A REVISIONIST VIEW OF TROPICAL DEFORESTATION AND DEVELOPMENT

This study critiques one of the prevailing theories of tropical defore station, namely that the forest is being cleared because its riches ha ve been overlooked (the purported solution to which is the marketing o f 'rain-forest crunch'). Edelman's work on the language of 'helping' i s drawn on to suggest that a focus on the micro-economics of forest dw ellers diverts attention from macro-economic and political issues whos e impact on the forest is far more serious. The study begins with a pa rable from Kalimantan, relating how the discovery of a big diamond can bring misfortune to a poor miner. It is suggested that this parable a pplies more generally to resource development in tropical forests, and that the major challenge is not to give more development opportunitie s to forest peoples but to take fewer away. This principal is illustra ted with respect to gold mining, rattan gathering, and truck-farming, in Indonesia. In each case, when a forest resource acquires greater va lue in the broader society, it is appropriated by external entrepreneu rs at the expense of local communities. A detailed case-study is prese nted of the development of Para Rubber cultivation. Smallholders curre ntly dominate this cultivation, despite steadfast opposition by both c ontemporary and colonial governments, whose self-interests are better served by the cultivation of the Rubber on large estates. Each of thes e cases illustrates the predisposition of political and economic force s in the broader society to take over successful resource development in the tropical forest. Contemporary efforts to develop 'non-timber fo rest products' are reinterpreted, in this light, as attempts to alloca te to the forest dwellers the resources of least interest to the broad er society. The absence of research in this area is attributed not to academic oversight but to conflicting political-economic interests. Th is thesis of resource exploitation is at variance with the 'rain-fores t crunch' premise: namely that forest reserves are being overexploited by forest dwellers, that this is due to the absence of other sources of income, and that the solution is to help forest dwellers to find su ch sources. It is suggested that there has been no lack of such source s in the past, and that the problem has been in maintaining the forest peoples' control of them. The lesson of this analysis is not to ignor e minor forest products, but to place them - and their potential devel opment value for indigenous forest peoples - clearly within their prop er political-economic context. Any resolution of the problems of tropi cal forest development and conservation must begin, not by searching f or resources that forest dwellers do not already have, but by first se arching for the institutional forces which restrict the forest dweller s' ownership and productive use of existing resources. One of these in stitutional forces is discourse. It is widely understood that state el ites seek to control valuable forest resources; it is less widely unde rstood that an important means to this end is the control of resource- related discourse. Demystification of the current debate over tropical deforestation and development is thus sorely needed.