Publication

This publication discusses the development and conservation of tropical forests. The author argues that these processes must begin not with a search for resources that forest dwellers do not have, but with a search for the institutional forces that restrict the dwellers' ownership and existing resources. He claims that the clearing of the tropical forests is being rationalized and is thus supported by the fiction that the beneficiaries are the poor and that this is being done to combat their poverty. He advocates instead that demonstrating that deforestation actually benefits a small elite would remove much of the justification for it.