Livelihood Vulnerability to Uncontrolled Fires Among Campesino Communities in the Northern Bolivian Amazon

Livelihood;Climate Change;Landuse Change;Bolivian Amazon;Fire;Natural Resources and Environment

Fournier, MichelleAgrawal, Arun ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Livelihood;    Climate Change;    Landuse Change;    Bolivian Amazon;    Fire;    Natural Resources and Environment;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/108218/Michelle%20Fournier%20MS%20Thesis%202014.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

The effects of climate change have now reached all parts of the world, and for many people,climate-related stressors add an additional layer onto the complex environmental, social, andeconomic factors already contributing to their vulnerability. Rural communities that rely to agreat extent on local ecosystems for their livelihoods may be greatly affected by seeminglyminor alterations in climatic conditions, which then catalyze other environmental changes. In thenorthern Bolivian Amazon, climate change, land cover change, and fire use in land managementare interacting synergistically across multiple scales to generate an elevated risk of uncontrolledfires. This study explores how uncontrolled fires have affected the livelihoods of one group ofactors in this region, campesinos, and the implications for ecosystem-based developmentinterventions. It also touches on how campesino communities, civil society organizations, andthe Bolivian forest and land management agency, ABT, have responded to the elevated risk ofuncontrolled fires.I carried out a total of 43 semi-structured interviews with residents of five campesinocommunities in the department of Pando, Bolivia, from May to August, 2013. Focus groupdiscussions, participatory mapping, and household surveys in the focal communities, as well asinterviews with local civil society organization staff, served as supplementary sources ofinformation. Residents of four of the five focal communities reported that they had experienceduncontrolled fires at least once between 2003 and 2013. In three of the communities, someresidents had experienced significant damage to annual crops, agroforestry systems, wild cacao,or Brazil nut trees.The effects of uncontrolled fires have implications for ecosystem-based developmentinterventions that are being carried out in rural communities throughout the northern BolivianAmazon. Local civil society organizations, supported by international donors, are promoting thedevelopment of agroforestry systems, commercialization of cultivated and wild cacao, andincrease of Brazil nut harvesting income, among other interventions. Because these productivesystems are susceptible to uncontrolled fires, the increasing incidence of fires in the region hasthe potential to derail these interventions over the short or medium term. There are alreadyindications that without additional fire adaptation measures, agroforestry systems are no longerappropriate in some communities.Separate interventions by civil society and the ABT to reduce and control the use of fire as a landmanagement tool have mainly focused on campesino communities. Given that uncontrolled firesare caused by multi-scaled factors ranging from global climate to regional land use patterns tolocal fire use practices, I suggest that campesino communities have limited agency and may notbe the most appropriate actors to target for such interventions. Other local actors, particularlyowners of large cattle ranches, appear to contribute much more to uncontrolled fires, includingfires that spread to community land, and may therefore represent a higher priority target for firemitigation interventions.