Footnote:
In: Environmental Conservation 20(1)17-24,56, 1993
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments 1993 erstellt
Description:
The study begins with a parable from Kalimantan, relating how the discovery of a big diamond can bring misfortune to a poor miner. It is suggested that this parable applies more generally to resource development in the tropical forest, and that the major challenge is not to give more development opportunities to forest peoples but to take fewer away. This thesis of resource exploitation is at variance with the `rain forest crunch' premise: namely, forest reserves are being over-exploited by forest dwellers, the reason for this is the absence of other sources of income, and the solution is to help forest dwellers find such sources. It is suggested that there has been no lack of such sources in the past, and that the problem has been in maintaining the forest peoples' control of them. The lesson of this analysis is not to ignore minor forest products, but to clearly place them - and their potential development value for indigenous forest peoples - within their proper political-economic context. Any resolution of the problems of tropical forest development and conservation must begin not by searching for resources that forest dwellers do not already have, but by first searching for the institutional forces that restrict their ownership and productive use of existing resources. De-mystification of the current debate over tropical deforestation and development is needed