Land and leña: linking transnational migration, natural resources, and the environment in Guatemala

Abstract

This article examines the relationships between international migration, natural resources, and the environment. Rather than looking at environmental change as a cause of population movements, the article reveals how migration affects the environment in sending countries. Empirically, we rely on a case study in Guatemala. Although migrants and cash remittances make significant contributions to Guatemala's changing economy, little is known about the relationships between migration and the environment in this Central American country-a country, which continues to have a large rural population and that relies heavily on its natural resources. Drawing on ethnographic research and household surveys in a Maya community, we reveal how migrants and their earnings, as well as their ideas, behavior and attitudes, affect land use, land cover, and firewood use. We reveal, for example, how in addition to investments in land for home building and pick-up trucks to help improve agricultural production, some migrant households purchase more land and often dedicate it to the cultivation of vegetable crops for local and foreign markets. Cultural practices and beliefs directly linked to land and the environment, particularly maize cultivation, also alter due to migration processes. And, despite the ability of migrant households to transition to more efficient fuels like liquid propane gas (LPG), we show how they continue to use firewood. In all, the study contributes important insights into the environmental implications of migration.

Impact of livelihood diversification of rural households on their ecological footprint in agro-pastoral areas of northern China

“…Both of the part-time farming and completely non-farming employment reduced the occupa-tion and consumption of households on local ecosystems and natural resources to some extent. Some researchers have argued that sustainable 'win-win' outcomes (poverty alleviation and environmental restoration) can be largely achieved through the non-farming employment of rural laborers (Groom et al, 2010;Moran-Taylor and Taylor, 2010). Therefore, a key initiative for ecosystem conservation in ecologically vulnerable areas is to increase the non-farming employment and the livelihood diversification of rural households.…”

Land-use change in a telecoupled world: the relevance and applicability of the telecoupling framework in the case of banana plantation expansion in Laos

“…These fields have long histories of researching how global flows, exchanges, and networks influence local social and environmental change through grounded empirical case studies exploring, for example, the increasing globalization of agriculture and rural livelihoods (e.g., Batterbury 2001, Zimmerer 2007) and translocal or transnational migration and the role of remittances in changing land access and land use (see, e.g., Moran-Taylor and Taylor 2010, Piguet 2010, Barney 2012. Within the telecoupling literature, Baird and Fox (2015:440) take a first inspiring step in such directions by investigating nearby, opportunistic, and transnational telecouplings associated with large-scale land concessions in Laos and Cambodia using a political ecology inspired "grounded approach, contextualizing from the local up to the global scale, land-use and forest-cover changes, and interrelations with political-economic dynamics."…”

‘Con nuestro propio esfuerzo’: Understanding the Relationships between International Migration and the Environment in Guatemala

“…cattle ranching (Schmook and Radel 2008). The empirical literature shows that migration can result in deforestation or reforestation in the areas of origin of migrants, depending on the investments made by households, markets, policies, and institutions (Conway and Lorah 1995;Hecht et al 2006;Holder and Chase 2011;Kull et al 2007;Moran-Taylor and Taylor 2010;Naylor et al 2002;Taylor et al 2006). It also shows that migration might affect patterns of land tenure (Hein 2006;Taylor et al 2006;Zoomers 2010).…”

“…Remittances change production and consumption patterns, affect social relations and social and economic institutions in the places of origin of migrants (Curran 2002;Moran-Taylor and Taylor 2010), and affect the asset base with which households build their livelihoods. What is the effect of migration and remittances on land tenure, land use, and the environment?…”

“…This paper addresses this question focusing on how households gain and secure access to resources and networks, and how such access affects the environment. In this paper, environment refers to natural resources including agriculture and forests (Moran-Taylor and Taylor 2010). I argue that migration is fostering a process of land redistribution.…”