Peasant farmer livelihood strategies as driver and outcome of socio-ecological transformations: A qualitative and empirical contribution towards improving land use and land cover modelling based on two case studies in Mexico and Bolivia
Empirical Social Research
Final Report Abstract
Overall aims of the project were to: 1) investigate qualitatively current transformation processes in peasant and indigenous farmers’ land use (LU) and potential socio-ecological implications, and 2) contribute to the development of meaningful generic insights from local, qualitative case studies for integration in regional to global LU analyses. To this end, a rich empirical basis was collected from two case study regions in the Velasco Province (east Bolivian) and North Chiapas (Mexico). Key insights include: • Peasant and indigenous farmers are undergoing complex and multi-faceted adaptation processes. Both structural conditions and factors that affect farmers’ agency influence the trajectories of change in farmer’s productive system and the associated LU implications. • The traditional swidden subsistence characteristic of indigenous communities is being profoundly transformed both quantitatively and qualitatively. However, these LU changes are not easily detectable through remote sensing as are typical “fish-bone” patterns of deforestation, characteristic of commercial farmers. • The first mapping of oil palm plantations in Mexico demonstrates that oil palm is, in place, resulting in deforestation of primary forest, despite accepted views that oil palm expands “only” on degraded pasture. • State policies have for decades fostered either the intensification of peasant producing systems or their abandonment. Current programmes that encourage the re-establishment of diversified, agroecological systems fail to attract farmers, who have invested work and resources to integrate conventional commodity chains. • Producers cooperatives can play a substantial role in pushing local rural development, but face many internal and external challenges that can lead them to repetitive (near) bankruptcy. • Young people in rural areas often project themselves in a future outside the countryside and in non-agricultural employment. Rural youth’s future projections may well run contrary to Western sustainable paths, even if the UN Sustainable Development Goals are realized. • Empirically-based generic insights on the life on the land and the role of agriculture produced in the project constitute building blocks for broad Business-as-usual and “Sustainable” narratives on potential socio-ecological transformations at agricultural frontiers in Latin America. Further research is needed to fully develop these narratives and test their transferability for other Latin American countries, or world regions. Surprises: • The rate and direction of changes experienced in both case study regions confirm the pertinence of our choice. Since the beginning of the project, the Velasco Province has become the hotspot of national deforestation, a tragic trend exacerbated by the August 2019 fires and current political turmoil. On the contrary, in Mexico, the president elected in 2017 rapidly brought important changes in the explicit direction of agricultural policy directed at peasant farmers. Further research is needed to understand the implications of these recent events. • Numerous colleagues and authors responded promptly to my invitation to a collective reflection on ways to foster cross-fertilization between the social and natural sciences to improve current understanding of ongoing socio-ecological transformations at extractive frontiers and formulate adequate policy recommendations. This strengthens my conviction that innovative arenas, where scientific / lay, Western / non-Western, quantitative / qualitative approaches fruitfully interact, help to produce hybrid, socially, politically and ecologically conscious research results.
Publications
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(2016). Extractive Conservation: Peasant Agroecological Systems as New Frontiers of Exploitation? Environment & Society: Advances in Research 7: 50–70
de la Vega-Leinert AC, Clausing P
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(2016). Peasant coffee in the Los Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve, Mexico: An critical evaluation of sustainable intensification and market integration potential. Elementa - Science of Anthropocene, 000139
de la Vega-Leinert AC, Brenner L. Stoll-Kleemann S
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(2017). Peasant systems at the agricultural frontier of the Velasco Province, Chiquitania, Bolivia, Geoöko 38, 203 – 230
de la Vega-Leinert AC
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(2018). El café de sombra: ¿una alternativa viable para campesinos en regiones marginadas? El caso de la Reserva de la Biosfera Los Tuxtlas, México. In Genet Guzmán Chávez M et al. (coordinadores). Conocimiento, Ambiente y Poder. Perspectivas desde la Ecología Política. El Colegio de San Luis — Fondo Editorial, CONACyT, México. ISBN: 978-607-8500-85-7
de la Vega-Leinert AC, Brenner L Stoll-Kleemann S
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(2019). Ciudades y consumo de bienes agrícolas. Transformaciones del consumo alimentario en el contexto de cambios en el comercio agrícola y las cadenas comerciales. Notas y comentarios. Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos 34(1) (100): 213-219
de la Vega-Leinert, AC
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(2019). Naturaleza y Neoliberalismo en América Latina. Centro Regional de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias (CRIM), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM). Pp559
Durand L, Nygren A, de la Vega-Leinert AC (Editors)
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(2019). The Down Side of cross border Integration: The Case of Deforestation in the Brazilian Mato Grosso and Bolivian Santa Cruz Lowlands in the Brazilian Mato Grosso and Bolivian Santa Cruz Lowlands, Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 61(2): 31-44
de la Vega-Leinert AC, Huber C
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A social-ecological approach to identify and quantify biodiversity tipping points in South America's seasonal dry ecosystems, Biogeosciences (Discuss.)
Thonicke, K., Langerwisch, F., Baumann, M., Leitão, P. J., Václavík, T., Alencar, A., Simões, M., Scheiter, S., Langan, L., Bustamante, M., Gasparri, I., Hirota, M., Börner, J., Rajao, R., Soares- Filho, B., Yanosky, A., Ochoa-Quinteiro, J.-M., Seghezzo, L., Conti, G., and de la Vega-Leinert, A. C.
