Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Decentralization, Rural Poverty, and Degradation of Uplands in Central America

2001; International Mountain Society; Volume: 21; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1659/0276-4741(2001)021[0221

1994-7151

Ian Cherrett,

Regional Development and Innovation

If current land use practices in the uplands of Central America are not modified soon, rural poverty will persist and lead to environmental collapse. There is a simultaneous need for increase of productivity, improved natural resource management, and recognition of people's rights to the resources they manage. Only when rural families can consider land to be their own, manage resources sustainably, and generate surplus will they be able to trigger genuine change in the system of governance. Top-down attempts to change the system of governance will only succeed in changing the form rather than the content. Until the governed have shaken off traditional patterns of dependency and control from above as well as modified their land use practices, the vicious circle of poverty will remain intact. The proposals for an alternative approach presented in this article are based on more than 6 years of field work in 20 municipalities in the mountains of Lempira, Honduras (Figure 1).