Tropical forest conservation : an economic assessment of the alternatives in Latin America

190 Pages·1998·8.822 MB·English

by  Douglas DeWitt Southgate

TROPICAL FOREST CONSERVATION
This page intentionally left blank
TROPICAL FOREST
CONSERVATION
An Economic Assessment of the
Alternatives in Latin America
DOUGLAS SOUTHGATE
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
1998
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay
Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam
Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne
Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore
Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1998 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Southgate, Douglas DeWitt, 1952-
Tropical forest conservation : an economic assessment of the alternatives in
Latin America / by Douglas Southgate.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-510996-1
1. Rain forest conservation—Latin America. 2. Deforestation—
Control—Latin America. 3. Forest ecology—Latin America. 4. Non-
timber forest resources—Latin America. 5. Sustainable forestry—
Latin America. 6. Habitat conservation—Latin America.
7. Ecotourism—Latin America. I. Title.
SD414.L29S68 1998
333.75'16'0980913—dc21 97-34601
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Printed in the United States of America
on acid free, recycled paper
Acknowledgments
This book has benefited from the advice and sup-
port offered by a number of colleagues and
friends. First and foremost, William ("Jeff") Vaughn, of the
Inter-American Development Bank, hired me, as a consult-
ant, in 1995 to assess the contributions that nontimber
extraction, low-impact logging, genetic prospecting, and eco-
tourism can make to tropical forest conservation in Latin
America. The consultancy provided me with a unique op-
portunity to interview experts and to visit sites in Brazil,
Costa Rica, and Ecuador. All this greatly enriched the content
of chapters 4-7 of this book.
I deeply appreciate the comments on a draft text that I
received from Vaughn and five other individuals: Bruce Ayl-
ward (of the Tropical Science Center in San Jose, Costa Rica),
John Browder (of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University), David Simpson (of Resources for the Future),
Steven Stone (of Cornell University), and Christopher Uhl (of
Pennsylvania State University). Also very useful were re-
views of my Inter-American Development Bank report pro-
vided by Glenn Prickett and John Reid (of Conservation
International) and four of Vaugin's associates: Sergio Ardila,
Arthur Darling, Kari Keipi, and Gil Nolet.
Among others, John Dixon (of the World Bank), Hans Gre-
gersen (of the University of Minnesota), and David Pearce (of
University College London) encouraged me to undertake an
examination of tropical forest conservation measures being
applied in Latin America. As work proceeded, Dixon and
three of his World Bank colleagues—Luis Constantino, John
Kellenberg, and Robert Schneider—furnished a great deal of
vi Acknowledgments
useful information. So did Marc Dourojeanni, Michelle Le-
may, and Raul Tuazon, all of the Inter-American Develop-
ment Bank. Several other people deserve special thanks,
including Alfredo Carrasco (of the Charles Darwin Founda-
tion), Howard Clark, Douglas McMeekin, Roberto Ulloa, and
Robert Vogel—all of Quito, Ecuador; Jaime Echeverria and
Joe Tosi of the Tropical Science Center; Adalberto Verissimo
and his colleagues at the Instituto do Homem e Meio Am-
biente da Amazonia, in Belem, Brazil; Jaime Acosta, Anabella
Larde de Palomo, and their associates at the Fundacidn Sal-
vadorena para el Desarrollo Economico y Social, in San Sal-
vador, El Salvador; George Carrington Wood, of Haverford,
Pennsylvania; Juan Carlos Quiroga of La Paz, Bolivia:
William Possiel (of The Nature Conservancy); Clovis Schar-
appe-Borges and Vitoria Miiller of the Sociedade de Pesquisa
em Vida Selvagem e Educagao Ambiental, in Curitiba, Brazil;
as well as Claudio Gonzalez-Vega, Brent Sohngen, and other
colleagues of mine at The Ohio State University. Two other
people at Ohio State also need to be acknowledged: Chad
Forster, my graduate assistant, spent many hours tracking
down literature and other materials, and Janice DiCarolis pre-
pared all the maps and line drawings.
Special thanks are due to Kirk Jensen and his colleagues
at Oxford University Press, for the excellent advice and sup-
port given at every stage of the writing and publication pro-
cess.
Of course, I am exclusively responsible for all the book's
errors and omissions, and the views and opinions expressed
herein are mine alone.
Finally, I am especially grateful to my wife, Myriam, and
my children, Elizabeth and Richard, for being patient as I
labored on this volume, which I dedicate to them.
Contents
Introduction: Responding to the Challenge of Habitat
Destruction in Latin America ix
Part I Deforestation and Its Causes and the Challenge of
Sustainable Forest-based Activities
1 Deforestation in the American Tropics: The Regional
and Global Stakes 3
The Magnitude of Land Use Change 5
The Impacts of Deforestation 8
2 The Causes of Excessive Habitat Destruction 11
Macroeconomic Crisis and Competition
for Space 11
The Contribution of Market Failure 13
The Role of Misguided Government Policies 17
Factors Contributing to Ecosystem Mining 21
3 Putting an End to Ecosystem Depletion 25
The Articulation of Formal Tenure 27
What Happens to Pioneer Nutrient Miners? 28
Saving Tropical Forests while Helping
the Rural Poor 30
Part II The Economic Returns of Environmentally Sound
Harvesting of Forest Products and of Nature-based
Tourism
4 Harvesting of Nontimber Products 43
The Movement to Establish Extractive Reserves 44
viii Contents
Impediments to Economically and Environmentally
Successful Extraction of Nontimber Products 45
Vegetable Ivory Production in Western Ecuador 49
Extraction of Nontimber Products and Rain Forest
Conservation 56
5 Environmentally Sound Timber Production 59
Logging in the Eastern Amazon 60
The Palcazu Forestry Project 70
Prospects for the Sustainable Development of
Tropical Timber Resources 78
6 Genetic Prospecting 83
What the Pharmaceutical Industry Might Be Willing
to Pay for Biological Raw Material 85
Controlling Access to Species-Rich Habitats 91
The Risk of Counting on Riches from
Bioprospecting 92
7 Nature-Based Tourism 95
The Ecotourism Boom in Costa Rica 98
Conservation, Tourism, and Local Interests
in the Galapagos 107
Ecotourism, Habitat Protection, and Local Economic
Development 118
Part III Key Elements of an Integrated Strategy for Habitat
Protection and Economic Progress
8 Another Approach to Habitat Conservation:
Agricultural Intensification 123
Agroforestry in Tropical Forest Settings 125
The Impacts of Sectorwide Improvements
in Productivity 127
9 Paying for Habitat Conservation and Investing in
Human and Social Capital 135
The Importance of Productivity-Enhancing
Investment 138
The Lessons To Be Learned in El Salvador about
Environmental Depletion and Conservation 143
The Inextricable Ties Binding Habitat Protection
to Economic Improvement in the Countryside 147
Abbreviations 151
References 153
Index 167
Introduction
Responding to the Challenge of Habitat
Destruction in Latin America
Tropical deforestation has come to be an abiding
international concern, and support remains strong
around the world for arresting encroachment on threatened
habitats in Latin America and other developing regions. Ex-
actly how to accomplish this task, however, is still a subject
of controversy.
Systems of national parks, like those that have been estab-
lished in wealthy nations, have proven difficult to transplant
to areas designated for special protection in Africa, Asia, and
Latin America. More often than not, these areas are already
inhabited, and local people, who tend to be quite poor, resent
being told by outsiders that they must relinquish certain eco-
nomic activities, move somewhere else, or both.
The difficulties of creating and maintaining an official pro-
tected area are illustrated by the case of Machalilla National
Park, along the Ecuadorian coast. The region has been inhab-
ited continuously for millennia and, when the reserve there
was set up in the early 1970s, local property owners were
promised payment for the land being taken from them. How-
ever, few of those individuals ever have received anything.
This would have been a simple, though regrettable, instance
of uncompensated confiscation had the government taken
effective action to safeguard its formal claims on resources.
But it did not. As of the early 1990s, only sixteen guards and
other employees were assigned to Machalilla Park, which
according to official maps takes in 467 square kilomet-
ers. Cattle grazing and fuelwood collection continue in
virtually every accessible part of the reserve. Indeed, the
argument could be made that, at least in Machalilla's case,
ix