Question

Forest Development the Indian Way
RICHARD K. REED
Summary When Richard Reed first entered the Guaran village of Itanaram over 20 years ago, he had to make an arduous journey, first on rugged dirt roads by car, then for two days on foot along a tropical forest trail. Only rivers and swampy areas broke the forest canopy. The village itself was buried in the forest, with houses scattered along a trail next to a small river. Reed's subsequent study revealed a tightly knit community whose members were tied together by kinship and values on sharing and cooperation. Political structure was informal; a village leader (tamoi) mediated disputes. Although villagers exploited their tropical forest environment, they did so in a way that permitted its renewal. Men cleared garden plots in the forest. Women burned the brush and planted the fields with beans, manioc, and orange trees. As fields became exhausted after two or three years, new plots were cleared and old ones permitted to lie fallow for 10 to 20 years so they could be reclaimed by the forest. Hunting and fishing provided a significant portion of people's food and, though seemingly isolated, villagers traded some forest products especially yerba-mate leaves, for hooks, machetes, soap, and salt with outsiders. Results of his study were described in "Cultivating the Tropical Forest," an article included in earlier editions of Conformity and Conflict.
Subsequent visits to Itanaram over the intervening years reveal changes commonly found in many areas of the Amazon drainage. Roads now bisect the forest, bringing an influx of ranchers, farmers, traders, frontier towns, and truck traffic. Clear cutting for farms and ranches has devastated Guaran life and its sustainable economy. Settlements stand isolated and devoid of resources. Villagers can no longer practice slash-and-burn agriculture; there are no animals to hunt or fish to catch. Without renewable resources, many Indians have joined the legions of unemployed or underemployed in frontier towns, and suicide rates, especially among young men, have skyrocketed.
Shouldn"t the Guaran simply accept the pain that accompanies modern development and look forward to a brighter future? No, argues Reed, because the use of forestland for ranches and farming is unsustainable. Cleared land quickly ceases to produce and is left vacant without a surrounding forest to reclaim it, leaving a red desert. Instead, the Guaran model for forest exploitation, even when it involves the extraction of forest products for sale to outsiders, is more economical because it is sustainable. Persuaded by this argument, the Nature Conservancy has recently bought and set aside 280 square miles of forest for sustainable development using the Guaran model.
According to Reed's "Forest Development the Indian Way," the Guaran and, in the past, millions of other Indians, exploited the Amazonian tropical forests without causing permanent harm to the ecosystem.

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