John Vandermeer - Breakfast Of Biodiversity: The Political Ecology of Rain Forest Destruction

OF The Political Ecology
of Rain Forest Destruction

second edition

JOHN VANDERMEER
and IVETTE PERFECTO

foreword by
VANDANA SHIVA

Food First Books

Oakland, California

This book is dedicated to Tina and Kiko, and to the poor farmers of the tropics.

Copyright 1995, 2005, 2013 Institute for Food and Development Policy. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher, except for brief review.

Text and cover design by Stephen Hassett.

Cover art copyright Corel.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vandermeer, John H.

Breakfast of biodiversity [electronic resource] : the political ecology of rain forest destruction / John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto ; foreword by Vandana Shiva. -- 2nd ed. (e-book)

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-935028-45-4 (2nd edn; e-book)

1. Rain forest conservation. 2. Rain forest ecology. 3. Banana trade--Environmental aspects--Costa Rica. 4. Deforestation--Environmental aspects--Tropics. 5. Agricultural ecology--Tropics. 6. Forest biodiversity conservation--Tropics. I. Perfecto, Ivette. II. Title.

SD414.T76V36 2013

577.34--dc23

2013000984

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by Vandana Shiva

John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto have in their book Breakfast of Biodiversity raised some of the most challenging questions about conservation of biodiversity.

The old conflict of ecology versus economics, environment versus development, has, in the post Rio era, mutated into a conflict about how natural resources will be conserved, by whom and for whom.

The dominant paradigm sees conservation as dependent on financial investments, which are, in turn, linked to increased economic growth, international trade, and consumption. This approach allows continued destruction of the environment and peoples livelihoods in the domain of the productive economy, while allowing islands of set-asides and wilderness reserves, which also displace people and destroy indigenous cultures and lifestyles. In this paradigm, there is an artificial separation of conservation and production, of people and nature. Further, the increased trade and commerce that generate the financial resources central to this paradigm of conservation themselves destroy natural resources, biodiversity, cultural diversity, and peoples livelihoods. The result is nonsustainable islands of biodiversity threatened with constant erosion by a sea of pollutants and monocultures.

The second paradigm is based on conserving biodiversity as the very basis of production, which ensures that both nature and peoples livelihoods are protected. It is this second paradigm that is both people- and nature-friendly that this book articulates. In this paradigm, conservation cannot be isolated from production, investment, and trade. Environmental action becomes inseparable from issues of social justice and peoples economic rights. As the authors state in closing, calls for boycotts of tropical timbers or bananas need to be coupled with actions to change investment patterns and international banking pressures.

The world is already saturated with books about rain forests. What then can be our excuse for writing yet another? Its simple. After reading many of those other books in the course of preparing slide shows, lectures, and discussions, we came to believe that for the most part they really did not get it completely right. While they all made very important points about the nature of the rain forest and the alarming rate of its disappearance, and they all had particular analyses about causes, their analysis focused on one or another issueoverpopulation, export agriculture, peasant agriculture, etc.

We can appreciate the temptation to focus on the facts of rain forest destruction, and we agree that the nature of the problem itself is quite worthy of persistent propaganda. This, we suppose, is why all the books say the same thingtropical rain forests are useful and beautiful, yet they are being destroyed. That the problem needs to be brought to the attention of the public, we agree. But once alerted to the problem, the public asks what to do. Causes must be addressed, and we feel that most of the popular literature on the subject does not do it adequately.

To be sure, many books talk about causes. But most frequently, authors are concerned with identifying some ultimate factoroverpopulation, greedy lumber companies, inefficient peasant farmers, avaricious export agriculture. We agree that some, even many, of these forces are part of the picture. But in the final analysis the cause is far more complicated. Indeed, the nature of the complications is the cause. This sort of analysis is multifaceted, with many interconnecting componentswhat we refer to as the web of causality. However, we also feel that it is not difficult to appreciate this analysis, if the focus is not on an individual component but rather on the complete web. That is the purpose of this book.

We aim to alert the reader to several obvious facts. The web includes subjects that ordinarily do not occur together between the same book covers: the poor soils of peasant farmers, international diplomacy, international agricultural economics, and a variety of other strands in the web. Thus our narrative ranges from the acidity of rain forest soils to the acridity of international politics.

Furthermore, this book is in no sense complete. It is not a comprehensive analysis of the nature of rain forests and their potential utility, nor is it a full presentation of the details of rain forest destruction the world over. Many other books do precisely that, and they do it quite well. Our purpose is to elaborate, in a compact and straightforward manner, the complicated story of why rain forests are disappearing. This is mainly a social, economic, and political story, with a pinch of ecology. The story has nothing to do with overpopulation and is not about a few evil capitalists who care more for profits than trees. Rain forests thus will not be saved by handing out condoms nor by refusing to buy furniture made of tropical wood. The only way to reverse the pattern of the past five hundred years is, first, to understand the complexity of the web that creates the problem in the first place and, second, to develop a strategy that shreds that causal web. Perhaps a boycott of tropical woods would make sense, but only within the context of a clear analysis of how that boycott contributes to eliminating the web of causality.

While our purpose is to elaborate the web of destruction in a brief form, we frequently find it easiest to argue from example. Since our personal experience is mainly in the tropical rain forests of Central America, almost all of our examples are from there. Other authors would obviously have used different examples. But in the end, our analysis is not restricted to the Central American case. To be sure, there will be differences from place to place logging is more important in Southeast Asia, for example, cattle ranching more important in Brazil. But the general principles, and consequently the appropriate actions, are not dependent on the particular site. The web is strung slightly differently in each place, but its connecting strands are similar the world over.