UNEARTHING GRASSROOTS POWER

The fate of tropical forests has captured the imagination of the world for over a decade. Many studies have diagnosed the proximate and deeper causes of deforestation and sketched out policy proposals to stem, halt, or reverse the process. In this debate, the "shifted cultivator"�the poor, land-hungry people who invade the forests in search of subsistence living�often bears the brunt of the blame. Because demographic pressure and misdistribution of agricultural land throw these people onto the frontier in large numbers, policy prescriptions focus on family planning, halting colonization projects and road-building, and advocating land reform, all the while stressing the need for parks and reserves, and the capacity to manage them. This policy preference is often interpreted as an attempt to keep people from the forest in order to preserve it. As laudable as those goals are, serious questions remain. What will be the fate of people who inhabit the forest? Are they to be driven out? Are they to be blamed for deforestation as they seek to survive?

For some time, poverty has been perceived as a major contributor to environmental degradation, especially in rural areas. Consequently, in the latter half of the 1980s, the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, the Brundtland Commission, focused on basic needs as a necessary component of sustainable development, in tandem with a redirection of economic growth along a more environmentally friendly path, population control, and citizen participation. How to balance economic growth, environmental quality, social equality, and participation remains a complex policy issue.

In forest policy, the grassroots development approach most directly addresses the livelihood concerns of economically and socially underprivileged forest dwellers. Under the assumption that forests are multiple use zones that can and do provide their inhabitants with a living, this approach promotes agro forestry, community forestry and reforestation, wood harvesting, the ranching of native fauna, extractive reserves, and ecotourism. Policies and projects based on this approach promote the conservation of forests at the community level. These policies encourage local self-reliance and control of economic resources, the use of appropriate technologies that mimic natural processes and emphasize the linkage of communities to markets.

Grassroots Development Politics

The experiences of Mexico, Costa Rica, and Brazil over the past 15 years provide some insights into the politics of crafting policies and projects that promote grassroots development in the forest sector. In the 1980s, Mexico promoted community forestry among forest ejidos (communal farms that arose as a result of the Mexican revolution). Based on sound silvicultural practices, these grassroots development models show how communities organize to sustainable harvest forests, build human capital, provide employment at better wages, and generate, reinvest, and distribute profits to the community. Costa Rica developed a robust community reforestation program in the Pacific northwest. In accordance with a land tenure system based on private property rights, family farmers belonging to cooperatives avail themselves of government incentives to reforest with native or exotic species. The cooperative mediates between the government and the farmers and provides members with technical and financial support. These cases show that community forestry is feasible under both communal and individual forms of land tenure rights. With the creation of extractive reserves�and a commitment to legalize Indian land claims�Brazil offers a case of explicit recognition of forests as multiple use zones, stressing its non timber services: nuts, rubber, fibers, and other agricultural products.

Understanding the politics that influenced the movement toward grassroots development in forestry requires analyzing actors, interests, and power in the context of economically and culturally defined social groups, state institutions and actors, and external factors. These, however, are only the essential building blocks; the dynamics of coalition building between these elements lies at the heart of the politics involved. The aggregation of the capabilities of the different actors constitutes the coalition's power.

What kinds of pro-grassroots development coalitions have been successful? The Mexican and Costa Rican cases suggest one path. Favorable outcomes in those cases depended on the formation of coalitions between organized communities and state and international actors that supported grassroots development. Two elements were crucial to the success of the coalitions. First, the communities were actively seeking help to either reverse an abrupt economic decline or to counter socioeconomically advantaged groups with whom they were locked in a struggle over natural resources. Second, relevant state institutions were sympathetic to grassroots development from the outset. In contrast, the Brazilian case exemplified coalition building in the absence of state support for grassroots development. Domestic social and ecological groups required strong support from international actors�US environmental pressure groups persuaded the Congress of the United States to threaten Brazil with blockage of World Bank loans.

These cases demonstrate that organized communities seeking to overcome a specific difficulty are the bedrock of grassroots development coalitions. Such communities actively seek allies to help solve their problems and have a vital interest in implementing proposed solutions. State actors (whenever available) play crucial roles in these coalitions; they can protect peasant and indigenous leaders from their enemies. Together with nongovernmental organizations and international actors sympathetic to grassroots development, state actors can also provide technical expertise, extension services, and funds. But only organized communities will be able to use these to best avail. If communities are not organized, community forestry projects should make organization the first priority. Wherever possible, such efforts should build on existing grassroots organizations even if they have little or no experience in forestry. Otherwise, competition between new and old groups can virtually ruin any project.

Grassroots development is difficult. It can be costly in terms of time (easily up to 10 years worth of project commitment). This type of development is capital intensive, especially in terms of human capital (technical expertise), extension services, and financial support. More-over, grassroots development requires great flexibility. It can also be politically costly because support for socioeconomic underprivileged groups can generate powerful enemies.

Given these difficulties, the tide has turned against grassroots development as a solution to the livelihood question for forest dwellers. The reflux is rooted in the desperate need of governments to generate export commodities to repay crushing foreign debt loans, the concomitant bankruptcy of states, and the emphasis on orthodox market economics and biodiversity. In this context, arguments for large-scale industrial logging or tree plantations to generate foreign exchange through exports and direct foreign investment are gaining popularity. Moreover, grassroots development has taken a back seat to a focus on parks and reserves as a means to conserve biodiversity in many multilateral institutions and international organizations.

Toward a New Conservationism

Although policies that promote large-scale timber industries are generally at odds with grassroots development, the same is not true of conservation. A "new conservationism" is emerging. This philosophy recognizes that the viability of parks and reserves depends in no small measure on their ability to offer solutions to the livelihood issues that bedevil impoverished rural populations. The application of grassroots development-style projects in buffer zones should reduce pressure to exploit the core areas of parks or reserves that contain essential habitats.

The utility of the buffer zone concept for development purposes may depend on whether it is narrowly or broadly interpreted. If reduced to areas immediately surrounding a park or reserve, a buffer zone may be of limited utility. The numbers of families and the area covered would be severely restricted. Success may draw families from the rest of the country where farmers and peasants are being subjected to bankruptcy and expulsion as the economics of agriculture concentrates land in the hands of agribusiness. Under these conditions, the defense of gains by those who benefit from grassroots development projects in a buffer zone could lead to either social tension, land invasions of protected areas, or both. A broader conceptualization of parks and reserves as integral parts of "areas of conservation" which are linked to each other might offer better chances of success�Costa Rica is currently experimenting with variations of this idea. Theoretically, areas of conservation distribute grassroots development-oriented projects more broadly across the country and cover many activities, such as watershed management, integrated small-scale agriculture, forestry, reforestation, and extractive activities.

While the "new conservationism" offers the prospect of integrating grassroots development with biodiversity protection, the extent to which this promise becomes reality also depends on politics. The funding for such efforts, and their conceptualization, lies mostly in the hands of multilateral lending organizations and conservationist nongovernmental organizations in the developed nations, especially the United States. The apprehension of grassroots development-oriented groups in developing countries is that these international actors�and their domestic sources of support�are dominated by persons primarily concerned with habitat protection. Thus, all too often, the obligatory community development component of project grant competitions is poorly conceived, under funded, and excessively limited in its reach. In short, the community development portion of the project runs the risk of being stillborn. In other proposals, such as joint implementation of carbon offset agreements and bioprospecting, sharing funds with grassroots development projects is simply not on the agenda.

The "new conservationism" and the funds attached to it thus provide an opportunity for generating grassroots development projects, but we must not assume that intellectual recognition and project requirements automatically translate into action. Given the central role of international agencies, converting this opportunity into reality may involve generating broad coalitions similar to the ones that obliged the World Bank to make the environment a more central concern�and that forced the Brazilian government to establish extractive reserves. These coalitions would necessarily involve international nongovernmental organizations that take the nexus between grassroots development and environment seriously in alliance with forces (peasant organizations, nongovernmental organizations, unions, and political parties) within developing countries. In order to generate support for their cause among the citizens of developed nations who are mainly interested in species preservation, such coalitions would have to demonstrate that parks and reserves cannot survive where human populations live in degradation. A campaign around those themes might build pressure�including from the US Congress�to pay more serious attention to the integration of projects that sustain "alternative" livelihoods in conjunction with nature conservation. This is a difficult task and the current political winds may not favor it. But if the process of grassroots mobilization and coalition building is not begun in expectation of more politically propitious times, we run the risk of accepting rhetoric for reality, the shell for the content.

 Eduardo Silva is assistant professor of Political Science and a fellow of the Center for International Studies at the University of Missouri at St. Louis.