Indigenous, Colonist, and Government Impacts on Nicaragua's Bosawas Reserve

Abstract

We studied the impacts of colonists, two groups of indigenous residents (Miskitu and Mayangna), and management by the Nicaraguan Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA) on the forest of the Bosawas International Biosphere Reserve. Indigenous people and colonists subsist on the natural resources of the reserve, and MARENA is responsible for protecting the area from colonization and illicit exploitation. Using geostatistical procedures and Landsat images at three different time periods, we compared per capita deforestation and boundary stabilization in areas with colonists and areas with indigenous peoples. We also examined whether the Mayangna deforested less than the Miskitu and whether the Nicaraguan government has effectively defended the Bosawas boundary against the advance of the agricultural frontier. In addition, we analyzed the current distribution of land uses within the reserve and its contiguous indigenous areas with a supervised classification of current land cover. Indigenous demarcations protected the forest successfully, whereas the Bosawas boundary itself did not inhibit colonization and consequent deforestation. Indigenous farmers deforested significantly less per capita than colonists, and the two indigenous groups in Bosawas did not differ significantly in their effects on the forest. Our results show that indigenous common-property institutions and indigenous defense of homeland have been powerful factors in protecting the forests of Bosawas and that the difficult evolution of a nested cross-scale governance system in Bosawas-under pressure from indigenous peoples-is probably the key to the forest's survival thus far.

Bosques y derechos comunitarios: las reformas en la tenencia forestal

“…Nuestra investigación ha determinado que, en muchos casos, la demanda de derechos de tierra por parte de las comunidades es una (contundente) respuesta a la invasión de sus tierras por parte de terceros. En América Latina, los bosques en pie están ubicados principalmente donde hay comunidades indígenas (véase RAISG 2009), y las invasiones de tierras por actores externos constituyen una de las principales causas de la deforestación (Geist y Lambin 2002;Stocks et al 2007).…”

The Robustness of Indigenous Common-property Systems to Frontier Expansion: Institutional Interplay in the Mosquitia Forest Corridor

“…For those scholars and practitioners involved in forest management, whether traditional systems remain robust or collapse in the face of external disturbances is of immediate concern as new populations and markets push into what were once remote forest lands (Redford 1991;Grosvenor et al 1992;Redford & Stearman 1993;Terborgh 2000;Rudel et al 2002;Nepstad et al 2006;Stocks et al 2007). This article examines if and how indigenous residents adapt their common-property systems to frontier expansion and the impact that protected area governance has on their adaptation strategies.…”

“…Frontier forests are some of the last tracts of forest that are of sufficient size to support a full range of native species and remain relatively undisturbed (Bryant et al 1997). These forests are frequently the ancestral homelands of indigenous peoples who have governed the regions for centuries, often through a loosely designed system of common-property norms (Grosvenor et al 1992;Dodds 1994;House 1997;Stocks et al 2007).…”

Challenges of Opportunity Cost Analysis in Planning REDD+: A Honduran Case Study of Social and Cultural Values Associated with Indigenous Forest Uses

“…Previous studies in this region demonstrate subsistence agriculture is not the primary driver of deforestation in La Mosquitia [34,45]. Cattle ranching practices of ladino colonists have been the proximate drivers of the majority of forest clearing in the buffer zone and increasingly within the Cultural Zone of the RPBR [34,38,39].…”