Unearthing Grassroots Power

Beginning of article

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 maldistribution 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 he 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 …