Conservation And Development Practices In Latin American Countries

The Conflict Between Conservation and Agriculture

Discuss the Practices of Conservation and Development.

This assignment discusses the practices of conservation and development that go beyond the protected area. The chief aim of this assignment is to find the congruity between environmental conservation and land-use modernization in the five Latin American countries namely, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru and Mexico (Zimmerer 2011). There is a conflict among the governments of the five Latin American countries along with various agencies regarding proper usage of land in the agricultural sector and land entitled for the protected areas. These two facets of development have attracted the researchers. They have found that despite the fact that numerous Latin American countries are selected to be the hotspot of environmental conservation, the legislation of these countries have not been supportive to the process of expanding protected areas for conservation. To them, it can be said that increasing amount of land used for agricultural purposes is incompatible with the expansion of protected area networks.  This is due to the fact that with the increase of population, the land for agricultural use is also increasing but the method of conservation through enhancing protected area within the country has been creating issues and debates among various agencies (Zimmerer and Carter 2002). The conflict between these two is instigated among various agencies and groups attached to support the conservation system and the organizations in support to restore the agricultural lands. This issue of land sharing between agricultural land and land of the protected areas, has been affecting the national conservation “booms”. The chief problem has been pointed out in this case that both these facets are important for development as well as sustainability. The government’s initiatives of using land resources to serve the agriculture prioritizes like the production of crops and livestock have become more important than the many other benefits of maintaining natural ecosystems that can nurture biodiversity of a place, balance carbon storage and help in water purification.

The changes in the mentality to support natural conservation only started during recent decades. This initiative to increase land for conservation was started when the governments of these countries focused on expanding protected natural areas like parks and reserves. This is due to the fact that the governments of these countries were instigated and motivated by the international entities to utilize their land as the medium to conserve and promote biodiversity. This ultimately led to have more than 15% of global coverage of protected areas in these lands (Speratti et al. 2015). In order to give this initiative a national agenda, various organizations such as civil society groups most importantly numerous national as well as international nongovernmental organizations, the national indigenous groups along with federations, political networks and various communities. In addition to this, the state agencies even from municipal to the national levels along with international organizations and multilateral lenders are associated with this campaign to increase the protected area for conservation. In order to gain the best result of this campaign in support of increasing protected areas and promote environmental conservation in these five Latin American countries, increased scientific and legal capacities and technological provision have been designed (Zimmerer and Carter 2002). In other areas across globe where the similar agendas have been initiated in support of acquiring land for conservation also become place of agitation and conflict. The balance between the political, economic feasibility and the measure to expand the protected areas. With the increase of protection in the land use by the government, the land used for the agriculture purpose had been reduced ultimately.

The Initiatives to Increase Protected Natural Areas

However, later with change in time and situation, the concept of sustainability was introduced through modernized method of land use. Through this the importance of agricultural land was balanced with that of conservation process. This ultimately had a good outcome as modernist had produced the environment-friendly as well as socially favorable consequences such as expanded fair trade, organic and certified “sustainable” production. This also propelled the adoption of essential environmental as well as sustainability themes in the previously powerful international agricultural centers. ((Zimmerer 2014). However, gradually, due to the green revolution in the Latin American countries, there was an increased agricultural export and expanded national production on the whole. The neoliberal policies supporting this agricultural expansion for increasing GDP of the countries harmed the protection of the environmental resources.

To Zimmerer (2011), intensified interactions among the various communities and the governments since 1985, included both conflicts and compatibility, of protected-area conservation units and land-use modernization but there is incongruity associated with land use. Despite the fact that the government of these five countries have focused on the estimates of the areal interactions as well as their future prospects, they have not yet examined the combined trends of conservation, and agriculture thoroughly. The issues associated with conservation are associated with political as well as resource-use interactions. These include forestry, military, narcotics, mining, energy development, tourism, urban growth and coastal, marine resource use ((Zimmerer 2011). The conservation types are central but the political and economic condition of these countries have affected the conservation booms. The governments of these five countries have followed the paths of agricultural modernization where the applications of sustainability and the natural protection, participatory development and payment for environmental services became mandatory. For doing this, these countries have employed the nontraditional agricultural exports (NTAEs). The widespread extension of the famous soy agriculture in these countries of South America is another reason, why the method of conservation is not getting the appropriate place to express. According to the critics, despite the government has been trying hard to apply the agricultural methods in favor of conservation, for which the methods of new agricultural cropping, developing transportation infrastructure and cattle ranching have been employed, these have become the most significant causal forces of the tropical deforestation and conservation threats in Latin American countries. In addition to this, the countries mainly focusing on the conservation method, are operating under tremendous political and social pressure (Zimmerer and Carter 2002). The situation has actually got complicated due to neoliberal governments with their resource policies. These policies are different in different Latin American countries.

Sustainability Through Modernized Land Use

The mixed political models in these countries had created issues for land and natural resources use. The conflict took more pace as the social movements of various indigenous organizations and the conservation supporters pressurized the governments to follow typically depoliticizing national technocratic approach toward the conservation of the protected areas for effective environmental stability as well as sustainability. In this context Zimmerer has referred to the case of Yellowstone Park model which is associated with the issues of protected area in North America (Zimmerer 2011). This included the social issues associated with the conservation campaign in this particular region along with the territorial role of the peasant, indigenous people and resource users. Similar to this incident, there has been a shift in the environmental conservation policy and these have been incorporated into the wide spectrum of political perspectives on social welfare, poverty alleviation, development, demographic growth and economic markets of the Latin American countries. Through a chart the author has discussed the difference among the five Latin American countries in percentage change of protected area expansion in the total percentage area from 1985 in which Costa Rica achieved the most (Zimmerer and Carter 2002). There are NGOs and other international organizations which partner with the government of the countries like Peru and Mexico to issue projects like Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. These are all initiatives to manage Significant national involvement in protected-area conservation. The changes in the agricultural sector has not yet helped the conservation initiative taken by the governments but gradually showing positivity in bringing changes in the legislation to serve the associated actors through governmental scholarships.

According to the researchers like Zimmerer and Carter (2002) sustainable farming in the protected areas has been initiated by the government of these regions for which many methods have been employed. This is how there has been a change in the mindset of the responsible governments have been seen. Through analysis of country-level estimates of changes in the protected-area conservation and land-use coverage and operations of the state agencies and the institutions of environmental governance and management in five Latin American countries have disclosed the fact of changes. In each of the five countries like Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil and Costa Rica, the focus is on the sustainability institutions as well as sustainability discourses. An analysis of the work of Zimmerer (2011) makes it clear that the author has laid significant stress on the policies and institutions functioning at the national level in these countries. The author states that these institutions and policies and their territorializing are both a form and outcome of extended environmental governance in these Latin American countries. The interests of the agricultural sector have been balanced through the method of participatory development. It has been approached in the study. This is due to the fact that they have been facing the pressure from the environmental organizations, social groups and the private interest groups to eliminate the effect of the agricultural land use over the land of the protected areas for conservation (Zimmerer 2011). The national policies of statecraft have started to manage the environmental and political agendas of the environmental organizations. In addition to this, there are persistent tensions between the successful political activism of the civil society groups. It has also been observed that apart from environment protection, conservation of land areas has received political and economic attention. Due to this, the discussion has involved territorial, business-based and legal aspects as well.

Political and Resource-Use Interactions Affecting Conservation

These Latin American nations have also witnessed political winners who focused on increasing protected area networks and environmental governance and change in land-use. This shows that environmental governance in these nations have seen and welcomed various changes (Zimmerer and Carter 2002).  These are gaining pace and relevance with time and creating space for development from both the perspectives. This is the reason why the concept of nature and society hybridity have gained importance in order to balance the environmental planning and management both the conservation as well as agriculture in these Latin American countries. This are the reasons why the governments of these particulate Latin American nations are aiming to bring changes in the special distribution of land in the recent decades as these social, political and environmental activists have come to prominence to get the governance scholarship.

As already mentioned in the previous sections, the actors involved in conservation and environmental governance include the social movements by indigenous people, indigenous federations, citizen groups, NGOs and environmental activists (Zimmerer 2011). These actors although had least support from the government initially, are starting to attract attention and receiving more and more funds and other assistance from the government. Numerous examples of the social movements started by the indigenous inhabitants in countries like Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica and other Latin American nations reveal the increasing importance given by governments to conservation movements. The national policies in Brazil have witnessed a shift in the environmental conservation policies. This has contributed towards the development and implementation of various state and donor-led programs for the conservation of the Brazilian Rain Forests (Zimmerer 2014). Social movements by indigenous people were also part of these new changes that contributed significantly towards the construction of chief conservations units throughout the country.

Within the last few decades, the government institutions and agreements on conservation of protected areas have reached new heights within the Latin American nations. Several agreements were made and international and national NGOs were formed with the help of government funding. In Bolivia, agreements like the CBD, Cartegena Protocol and ILO Convention was ratified while NGOs like Conservation International, World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy amongst others were formed. These were funded by international organizations like World Bank, which contributed around 4.5 million dollars (Speratti et al. 2015). The USAID also contributed towards the conservation programs however; it was replaced in 2008 by the Morales administration (Zimmerer 2011). The agencies like SNUC and FNMA, international agreements including similar ratifications as that of other Latin American countries and NGOs like Amapa, TNC in Brazil also reflect the changes in the environmental governance strategies in the Latin American countries (Estrada-Carmona et al. 2014). The governments in other Latin American nations like Mexico and Costa Rica also pursued neoliberal policies following the footsteps of Brazil and came in support of the non-state social groups. The Mexican governments have created a trio of sustainable community development institutions in order to guide the land use in the conjunction with the implementation of CONANP of the protected areas. The community forestry programs also gained prominent place in the Mexican environmental governance, which was, supported the international environmental NGOs (Ruiz-Mallén et al. 2015). Despite the fact that the state programs were supposedly participatory as well as sustainable which can be found in the other states. These inclined not to offer the important empowerment and more essentially, resembled the disappointments of the supposedly participatory non-governmental organizations’ projects the treatises of Mexican state institutes on this participatory as well as sustainability development. These have continued as the central to the environmental governance and include the initiatives for the protected area conservation.

National Policies Balancing Agriculture and Conservation

On the other hand, Costa Rica gets the loan of US$2.2 billion by the Inter-American Development Bank, which the government uses as the fund to help the NGOs for supporting conservation policy within the country (Epanchin-Niell et al. 2014). These helped the NGOs to assist the small holder farmers and maintain the protected lands. Market-based approach by the government of Costa Rica has represented the best-developed as well as distinctive response to intensify the intersections of the environmental conservation along with land use which helped to the services of the NGOs concerning watershed, carbon and biodiversity-related environmental services (Zimmerer 2014). Moreover, the government has also included the new programs referred as PSA in order to connect the land-use activities of the people with the land used for conservation. These match the goals of the country’s national program for securing the protected areas for environmental conservation. The government of Peru had been suffering from economic as well as political turmoil for a decade from 1990 to 2000 but there has been a fourfold increase in the conservation coverage after 2000. Before its political turmoil, the initiative of Peruvian protected area conservation was quite productive as the government had created a huge number of conservation unites in the country (Graesser et al. 2015). After the change of ruling party, the number of new protected areas have been established which included three sizable national parks in the country making it one of the most important biological hotspots of the world. Designation and implementation of legislation to secure the protected areas in the country have helped the all the international agencies which predominantly include the multinational lenders as well as international NGOs (Zimmerer 2014). These legislations have supported the sustainable development align with participatory developments which claimed ample environmental safeguard in the region.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the trend in the Latin American countries regarding the fostering of conservation and modernization of land use in the recent decades has been a positive sign for the people of this region. The funding of institutions like NGOs, multilateral agencies and indigenous people working towards conservation on national as well as global levels have received national importance. The amalgamation of business and government agencies along with non-profit organizations have contributed largely towards the success of conservation movements.

References:

Epanchin-Niell, R., Blackman, A., Siikamäki, J. and Velez-Lopez, D., 2014. Biodiversity conservation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Prioritizing policies. Routledge.

Estrada-Carmona, N., Hart, A.K., DeClerck, F.A., Harvey, C.A. and Milder, J.C., 2014. Integrated landscape management for agriculture, rural livelihoods, and ecosystem conservation: An assessment of experience from Latin America and the Caribbean. Landscape and Urban Planning, 129, pp.1-11.

Graesser, J., Aide, T.M., Grau, H.R. and Ramankutty, N., 2015. Cropland/pastureland dynamics and the slowdown of deforestation in Latin America. Environmental Research Letters, 10(3), p.034017.

Ruiz-Mallén, I., Corbera, E., Calvo-Boyero, D., Reyes-García, V. and Brown, K., 2015. How do biosphere reserves influence local vulnerability and adaptation? Evidence from Latin America. Global Environmental Change, 33, pp.97-108.

Ruiz-Mallén, I., Schunko, C., Corbera, E., Rös, M. and Reyes-García, V., 2015. Meanings, drivers, and motivations for community-based conservation in Latin America. Ecology and Society, 20(3).

Speratti, A., Turmel, M.S., Calegari, A., Araujo-Junior, C.F., Violic, A., Wall, P. and Govaerts, B., 2015. Conservation Agriculture in Latin America. In Conservation agriculture (pp. 391-415). Springer, Cham.

Zimmerer, K.S. and Carter, E.D., 2002, January. Conservation and sustainability in Latin America and the Caribbean. In Yearbook. Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers (Vol. 27, pp. 207-249). University of Texas Press.

Zimmerer, K.S., 2011. ” Conservation Booms” With Agricultural Growth? Sustainability and Shifting Environmental Governance in Latin America, 1985-2008 (Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia). Latin American Research Review, pp.82-114.

Zimmerer, K.S., 2011. New geographies of energy: Introduction to the special issue. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101(4), pp.705-711.

Zimmerer, K.S., 2014. Conserving agrobiodiversity amid global change, migration, and nontraditional livelihood networks: the dynamic uses of cultural landscape knowledge. Ecology and Society, 19(2).