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Does Tenure Matter? A Comparative Analysis of Agricultural Expansion in the Mosquitia Forest Corridor

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Abstract

This article compares how public protection of forests and common-property forest institutions serve to control outside encroachment into frontier forests in Honduras and Nicaragua. The article combines institutional analysis with ethnographically based fieldwork and analysis of land-cover images to evaluate how property-rights arrangements influence monitoring, enforcement, and compliance with rules to restrict agricultural expansion in two biosphere reserves in the Mosquitia Corridor. Findings show that territorial demarcation and common-property rights are important components for frontier forest conservation. In areas with weak enforcement mechanisms and heavy reliance on social norms over official regulatory measures, the findings suggest that the perceived legitimacy of tenure arrangements and their respective land-use rules are fundamental to controlling the agricultural frontier.

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Notes

  1. A World Resources Institute report defines frontier forests as being primarily forested; of sufficient size to support viable populations of the full range of indigenous species within that particular forest ecosystem given periodic natural disturbance episodes; and exhibiting a structure and composition shaped largely by natural events, as well as by limited human disturbance from traditional activities (WRI 1997, p. 40).

  2. In Bosawas, 8,000 km2 constitutes the six indigenous territories that make up the core zone of the Reserve. It does not include the buffer zone that was later added. Total area of the Reserve including the buffer is approximately 20,000 square km.

  3. In order to protect the identity of individual respondents, I do not state their names.

  4. Indigenous population statistics are based on the TNC census conducted in 1995 and the natural fertility rate, estimated to be 0.035 per year (Stocks 1998).

  5. The 2003 image classified by the Nicaraguan Ministry for the Environment and Natural Resources does not distinguish pasture land from fallow land. However, fieldwork in both areas found that few of the Miskitos interviewed had pasture while almost all of the mestizos did.

  6. The remaining 1% of the land in the western region of the cultural zone was covered by grass or sand.

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Acknowledgments

This work would not have been possible without support from the Institute for International Exchange Fulbright Fellowship, National Science Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population and Environmental Change (CIPEC), and the Workshop for Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. Folks at The Nature Conservancy, MOPAWI, AFE-COHDEFOR, MARENA, Proyecto Biosfera Río Plátano, the Saint Louis Zoo, and Centro Humboldt were also crucial in facilitating my fieldwork. I would like to thank Felipe Murtinho, Anthony Stocks, Tom Evans, and Catherine Tucker for their comments on earlier drafts and Joanna Broderick for her helpful technical edits.

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    Tanya Marie Hayes

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Hayes, T.M. Does Tenure Matter? A Comparative Analysis of Agricultural Expansion in the Mosquitia Forest Corridor. Hum Ecol 35, 733–747 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-007-9117-6

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