GEOG 216 Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: Sustainable Agriculture, Avocado, Agricultural Productivity
13 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Rain Forest Livelihoods in Amazonia: Myths and Realities
Introduction
• More sustainable paths for development in Amazonia
• Rain forest peoples: partners in conservation/REDD
• Economic life in rain forest: limited understanding
• Lecture: Challenge six myths
Rain forest peasants
• Two groups: Amerindians and folk (metis) peoples
• Live along Amazon and its tributaries
• Traditional agriculture and forest harvesting practices but sell produce in
markets
• Poor in income and assets (typical family of 5 would earn about $4000 a
year, assets usually never more than $1000)
• Guardians of forest
Small communities surrounded by tremendous diversity: waterways, lakes,
diverse forests and fauna. Usually monotypic forests that seem to go on forever.
Why you fly over the amazon forest, you only see green for hours and every now
and then a little community.
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City of Iquitos of about 4000 people, originally rubber court?
First myth: Forest peasants are generalists aka they do a bit of everything but
nothing in particular)
• Backwoods people: peasants
• Livelihoods: mix of agriculture, fishing, hunting, forest product extraction
(pluriactivity), hard to identify what is that that people do
• Ethnographies and self-identification
• Everyone does a little of everything
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find more resources at oneclass.com
National reserve where lowlands are protected.
Some villages do a lot of fishing; some agriculture and some rely on non-
timber forest products (palm fruit, resins, etc.)
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Rain forest livelihoods in amazonia: myths and realities. Introduction: more sustainable paths for development in amazonia, rain forest peoples: partners in conservation/redd, economic life in rain forest: limited understanding, lecture: challenge six myths. Small communities surrounded by tremendous diversity: waterways, lakes, diverse forests and fauna. Usually monotypic forests that seem to go on forever. Why you fly over the amazon forest, you only see green for hours and every now and then a little community. Some villages do a lot of fishing; some agriculture and some rely on non- timber forest products (palm fruit, resins, etc. ) Rain forest communities: access to land: land can be highly unequally distributed in a village where land markets are absent, not everybody has one path of land, someone can have 27 and another can have (cid:884). Some people (top left) are super isolated, some are central to the networks and some are somewhat marginalized. Some households have much better access to seeds.
