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Human migration and population growth, in concert with globalization trends, greatly affect the environment and conservation efforts. In the Americas, the movement of people, capital, goods, and services has caused different types of ecosystem change, including deforestation. Urbanization, a dominant trend in the Americas, is a two‐edged sword for conservation, moving human populations away from rural and protected areas, but also increasing per capita demand for energy, goods, and services. Migration to the forest frontier and the abandonment of marginal rural land present opposite but equally difficult ecological challenges. Projected climate change will also complicate both conservation and migration flows, particularly in developing countries with limited economic and technical capacity. However, better integration of ecological, demographic, and sociological data and theory can lead to the development of predictive models, which will help us to understand and project human migration patterns and their dynamic relationship with ecological change. This interdisciplinary work could lead to the successful development of long‐range conservation policy and interventions. La migración humana y el crecimiento de la población, aunado a las tendencias de la globalización, afectan substancialmente al medioambiente y los esfuerzos de conservación. En el continente americano, el movimiento de personas, capital, bienes y servicios ha causado diferentes tipos de cambios en los ecosistemas, incluyendo deforestación. La urbanización, tendencia dominante en el continente americano, es un arma de dos filos para la conservación, ya que, por un lado, desplaza a las poblaciones humanas fuera de las áreas rurales y protegidas, pero por otro lado, incrementa la demanda de energía, bienes y servicios. La migración hacia zonas boscosas y el abandono de tierras rurales marginadas exponen retos ecológicos opuestos, pero igualmente difíciles. Además, el cambio climático previsto complicará los flujos migratorios y la conservación de los ecosistemas, particularmente en los países en desarrollo cuya capacidad económica y tecnológica es limitada. Sin embargo, una mejor integración de los datos y de las teorías ecológicas, demográficas y sociales, encaminarán a desarrollar modelos predictivos que ayudarán a entender y proyectar los patrones de migración humana y su relación dinámica con el cambio ecológico. Este trabajo interdisciplinario puede encaminarnos hacia el desarrollo de políticas e intervenciones de conservación exitosas.

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Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Contents List of Figures and Tables viiPreface viii List of Contributors xi PrefaceThis book is the result of the collaborative research project Environmental Governance in Latin America (ENGOV) funded by the European Union (EU). For four years, a team of experts from ten Latin American and European academic institutions investigated how environmental governance is currently being shaped in Latin America. In this joint effort, we were driven by our concerns about widespread ecological degradation, poverty and injustice, as well as by our curiosity about the ways in which the emergence of new political regimes and elites, and innovative steps by communities and social organizations, affects governance practices and nature-society relations. To understand the possibilities and obstacles for sustainable and equitable natural resource use, a range of case-studies were carried out in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico. Although some of the research topics and cases are not included in this volume, their findings have contributed to the discussions and theoretical reflections in the overall analysis. The ENGOV project has been simultaneously challenging and inspiring. The theme of environmental governance is a huge academic enterprise because it addresses complex social relations, practices and views influencing how societies perceive nature and use natural resources. Combining methods and theories from different fields of the social sciences is a prerequisite which in practice is fairly demanding. Furthermore, by encompassing political, economic, cultural and environmental changes, formal as well as informal arrangements, and cross-scale connections, the study of environmental governance can easily become a 'mission impossible'. Arguably this is even more the case for contemporary Latin America, with its variety of local and national conditions facing rapid-paced changes. Finally, collaborating in an international research consortium of ten institutional partners and more than 25 researchers from different disciplines, schools of thought and generations has also proved to be both daring and rewarding. The fact that we spoke in different academic languages and idiom accents was not only a hurdle to tackle during our group discussions, but also forced us to learn from each other's approaches and convictions, and the foundations on which these are based. As a typical governance process, next viii Preface ix to misunderstandings, dissonances and unbridgeable differences, the exchange of different insights and perspectives proved to bring ab...