayed, although the rest of the nation forgot about the ‘green hell’ until the late 1960s, when the newly-installed military government began to promote plans for the large-scale economic development of the region.

The extensive felling of the tropical forest that began in the early 1970s in Brazil was a direct consequence of the authoritarian regime’s aggressive, well-articulated, ambitious and widely-publicized economic development and colonization plan for the region. As far as the Brazilian government was concerned, forests were empty lands of little or no intrinsic economic value. Their conversion to cattle ranching, the exploitation of mineral resources, the generation of energy, and the granting of plots of land to landless peasants from North-eastern and Southern Brazil - to diffuse social tension in those areas - were the national state’s primary goals (Bunker, 1985; Guimaraes, 1991; Hall, 1989; Hecht, 1985; Mahar, 1989). The military

Thinking Politically about Sustainable Detdopment 705

government was blind to the fact that, far from being empty land, Amazonia was home to and provided a livelihood for a diverse range of long- established socio-economic and ethnic groups.

At both the federal and state level, Brazil’s military government single- mindedly pursued its geopolitical and developmentalist goals. The authoritarian regime displayed its contempt for ecological concerns by consistently flouting the environmental conditionality clauses insisted upon by the multilateral lending institutions that were partially financing the large-scale development projects. This conditionality was aimed at controlling some of the projects’ most deleterious environmental consequences, although monitoring and enforcement were lax (Schwartzman, 1991). The Brazilian government also uniformly and steadfastly refused to create reserves for the use of native and non-native forest dwellers, although these were afso part of the conditions for some of the loans.

The Brazilian government’s development policies thus created a regional economy that shaped the formation of social groups as well as their relative alignments and power resources. Due to massive subsidies for cattle ranching up to the mid- 1980s, cattle ranchers became the most visible component of the dominant social groups. Their power derived from the financial support of the federal government, the labour repressive nature of the authoritarian regime, and their alliances with state and local government officials. Often in collusion with local and/or regional authorities, cattle ranchers coerced subordinate social groups, such as colonists, rubber tappers, river dwellers and native peoples, into giving up their lands; and land was the main source of their livelihood (however meagre), social cohesion and cultural identity (Cockburn and Hecht, 1988; Goodman and Hall, 1990; Ramos, 1984).6

In the mid-l980s, the struggle over land gave birth to the idea of the extractive reserve, conceived as a form of land-use that would benefit local non-blite groups as well as protecting the forest. The idea was to set aside extensive areas of the forest for the near-exclusive use of groups that extract economic resources from the forest without destroying it beyond the point of spontaneous regeneration. For example, rubber tappers need to have the trees in order to obtain the product they sell. By the same token, native peoples practise swidden-fallow and agroforestry systems of cultivations on small plots of well-dispersed land (Goodman and Hall, 1990; Posey, 1985). Just as the military government before it had had little patience for ecological concerns, however, Brazil’s new democratic government only paid lip service to proposals for the creation of extractive reserves and demarcation of native people’s reserves. Then, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Brazilian government sharply changed direction, established a

6. The level of violence was so dramatic that Amnesty International (1988) devoted a special report to it.

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number of extractive reserves, and awarded land to some Indian nations (Garrison, 1991). What accounts for this volte-face, this sudden turnaround in ecological convictions?

The evidence suggests that the formation of a broad coalition of national and international actors was an important factor, although not necessarily the only one. For national policy-makers, the existence of that coalition probably altered their calculations; by continuing to disregard ecologically- based solutions, they now risked dangerous levels of rural conflict. What, then, was the composition of that coalition? What values and interests pulled together that diverse group of actors? From what power resources did it draw?

At its core stood a number of consciously engaged and highly motivated regional subordinate social groups, which gave the coalition a resilient base. Stripping a complicated situation to its barest essentials, the following circumstances provided motivation for coalition formation. The cattle ranchers’ often violent land grabs gave dispossessed and threatened groups - rubber tappers, river dwellers, native peoples and colonists - a powerful common interest around which to forge an alliance (Hecht, 1985; Melone, 1993). Their livelihoods - and often their lives - were at stake. The level of violence was such that these social actors overcame inter-group conflicts, at least temporarily, in order to face a common foe.

Although this was a crucial factor, it was not a sufficient condition for coalition formation, nor would such an alliance have been strong enough to succeed on its own. These groups initially faced three hurdles to collective action: they had to organize, reach out to national level associations, and overcome conflicts amongst themselves. The first two obstacles were overcome more or less simultaneously in a self-reinforcing process, especially among the rubber tappers and colonists. As rural conflict escalated in some Amazonian states, these groups began to organize and thereby came to the attention of larger national movements. The rubber tappers, for example, were affiliated with the national labour movement and with Brazil’s Labour Party, both of which, in turn, strengthened the organizing efforts of the rubber tappers themselves. Equally important, such connections took the struggle out of its purely rural context, where landowners easily dominated (Cockburn and Hecht, 1988; Goodman and Hall, 1990; Payne, 1991), thus enhancing the local and national power of the rubber tappers and their policy proposals. Some Indian nations, notably the Kayapo, began their own organizational drives.

In and of themselves, however, these efforts were insufficient to overcome the collective action problems of the different social groups, which had long-standing histories of animosity between them. Here, Brazilian and international environmenal non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - the organizational core of the environmental social movement - played a key role in cementing an alliance among Amazonian social groups, and in


bringing increased pressure to bear on the Brazilian government. In the first stage of this process, the Brazilian Institute for Amazonian Studies (IAS) developed the idea of the extractive reserve and played a central role in organizing and bringing together rubber tappers, river dwellers and colonists. Overcoming the collective action problem was a great achievement. Yet in spite of these advances, the Brazilian government (newly redemocratized as of 1985) refused to act on their proposals. In other words, this broad coalition of regional and national social groups, new social movements and their political organizations was still insufficient to change policy. How could more pressure be brought to bear on the national authorities? Once again the Brazilian environmental movement, in the shape of the IAS, played a key role. It sought help outside Brazil by appealing to international environmental NGOs (INGOs) to join the struggle . ’

The position of the IAS within an international network that links the environmental movements of the developed and the developing world tipped the scales in favour of ecologically sensitive grassroots development efforts. From this point forward, Washington-based INGOs began a national publicity campaign in the USA in solidarity with their Brazilian counter- parts. Equally, if not more importantly, they searched for a strategy that would bring international political pressure to bear on the Brazilian government. In the end, the INGOs found an ally in an unlikely quarter: the Senate Finance Committee, which controlled US appropriations for multilateral development banks. In short, the US Congress ‘persuaded’ the multilateral development banks to halt disbursement of loans for Amazonian development projects until Brazil addressed the deforestation issue. In other words, the Congress threatened to withhold US appropriations from the banks for their failure both to monitor contractual obligations with the government of Brazil, and to punish violations (Aufderheide and Rich, 1988; Schwartzman, 1991).8

The combination of growing internal and external pressure finally forced the highest levels of the Brazilian government to take notice and to establish extractive reserves. In the process, it also created a series of national parks and reserves for native peoples (Albert, 1992; Environmental Defense Fund, 199 1 ; Garrison, 199 1). External pressure in the form of transnational coalitions finally got the Brazilian government to change its ways. But the fact that extractive reserves were created. rather than some other form of

.~ .-

7. INGOs had an intrinsic interest in Amazonia; however, the fact that the IAS (like most important NGOs in developing countries) had working connections to INGOs certainly facilitated the process of linking them to the struggles in Amazonia.

8. The Environmental Defense Fund has a complete package of data on the exchanges between international NGOs, the Senate Appropriations Committee and multilateral lending institutions.

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land use, was the result of the demands of the Amazonian social coalition, born of local conflicts, and advised by a Brazilian policy-advocacy environmental NGO.

In conclusion, Brazil was a case of polarization between an alliance of federal, state, and local government actors with dominant socio-economic Clites that opposed sustainable grassroots development, and a coalition of subordinate social groups, unions, leftist political parties, domestic and international environmental NGOs and, temporarily, the US Congress. Through struggle in a situation of intense social conflict the new social movements opened political space for themselves in Amazonia - they succeeded in securing favourable decrees. The dominant interests in the region, however, are far from vanquished and pose a continual threat to the successful conclusion of these efforts. Large-scale landowners and their allies in national, state and local government obstruct the implementation of the extractive reserve and Indian reservations demarcations. Organized Amazonian landowners were instrumental in the defeat of the agrarian reform law during the constitutional convention of 1988, further weakening the opportunities of subordinate social groups to win secure land tenure (Monbiot, 1993). The size of promised Indian reserves has already been substantially reduced (Albert, 1992). Moreover, many rubber-tappers, colonists and placer-miners remain trapped in debt peonage chains that ultimately benefit dominant socio-economic Clites. These are frontier zones, and state and local governments still favour the large-scale landowners. This means that violence against subordinate social groups and grassroots sustainable development projects continues (Monbiot, 1993).

In other words, although enabling legislation now exists to support grassroots sustainable development projects in Brazilian Amazonia, the struggle is far from over. The original coalition-minus the US government -must somehow stay together to keep the landowners at bay, prod the federal government into bringing the violence in Amazonian states under control, and lobby the national government to demarcate and support the projects as required by the letter and spirit of the law. Finally, the coalition members, especially the NGOs, must work to find technology and techniques that will help make the project more economically viable. Since some of these measures are now being addressed, perhaps we can be guardedly optimistic about the future of these efforts (Inter-American Foundation, 1991:47).9

9. The situation of the extractive reserves suggests interesting further research on a key question. Once national policy has been set, which components of the original coalition are necessary and sufficient for adequate implementation? Are there actors or institutions that can substitute for key members who drop out?


Community Forestry in Mexico: Nohbec

Nohbec, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, is a relatively successful example of community forestry - the practice of promoting participation and providing direct benefits to local peoples through tree growing, forest management, or forest conservation activities (Cabarle, 199 1). Specifically, Nohbec shows how a community can sustainably extract wood from the forest and even add industrial value to it. Substantial amounts of the money made from the industry go back to the community in the form of health and education benefits.'O Moreover, Nohbec's experience has contributed to the community forestry policies of the state and national government.

What conditions made community forestry in Nohbec possible? This is, of course, a much smaller programme than the extractive and Indian reserves in Brazil. Nevertheless, the genesis and development of the project imbue the case with interesting heuristic value in terms of the theoretical issues this article seeks to address. To begin with, the situation in Mexico differed from that in Brazil in a crucial manner: the initial position of key government agencies and the dominant classes. In Brazil federal, state and local governments and the socio-economic elites they supported uniformly resisted grassroots sustainable development. In Mexico the federal and state government and the regional socio-economic Clites were more fragmented; some key government and private sector actors were more accommodating to environmentally friendly policies. All the same, government initiative and a lack of upper-class opposition were still not sufficient political conditions on their own to create sustainable development projects at the grassroots; as in the Brazilian case, strong community organization in coalition with an international actor were also key to the success of the project.

In Nohbec, both federal and state governments provided conditions favourable for a grassroots-oriented forestry policy. There were thus significant differences in the dynamics of the politics of sustainable development at the grassroots when compared to the Brazilian experience. During the 1970s, the Federal Forest Service, under the Secretariat of Agriculture and Water Resources (SARH), concluded that the system of exclusive concessions to timber companies, established in the 1950s, did not work. Under that system, the companies - most of which were state owned - gained sole rights over the timber of ejidos:" the ejidos were obliged to cut and sell logs only for their particular firms. Faced with declining production and rising costs, SARH concluded that the firms were inefficient and that their practice of high grading (the mining of commercially valuable species)

10. This is richly illustrated in 'Talking with the God of Money', an independent film production of Norman Lippman, St Louis, Missouri.

1 1 . Ejidos were inalienable grants of land given to peasant communities in the wake of the Mexican revolution. In 1992, ejidos acquired the right to sell the land under certain conditions.

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had degraded forests to a point that endangered the regeneration of commercial species. Moreover, the peasants living on the ejidos reaped few benefits from their labour as loggers, a situation which contributed to rising tension between the timber companies and the local communities. Thus, when the concession system expired in 1983, SARH developed a national forestry policy that included the replacement of industrial concessions with participatory community forestry (Bray, 1991; Snook, 1991). The idea was for the ejidos to control timber production and supply and be able to sell to the firm that offered the best price, rather than being forced to provide a single company with a set quota of timber. As parapublic firms, the major logging companies in Quintana Roo were not in a position to offer much resistance to SARH’s directive.

The SARH is an important, cabinet-rank federal agency, and its policy initiative clearly opened up an opportunity for grassroots sustainable development efforts. Additional factors, however, were necessary to trans- form that opportunity into a social forestry project, in which the community reaped the economic benefits and distributed them equitably. One important condition was the historical tension between parapublic concessionaires and the community. While the level of strife was significantly lower than in Brazil, local confrontation with state-led industrial development still proved critical for the emergence of a key factor: local organization. In other words, controlled conflict with concessionaires contributed to Nohbec’s drive to organize a functioning co-operative, with a leadership dedicated to the improvement of the community’s income level.

On their own, however, co-operatives such as Nohbec were not strong enough to successfully negotiate prices with the buying companies. Nor was Nohbec capable of obtaining credit to build an industry, or of warding off SARH’s attempts to control the community’s income (Argiielles, 1991).12 In short, Nohbec needed allies to provide technical assistance and the political space necessary for the project to succeed.

It found both. The political space was provided by the Governor of Quintana Roo: in alliance with the private sector tourist interests of the region, he supported the project and wanted to see it succeed (Snook, 1991). He forced timber companies to negotiate directly with the co-operatives and made credit available from the state treasury. He also assured the co- operatives’ control over sales and profits by foiling SARH’s attempt to manage those funds on the co-operatives’ behalf.13

Understanding these actions requires a brief note on Quintana Roo’s economic development. It is a relatively new state (having been a territory

12. Many of the details in this section were provided by Alfonso Argiielles in an interview with the author, 14 March 1992, St Louis, Missouri. He is a Nohbec community leader who is also on the professional staff of the Plan Piloro Forestal. Alfonso Argiielles, interview, 14 March 1992, St Louis, Missouri. 13.

Thinking Politically about Sustainable Deoelopment 71 I

until the 1950s), remote from the rest of the country, and economically not very developed. For many decades the production of henqukn for rope fibre in the more arid northern part of the state was the region’s major industry, rather than the state logging concessions further to the south (Snook, 1991). In the 1970s, the federal government began an economic development programme based on tourism; the Cancfin resort and nearby Mayan ruins are the most famous attractions. By the 1980s, the tourist sector formed the dominant interest group in the state, and the governor was closely linked to it.14 Both the governor and this important upper-class interest group were open to development projects that appealed to environmental ~ensibi1ities.l~ Their predisposition to such projects probably derived from the success of ecotourism in nearby Costa Rica, where the country’s international repu- tation for environmental action had clearly contributed significantly to its tourist boom. The governor and the dominant klites were very much aware that social strife and international condemnation for environmental degradation would have the opposite effect. At the same time, the fact that the timber interests were either state-owned or less powerful business groups helped to control them.

The source of international support was also vital in the effort to establish the Nohbec experiment in social forestry. For although the state’s political and business elites were open to environmentally sensitive development programmes, Nohbec’s source of technical assistance - the German Devel- opment Agency (GTZ) - was crucial to the Governor’s enthusiam for the project. Support from such a prestigious international source gave Nohbec’s leaders a respectability and credibility they may not have achieved otherwise. On their own they may have been perceived as little more than a dangerous group of radical peasants.16 The fact that the GTZ and not USAID (or some other agency) was the external source of technical support also contributed to the initial success of Nohbec in other ways. The GTZ team that helped to design Nohbec’s social forestry experiment was mainly composed of expatriates who had lived in Mexico for many years and understood local needs and capacities, as well as the national political system. The main strength of the project’s design lay in its open-endedness; it was conceived as a process rather than a finished product with set timetables and procedures. This gave it great flexibility (Snook, 1991)’’

14.

15. 16. 17.

In fact, he became the Secretary of Tourism - a cabinet-rank post -in the administration of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, 1988-94. Alfonso Argiielles, interview, 14 March 1992, St Louis, Missouri. Alfonso Argiielles, interview, 14 March 1992, St Louis, Missouri. This interpretation of the Nohbec case also relies on interviews with Antonio Carrillo. one of the GTZ directors of the Plan Piloto Foresral in Mexico. The interviews were conducted by the author in Caracas, Venezuela, in June and July 1993, where Mr Carrillo was directing another GTZ pilot project in the Venezuelan state of Amazonas.

712 Eduardo Silva

In the context of advantageous national government policy, what was the result of this alliance between local communities, the GTZ, and the state government-dominant business tlites nexus? In the first phase, between 1983 and 1985, it led to the establishment of two co-operatives; one centred in Chetumal, which included Nohbec and covered 100,000 ha, and one to the north among the Maya, occupying an area of 150,000 ha (Argiielles, 1991). But in 1986-87 Nohbec faced a further challenge, a change in the Mexican presidency and state government. Nohbec now confronted two significant problems. One of them was the need to strengthen the community’s organization to make it more independent from the patronage of any particular government. To this end, Nohbec created its own technical department and, with the help of the governor, who also recognized the need for greater autonomy, the ejido obtained the legal right to negotiate contracts with the government and to hire its own technical personnel. As a result, May 1986 saw the birth of the Sociedad de Productores Forestales Ejidales de Quintana Roo. In June the Sociedad signed a contract with SARH and set up its first sawmills (Argiielles, 1991).

A second problem for the institutionalization of social forestry at Nohbec was the need to change the role of the Quintana Roo forest service from a policing agency to one that supported peasant co-operatives. Again, both the governor and the GTZ proved invaluable. First, the governor launched the State Forestry Plan, in which Nohbec leaders and technicians played a key role. This committed SARH to a treaty regulating forestry practices. Secondly, he instructed SARH to give technical assistance to community forestry (Argiielles, 1991).

Nohbec’s economic and social institutionalization, along with changes in SARH’s approach to community forestry as a result of the State Forestry Plan, have placed the Sociedad on as strong a footing as possible for independent growth and action in the future. However, Nohbec still relies on the strategic guidance of its GTZ-financed advisors to keep the process going. They have been essential in overcoming political, economic, and organizational obstacles. In short, this regional example of sustainable development at the grassroots consistently shows that even when key national and local government agencies and regional dominant Clites provide supportive conditions for such efforts, a winning coalition under those circumstances still requires strong community organization and international agency support.

Community Forestry in Peru: The Pichis-Palcazu Special Project

In the two cases examined, Brazil and Mexico represented polar ends of the spectrum with respect to the impact of government and dominant class actors on the politics of sustainable development at the grassroots. In Brazil, a cohesive alliance of federal and state government officials supported local


elites in opposition to such projects. A more fragmented government, and dominant business sectors that were more accommodating to environmentalism, provided more supportive conditions in Southern Mexico. By con- trast, Pichis-Palcazu in Peru offers an example of the politics of grassroots sustainable development efforts in the context of relative government indifference - when key government actors neither support nor overtly oppose such initiatives. Moreover, because this is a remote and newly settled area, there are no significant dominant social elites to contend with. As we will see, under these circumstances international agencies largely define the projects and programmes. Yet in the absence of strong local organization - perhaps due to the lack of exposure to and tension with the dominant capitalist economy and society - such projects run a significant risk of failing. Furthermore, the indifference of government to the programme makes its expansion to other areas (scaling up) a difficult and unlikely proposition. Taken together, relative government indifference and the lack of strong local organization call into question the survival of such projects once the international donor agency has retired. Success demands a broader and stronger alliance.

With the re-establishment of democracy in 1980, the Peruvian national government revived efforts to integrate Amazonia into the rest of the country. As part of this effort, the administration of Fernando Belaunde- Terry solicited funding and technical assistance from international organizations for a number of special projects in road-building, colonization, agricultural and forestry production, and the improvement of local living standards (Valcarcel, 199 1). In this context, the Pichis-Palcazu Special Project - which included a community forestry component - was initiated in Peru’s central jungle region when the Peruvian government decided to build a portion of the Jungle Marginal Highway between Villa Rica and Pucallpa. The Peruvian government itself was reportedly largely indifferent to grassroots sustainable development. It wanted the road to encourage new settlements: colonization would ease tensions in areas of land scarcity, and would increase well-being simply by the fact of granting land to landless peasants. Any more detailed thinking about how to improve local living standards depended on the programme design of the international agency funding the project - USAID, the United States Agency for International Development (Central Selva Resource Management, nd).

After the World Bank’s experience with the Polonoroeste colonization programme in Brazil, USAID foresaw the drastic impact of the road and subsequent colonization on the natural resources and native population of this region in Peru. In 1982, USAID therefore began a regional development programme - the Central Selva Resource Management Project (CSRM) - in the Palcazu valley to develop sustained-yield land use, to protect the native cultures and to safeguard biodiversity (Central Selva Resource Management, nd; Hartshorn, 1989). The CSRM was a joint project between

714 Eduurdo Siliu

USAID and the Government of Peru. Its principal economic activity was sustained-yield forestry, in co-operation with an international NGO (the Center for Tropical Studies) which, under the guidance of Gary Hartshorn, pioneered a system of tree harvesting based on the forest's natural strip- clearing cycles (Hartshorn, 1989).

In the beginning, the CSRM project had the typical top-down developmentalist bias of most large-scale international agency efforts. In the best technocratic style, it wanted to demonstrate that effective resource management can achieve long-term sustainable production and economic growth. Thus, although the project focused on improving conditions for peasant and native communities, the affected population was rarely informed or con- sulted in the planning stages. As a result, the project began to flounder because of the lack of involvement of the local target population, especially the Yanesha Indians, who formed the largest native group in the area (Fernandez-Davila, 1992).

These problems led the CSRM to re-evaluate the project and to find ways to involve the local population and make use of their knowledge. Secure land-tenure for local peoples became an important goal, giving rise to the Yanesha Communal Reserve (35,000 ha) to secure areas for traditional extractive use of timber, hunting and gathering. In consultation with the Yanesha and other communities, Hartshorn developed and refined the project's strip-cutting method of sustained-yield tree harvesting (Fernandez-Davila, 1992; Hartshorn, 1989). The CSRM and the scientific community also helped the Yanesha to organize themselves by sponsoring the creation of the Yanesha Forestry Co-operative (Y FC) in May 1986. Consistent with Yanesha social organization, the YFC sought to build community expertise in managing the communal reserve's extractive activities (Cooperativa Forestal Yanesha, nd). With the aid of soft loans, the YFC acquired equipment to operate the tree felling, hauling, and initial processing phases of the enterprise (Fernandez-Davila, 1992; Hartshorn, 1989).

The project's long-term viability depends heavily on the strength of the Yanesha Forestry Co-operative. A strong co-operative reinforces the commitment of individual Yanesha to collectively engage in sustained-yield forest management. Without it, they might be tempted to sell off land rights (Hartshorn, 1989). Because the project has largely been donor-driven, however, the YFC is more of a top-down creation than a strong organization born of a people's internal needs and experience." This fragility is com- pounded by the co-operative's uncertain economic prospects.19 In spite of

18.

19.

The Pichis-Palcazu case highlights the perennial problems of development projects that have first to create local community organization. Author interview with Patricia Fernandez-DBvila, 14 March 1992, St Louis, Missouri. She is the executive director of Asociacion Amazonia, a Peruvian NGO.

Thinking Political1.v about Sustainable Development 715

these difficulties, it is far too early to draw conclusions with respect to the success or failure of this project. At the time of writing, international and local NGOs were engaged in a campaign to enlist other international donors.

CONCLUSIONS: SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AT THE GRASSROOTS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

This article has tried to disentangle actors, interests and power resources in an effort to understand the kinds of coalitions that are necessary to establish policies, projects and programmes that promote sustainable development at the grassroots level. Although more studies are required, the evidence of the three cases presented here suggests that variations within four factors particularly affected the political climate and the type of coalition required to get such policies adopted. Those conditions were: the initial disposition of state and dominant class actors towards this type of programme; the degree of existing local social conflict; the level of organization within local groups; and the role of international actors.

The Brazilian case suggests that great pressure must be brought to bear when relatively powerful, cohesive state actors and their dominant class allies oppose policies that promote sustainable development at the grassroots. In this case, high levels of social conflict helped fuse a strong coalition between well-organized regional subordinate social groups with national political and institutional affiliations. This brought the issue to the national political arena. However, the domestic groups by themselves were not strong enough to prevail. They could agitate but not win; they could not induce the Brazilian government to act. Under those circumstances, the connection between Brazilian policy advocacy NGOs and international NGOs proved crucial. Local NGOs had helped to build a coalition in favour of extractive reserves in Brazil; the international NGOs swayed US public opinion, and learned how to influence congressional committees capable of pressuring multilateral lending institutions into taking action against flagrant contractual violations of environmental clauses. It was this last action, the suspension of loans and the threat of further international difficulties, that persuaded the Brazilian government to take the environmentalists seriously.

The likelihood of repeating such a grand international coalition seems improbable.20 No other Latin American country has such a vast expanse of

20. In the absence of such pressure, it seems equally improbable that administrations bent on policies of deforestation and unsustainable development will change. At present Ecuador seems to prove this point. Ecuador has a high degree of social conflict in Amazonia, particularly between organized native peoples, colonists and oil companies. Despite alliances with local NGOs, and national awareness of the issue, the Ecuadorean government has shown no sign of changing its policies toward the region, with the result that even some of the better publicized parks and reserves are suffering.

716 Eduardo Silva

tropical forest, which was, after all, partially what had turned Brazil into an international symbol. Fortunately, not all governments and dominant classes are so unified in their resistance to the idea of sustainable development, Governments and socio-economic Clites may be split, thus providing political space and opportunities for projects that simply do not exist in cases of more solid opposition. Nevertheless, the fact that some ministries, state or provincial governments, or powerful interest groups may be more receptive to the idea of sustainable development does not mean that such projects will materialize, or that they will be able to successfully reproduce at the grassroots level.

The experience of Nohbec suggests that some degree of social conflict and organization at the grassroots level are important. Tension between social groups is often a catalyst for organization, which then provides the drive from within to make the project happen in accordance with specific goals. Knowing that they cannot act alone, communities often actively seek allies. Having found them, and especially if they are government actors, the organized community will strive to infuse policy content with its interests. Where communities are unorganized, they are more likely to be the objects of top-down planning efforts. And those, well-meaning as they may be in some respects, are often not oriented towards the creation of self-sustaining projects at the grassroots.

Community organization by itself, however, does not ensure that even governments more accommodating to environmentalism will adopt policies that take grassroots concerns into account. International actors and domestic NGOs can provide critical support for local communities in their efforts to shape policies emanating from relatively sympathetic government offices. In Nohbec the strong presence of the well-respected German GTZ was crucial not only in project design but also in legitimizing the community’s demands. The governor supported the Nohbec project politically, but only after bona fide evidence of the co-operative’s respectability had been provided through its GTZ sponsorship.

The discussion has centred on the coalitions that were necessary to establish grassroots-oriented policies of sustainable development when key government agencies and dominant classes opposed or supported the general idea, and in the presence of significant community organization promoted by social tensions derived from the clash of local people with dominant groups of the national capitalist economy. Can such policies be introduced when relatively weak governments are generally indifferent to sustainable development at the grassroots, and when local social conflict over, and organization for, land use are largely absent? The Pichis-Palcazu case suggests that, because Latin American countries rely heavily on foreign funding for their development projects, the goals of the lead international agency will be crucial to answering that question. In the Pichis-Palcazu case, the Peruvian government basically only wanted funds to build

Thinking Politically about Sustainable Detielopment 717

transportation infrastructure in the area. USAID, however, foresaw the environmental and social consequences and initiated the project for grassroots sustainable development. USAID was able to control the project because it kept a large field presence, in part because the Peruvian government lacked the human resources to fully manage it.

This case also highlights the relevance of local social organization and NGO participation for project design and implementation. USAID originally implemented the Central Selva programme in a top-down manner. The area, relatively isolated from the national economy, lacked the kind of confrontation that had led to the development of strong community organization in defence of local interests in Nohbec. Consequently, there was no local drive to shape the direction of events, to act as an internal impetus in search of external partners reaching for the same goal. As a result, the project began to flounder. Only the belated creation of local social organization by USAID and international and local NGOs managed to keep it afloat.

This suggests that domestic and international NGOs play crucial roles when regional organizing efforts, and the coalitions of which they form a part, are insufficient to get programmes adopted, or to maintain them once they are started. In Brazil the government’s opposition to grassroots sustainable development strengthened local dominant itlites. Well-organized grassroots groups could not prevail against such odds. The domestic and international NGOs provided a crucial link to powerful external actors. In the case of Pichis-Palcazu, these NGOs filled a different need: they bolstered local communities by helping them to organize. This activity initially complemented USAID needs. After the end of the USAID project cycle, and in the face of an indifferent government incapable of helping, the NGOs have begun looking for additional external support that might keep the project alive.

In conclusion, while much research remains to be done, these three cases offer a first attempt at disentangling some of the general conditions necessary for policies of sustainable development at the grassroots. Where government and dominant social classes are united in their resistance, it will take high levels of social conflict and very broad alliances of local, national and international actors to force a change of course. Where government is largely indifferent or weak, international agencies may be the most important actors, but may be unsuccessful without involvement at the local level and/or a very long-term presence. Moreover, scaling up, which the Nohbec case suggests requires active government assistance, seems unlikely. Lastly, where key government actors and dominant social classes support sustainable development at the grassroots for one reason or another, local actors may succeed largely on their own, but international actors and local NGOs make important contributions to policy-making. The evidence highlights the centrality of local organization and participation in relatively successful

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projects, even when significant public and private sector elites are favourably disposed.

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~ ~ ~~ ~~

Eduardo Silva is Assistant Professor of Political Science and a Fellow of the Center for International Studies at the University of Missouri-St Louis (St Louis, Missouri 63121-4499, USA). He is co-editor (with Paul Drake) of Elections and Democratization in Latin America, 1980-85 (San Diego: Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, 1986). His articles have appeared in World Politics and the Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Afairs. He is currently directing a comparative research project entitled: ‘The Politics of Sustainable Development: Native Forest Policy in Chile, Venezuela, Mexico, and Costa Rica’.

Thinking Politically about Sustainable Development in the Tropical Forests of Latin America

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