Tropical Deforestation, Land Degradation, and Society

The devastation of the world's rain forests is increasingly the focus of international attention. Scientific and public concern over the adverse consequences of large-scale tropical deforestation centers on the possibility of decreased biological diversity and species extinctions, modification of hydrological cycles, changes in and global climate, degradation of soil resources, and threats to the physical and cultural survival of indigenous peoples and other local inhabitants. Yet, despite this concern, the causes of tropical forest destruction are often poorly understood. About one-third of the world's remaining tropical forests are located in the 5.8 million-km2 Amazon Basin, over half of which is included within Brazil's national boundaries. The Brazilian state of Rondonia is both a major agricultural and demographic frontier and the site of some of the most rapid deforestation ever witnessed in the humid tropics. Rondonia has recently attracted considerable international attention not only because of this alarming deforestation but because the world's largest and most influential development institution, the World Bank, has been held directly responsible for financing a social and ecological disaster of tremendous dimensions in the region (Rich, 1985). This article examines the causes of tropical deforestation, land degradation, and the apparent failure of small-farmer settlement projects in Rondonia. The analytical approach draws on both political economy and human ecology (what Blaikie and Brookfield [1987] have termed regional political ecology). Similar studies of rural poverty, agrarian change, and environmental degradation in the Third World in various academic disciplines (see Little and Horowitz, 1987; Watts, 1983, 1984; de Janvry and