Migration, Remittances, and Forest Cover Change in Rural Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico

Angelsen, Arild; Aguilar-Støen, Mariel; Ainembabazi, John Herbert; Castellanos, Edwin; Taylor, Matthew

doi:10.3390/land9030088

Cited by 26 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…These outbound flows of people eventually, when the migrants consolidate their socioeconomic position, translate into inbound flows of cash through migratory remittances (Courtney Smith 2006; Gomberg‐Muñoz 2011). The money sent back by the migrants to their relatives that remained in the village to help them or to improve the family’s standing by buying lands for housing or cultivation of more fields (Angelsen et al 2020). Although we do not have numbers for Santiago, the aggregates for the state of Oaxaca give an idea of importance of this phenomenon for the local economies.…”

Section: Modernity’s Flowsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The social production of the space (Lefebvre 1992) began to include factors beyond the traditional self‐subsisting agricultural village. Due to the considerable amounts of cash suddenly available to the families, some of them reduced or stopped altogether their cultivation efforts, food (traditional and non‐traditional) could be bought (Angelsen et al 2020). Contrasting with the traditional dwellings made of adobe or wood, some large houses of cement (status markers) were built and kept empty for most of the year or were taken care of by local family members on behalf of the “americanos” (used to refer to those migrating to the U.S.).…”

Section: Modernity’s Flowsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Effects of Migration on Peasant Agricultural Systems: Oaxacan Villages, Between Remittances and Market Integration

Vaccaro¹,

Díaz²

2021

Culture Agric Food & Envi

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Contemporary indigenous Zapotec rural villages of the northern sierra region of Oaxaca state exhibit profound transformations in their agricultural strategies. Since the mid‐twentieth century, its agricultural lands have suffered a gradual process of abandonment. As a consequence, forest transition is occurring around the villages, and the cultivar portfolio seems to be dominated by cash crops. This article examines these landscape transformations through a multicausal explanatory framework: these mountains have experienced intense outbound migratory processes since the 1980s; the communities have cash available to buy certain labor‐intensive crops as a result of the remittances sent back by the migrants; and the area has been recently integrated to road‐connected regional markets thanks to an intense development of its infrastructures. This article discusses some the changes experienced by the landscape of the village of Santiago Zoochila (Oaxaca), as a result of the interaction demographic and economic factors (migration, availability of remittances, and market integration).

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Section: Modernity’s Flowsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Modernity’s Flowsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Migration on Peasant Agricultural Systems: Oaxacan Villages, Between Remittances and Market Integration

Vaccaro¹,

Díaz²

2021

Culture Agric Food & Envi

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“…More evidence is needed on the implications of migration and remittances for forests and forestbased rural livelihoods which remain largely unexplored in the empirical literature (Hecht et al 2015). A few exceptions include Angelsen et al (2020) and López-Feldman and Chávez (2017). Based on household data from Guatemala and Mexico, Angelsen et al (2020) show that migration is not linked to expansion of agricultural land and only partially correlated with the use of chemical inputs, whereas the impact of remittances was not tested.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

The implications of remittances for agricultural land use and fuelwood collection: evidence from the remaining forested landscapes in the Philippines

Zhunusova

Lippe

Yang

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Despite the projected sharpest decline in remittances in history due to the global economic crisis induced by the Covid-19 pandemic, remittances are expected to remain an important source of external financing for many developing countries. The Philippines is among the top five recipients of remittances worldwide, while outmigration is an important livelihood strategy for rural communities in the country due to rapid population growth, poor employment opportunities, and scarce agricultural land. Migration and remittances can influence smallholder land use with potential implications on forest resource use through an impact on household income and household decisions on local activities. However, little attention has been paid in previous research to how remittances relate to changes in rural households’ land use and their implications for forests. The goal of this study is to investigate the linkages between the inflow of both international and internal remittances and rural households’ land use in forested landscapes in the Philippines. In order to do that, we use the data from 1,024 household surveys and an instrumental variable approach to investigate the impact of remittances on fuelwood use and on the area cultivated by perennials and cereals. The findings of this study show that remittances positively influence the size of land planted by perennials and reduce households’ reliance on fuelwood use. Our findings provide an improved understanding of the links between migration - remittances - natural resource management, which will become especially relevant as countries struggle to deal with the economic fallout associated with Covid-19. We argue that demographic policy measures should play a bigger role in Land Use, Land-use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) negotiations than before. Moreover, global sustainability agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should recognize the impacts of migration on natural resources to help bridge the gap between developmental and environmental goals.

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“…Other studies have shown that wildfires (Oliveira et al, 2017), farmers, and ethnic minorities with low education levels (Do & Mulia, 2018), a relaxed regulatory policy (Marcos‐Martinez et al, 2018), political transition (Biswas et al, 2021), and displaced deforestation (Pendrill et al, 2019) could impede or reverse forest transitions. The path to net forest gains is also dependent on agro‐ecological and climatic conditions as well as on population trends and urbanization (Nanni et al, 2019), livestock efficiency gains and woodfuel substitution (Gingrich et al, 2021), international outmigration and migrant remittances (Angelsen et al, 2020; Oldekop et al, 2018; Ospina et al, 2019), and climate (Harvey et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The spatiotemporal patterns and pathways of forest transition in China

Marcos-Martínez

et al. 2021

Land Degrad Dev

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China experienced a shift from net forest losses to gains (forest transition) between 1976 and 1981. Such transition has increased timber volume in natural forests and expanded the provision of forests ecosystem services. However, the timing, magnitude, and impact of the forest transition varied at provincial scales due to heterogeneous socio‐economic and institutional conditions. The aim of this study is to quantify the impact of spatial drivers of forest transition in China through integrated comparative and spatial regression methods. This approach allows the documentation of feedbacks and interactions of theoretical pathways to forest transition at different geographical scales, which is of relevance for large‐scale land restoration efforts. Our analysis also accounts for changes in forest volumes, a parameter that is usually not studied in the forest transition literature. Here, we used key indicators of demographic, economic, agricultural, and urbanization processes coupled with forest area data to investigate factors influencing forest transitions at multiple geographic scales between 1973 and 2013. Stepwise and geographically weighted regression models were adapted to quantify the key drivers' integrated and distributed magnitude effects on forest transition patterns, respectively. We assessed changes across forest types (i.e., primary and secondary forests, plantation forests) and investigated pathways to forest transition at provincial scales. The results indicate that increasing demand for timber and other forest ecosystem services, rising gross domestic product and population, forest policy, and increasing employment in the industry and service sectors generated multiple pathways to forest transition. The impact of those drivers varied within provinces, and some transition pathways were more relevant than others at sub‐national scales. Despite the Country scale shift to net forest gains, the loss of natural forests continued in some provinces (e.g., Guangdong, Guangxi) until recent years. The loss of ecosystem services from mature forests offset some of the benefits of China's forest transition. Coordinated forest management strategies across political jurisdictions could speed up the path to net forest gains, reduce trade‐offs of forest transitions processes, and achieve sustainable afforestation processes. Such an effort could have significant contributions to the preservation and increase of key forest ecosystem services for the Country and the world.

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Migration, Remittances, and Forest Cover Change in Rural Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico

Cited by 26 publications

References 60 publications

The Effects of Migration on Peasant Agricultural Systems: Oaxacan Villages, Between Remittances and Market Integration

The Effects of Migration on Peasant Agricultural Systems: Oaxacan Villages, Between Remittances and Market Integration

The implications of remittances for agricultural land use and fuelwood collection: evidence from the remaining forested landscapes in the Philippines

The spatiotemporal patterns and pathways of forest transition in China

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