Extra-legal land market dynamics on a Guatemalan agricultural frontier: Implications for neoliberal land policies

Land speculation and interest rate subsidies as a cause of deforestation: The role of cattle ranching in Costa Rica

“…Fearnside (1990), Diegues (1992), Kaimowitz (1996) and Gould et al (2006), for example, claim that real land prices have risen over the last decades due to infrastructure development, favourable livestock product prices during the 1960s and 1970s, population growth, and urbanization. Faminow (1998), on the other hand, states that empirical evidence is limited, and shows that annual rates of return to land speculation in the Brazilian Amazon exceed the opportunity cost of capital only to a limited extent and in a small number of cases.…”

“Blind passes” and the production of green security through violence on the Guatemalan border

“…The language that scholars employ may also reproduce the notion that these regions are ''ungovernable'' due to their location, weather and lack of legibility (from the perspective of urban centers). In terms of location, Guatemala's northern lowlands are often framed as a ''frontier'' for disappearing forests giving way to small farms and plantations (Schwartz, 1990;Carr, 2006;Gould et al, 2006;Grandia, 2012), which implies that agriculture is newly expanding into virgin rainforest in a one-way historical shift. In a longer historical viewpoint, ''virgin'' forest has not existed in the Américas for centuries (Denevan, 1992), but reforestation may also be an 10 The Senate Committee report does not claim that Central Americans participated in this process.…”

La implementación de REDD+: estrategia nacional y opciones de política

“…En términos más generales, una gobernanza forestal débil y una tenencia insegura aumentan los costos de oportunidad de mantener los bosques, fomentan la expansión de la tala ilegal y mantienen bajos los precios de la madera (Tacconi 2007c). Dicho esto, la seguridad en la tenencia puede proporcionar acceso al capital y, por consiguiente, promover la destrucción del bosque si la intensificación del uso de la tierra tiene atractivos financieros y culturales no impedidos por las normativas gubernamentales vigentes (Gould et al 2006).…”