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Farm Households and Land Use in a Core Conservation Zone of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala

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Abstract

This paper employs cross-tabular analysis, and multivariate and logistic regression to explore demographic, political-economic, socioeconomic, and ecological patterns of farm households and land use outcomes in an emergent agricultural frontier: the Sierra de Lacandón National Park (SLNP)-a core conservation zone of the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR), Petén, Guatemala. Data were obtained from a 1998 probability sample of 241 farm households, the first large detailed household land use survey in Guatemala’s Selva Maya-the largest lowland tropical forest in Central America. Virtually all settler households were poor maize farmers who colonized the SLNP in search of land for subsistence. While they faced similar ecological and economic conditions, land use strategies and patterns of forest clearing varied with demographic, household, and farm characteristics. Findings support and refute elements from previous frontier land use theory and offer policy implications for conservation and development initiatives in the Maya Forest specifically, and in tropical agricultural frontiers in general.

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Notes

  1. Although farmers in the region use manzanas (0.7 ha), measurements for these three variables and cleared land were converted to hectares for purposes of broader comparison.

  2. Estimates of the share of global deforestation attributed to shifting cultivators range from 45% (UNEP 1992) and 60% (World Bank 1991; Myers 1992) to 79% (Amelung and Diehl 1992).

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the generosity of several funding sources that supported this research: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Social Science Research Council, Association of American Geographers, The University of North Carolina Institute of Latin American Studies, the University of North Carolina Royster Society of Fellows, Latané Center for the Human Sciences, Carolina Population Center, and the Mellon Foundation. Many thanks go to the following awards for supporting the development and analysis of this paper: National Institutes of Health Career Development Award, K01 (HD049008) and National Science Foundation Geography and Regional Science grant (BCS-0525592). I would like to thank several people and institutions in Guatemala. The Nature Conservancy provided a home institution for research in Petén. I especially thank Andreas Lenhoff, David Rinck, Juan Carlos Rosito, Katherine Mason, James Webb, John Beavers, Rudy Herrera, Juan Pablo Arévalos, and Edgar Calderón for their help. Countless others provided valuable assistance in Petén, most notably Norman Schwartz, Oscar Obando and Amilcar Corzo, and George Grunberg. My field assistants deserve special recognition for their work under difficult conditions. Thank you Rubí Salazar Paredes, Marsúm E. Rosales Peche, Juan Carlos Palencia Cetina, Mario Eduardo Rivas Mejía, Elmer Noel López Grijalva, Glyde Márquez Morales, Mayra Esperanza Nora Ramón Guerra, and Petrona Choc Chub. Further thanks go to Thomas Whitmore and Richard Bilsborrow of the University of North Carolina for their support during the development of this project.

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    David L. Carr

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Carr, D.L. Farm Households and Land Use in a Core Conservation Zone of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala. Hum Ecol 36, 231–248 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-007-9154-1

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