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Secondary Forests and Agrarian Transitions: Insights
from Nepal and Peru
Adam Pain
1
&Kristina Marquardt
1
&Dil Khatri
1,2
Accepted: 16 February 2021
#The Author(s) 2021
Abstract
We provide an analytical contrast of the dynamics of secondary forest regeneration in Nepal and Peru framed by a set of common
themes: land access, boundaries, territories, and rights, seemingly more secure in Nepal than Peru; processes of agrarian change
and their consequences for forest-agriculture interactions and the role of secondary forest in the landscape, more marked in Peru,
where San Martín is experiencing apparent agricultural intensification, than in Nepal; and finally processes of social differenti-
ation that have consequences for different social groups, livelihood construction and their engagement with trees, common to
both countries. These themes address the broader issue of the necessary conditions for secondary forest regeneration and the
extent to which the rights and livelihood benefits of those actively managing it are secured.
Keywords Forest and agrarian transitions .Secondary forest .Territory .Social differentiation .Rural households .Indigenous
peoples .Nepal .Peruvian Amazon
Introduction
Tropical forests have a core regulatory function in global cli-
mate systems, but even if they are conserved, existing primary
or near climax tropical forests are unlikely to be sufficient to
maintain this role (Chazdon 2014). Since secondary forests
now provide at least 70% of tropical forest cover (FAO
2010) and make a critical contribution to the maintenance of
global climate systems it is important to identify the condi-
tions under which such forests are established and maintained.
But secondary forests are too often regarded as degraded and
too little attention is given to their diverse formations
(Chazdon et al. 2016), the ecosystem services they provide,
and crucially the contribution that smallholders can make in
managing such forests for livelihood benefits (Hecht 2014).
Their diversity reflects the nature of the disturbances that cre-
ated them, the institutional regimes within which those are
embedded, and the resulting forest regeneration processes. A
more nuanced definition of secondary forest is required to
capture the spectrum of secondary forest types in terms of
their origins, scale, and use values to encompass swidden
agriculture systems, managed forests, social forestry, and
assisted regeneration of old growth forests (Pain et al. 2020).
Current thinking on secondary forest formation draws
heavily on ideas of the normative models of agrarian and
forest transitions that are linked to notions of stages of devel-
opment (Mather 1992; Timmer 2014). But the conditions that
might have generated such transitions in the past are no longer
present. Equally the notionof separate categories of forest and
agriculture have been questioned (Hecht 2014). Secondary
forests (Pain et al. 2020), within and outside the forest bound-
ary, lie in a transition zone for foresters and agronomists. Here
we explore the conditions under which secondary forest re-
generation takes place and whether these conditions necessar-
ily guarantee the security of users of forest resources who have
a vested interest in its management through a comparative
analysis of the dynamics of smallholder actions in various
types of secondary forest regeneration and the agrarian condi-
tions associated with these. We draw from long term research
in the mid-hills of Nepal (Marquardt et al. 2016) and in the
San Martín region of the Peruvian Amazon (Marquardt et al.
2019).
Although Nepal and Peru are both experiencing processes
of modernisation their settlement patterns differ markedly.
The Nepalese hills are densely settled, the population depends
*Adam Pain
adamnpain@gmail.com
1
Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of
Agricultural Science, Uppsala, Sweden
2
Southasian Institute of Advanced Studies, Baneshwor,
Kathmandu, Nepal
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-021-00224-1
/ Published online: 2 March 2021
Human Ecology (2021) 49:249–258
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
on a remittance economy, and the margins of cultivation have
long been fixed. Very little primary forest remains in the hills.
In contrast the Peruvian Amazon is sparsely populated, re-
mains a frontier region (Rasmussen and Lund 2018), and the
forest boundary is not fixed. But from an analytical perspec-
tive the differences should not mask the fact that a common
analytical framework can contextualise their forest settings
and deepen understanding of forest and agrarian processes
of change. We seek analytical generalisation (Lund 2014)
drawing on and refining key concepts of context, forest gov-
ernance, and agrarian change. Central to our analysis is the use
of categories and normative models to characterize disparate
practices on the ground.
In Nepal, democratic decentralisation of the forests and
community forest development generated from a background
of Himalayan degradation (Thompson et al. 1986)havebeen
described by Paudel (2016) as a re-invention of the commons
and a case of accumulation without dispossession. However,
the terms and conditions under which this occurred raise ques-
tions as to who has benefited. There has been a significant
recovery of secondary forest in the Nepalese mid- hills
(Niraula et al. 2013;Birchet al. 2014), although the mosaic
of forest cover and agroecological variability of mountain
landscapes demands careful attention to micro-contexts in
assessing the nature and species composition of that recovery
and its benefits (Marquardt et al. 2016).
In contrast, the Amazonian region of Peru holds the fourth
largest area of primary or old-growth tropical forest in the
world (FAO 2010). But forest cover is being lost at an esti-
mated rate of 123,000 ha per year (Hansen et al. 2013)toroad
development, agricultural intensification and an influx of mi-
grants, although the Peruvian state sees smallholders’swidden
practices as the main culprit for deforestation in this region
(MINAG 2002). In response, forest conservation programmes
have been designed largely following a fortress forestry ap-
proach prioritising old growth forest with less attention given
to secondary forests.
At first sight these country contrasts seem to offer insights
into the drivers of reforestation and deforestation from a per-
spective of forest transition theory. Such analysis would focus
on the changes in forest cover and quality but ignore the wider
dynamics of forest and agrarian change and their contingent
and conjunctural circumstances, including land use where an
agricultural frontier is either fixed or open and the competition
for land with shrinking farm sizes (and landlessness) or by
expansionist capitalist agriculture. It would also not address
the contrast between an agrarian economy that has largely
failed to make a transition to capitalist agriculture and
outmigration and remittances have become a key component
of the rural economy (Sugden et al. 2017) and the situation of
migrants attracted by land availability in the Peruvian Amazon
leading to crop booms. Nepal has seen the integration of ag-
ricultural and forest land leading to a retreat of the cultivation
margins and a re-treeing of the agrarian landscape outside the
forest boundary areas. In the Peruvian Amazon, the increasing
number of large oil palm plantations and smallholder commer-
cial agriculture of tree crops and competition for land between
large scale and small-scale farming are driving forest loss to
which the creation of forest conservation zones has been an
ineffectual response.
We first discuss the debates on agrarian and forest transi-
tions before examining in more detail these processes in each
country. We conclude with a discussion of the limits of
existing land use categories and the redundancy of classic
models of transitions and the implications for securing the
regeneration of secondary forests.
Understanding Processes of Agrarian and Forest
Transitions
Modernisation orthodoxy (Timmer 2014) champions the dy-
namics of structural change as the normative route through
which development should occur: the rise of capitalist agricul-
ture leads to agricultural intensification, increasing farm pro-
ductivity, the shedding of labour from agriculture, and the
growth of a non-agricultural economy that absorbs agrarian
labour. This premise also underlies the normative model of
forest transition whereby agriculture retreats from marginal
lands leading to forest recovery through secondary forest re-
generation (Mather 1992; Rudel et al. 2010). It is also the
orthodoxy that informs Peru’s approach to forest conserva-
tion, but in Nepal secondary forest regeneration has not been
achieved through such a transition. Moreover, while histori-
cally this agrarian structural change may have been the
Western experience and more recently that of certain East
Asian states under specific state managed conditions
(Timmer 2014), this is not what seems to be happening else-
where. There is increasing evidence of agrarian transitions
failing or becoming blocked, e.g., in India (Lerche et al.
2013) and Indonesia (Li 2014). This has resulted in increasing
landlessness, migrant labour securing at best seasonal or part
time employment in the informal sector of urban economies,
and the rise of distributional rural economies (Ferguson 2015;
Pain and Huot 2018). These households remain rurally based
to secure informal support through personal social relation-
ships but find few opportunities for remunerative work.
A market-based approach to agrarian transitions focuses
almost exclusively on land and labour productivity and the
role of technology in increasing these. Political economy ap-
proaches in contrast draw attention to the social relations that
are central to production and productivity and that shape how
farming is organised. An interest in the class based nature of
agrarian change, processes of social differentiation, the nature
of agrarian transitions, and the consequences of capitalist de-
velopment for rural classes has long been central to agrarian
political economy approaches (Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2010).
250 Hum Ecol (2021) 49:249–258
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But the evidence points to the fracture of the interlinkages
between capitalist agriculture and industrial development. For
example, in India strong industrial growth has drawn capital
from outside agriculture (Lerche et al. 2013) resulting in
growth that does not create employment or pull labour out
of agriculture (Li 2013). This suggests that the classic agrarian
transition model is no longer necessary (Bernstein 2006)as
the structural transformations of the past may no longer be
possible. This raises questions about the premises of the clas-
sic forest transition model and expectations of increasing land
use efficiency moving people out of agriculture, leading to
land abandonment and secondary forest regeneration.
Agrarian political economy perspectives increasingly look
to the consequences of expanding capitalist agriculture, un-
even processes of capital accumulation, and forms of social
differentiation, allof which are becoming more complex com-
bining both on farm and forest elements creating variation and
complexity in forest cover dynamics (Hecht 2014). There is
also greater involvement of farming households in both rural
and urban off farm labour markets. Much of this employment
is in the informal sector with degrees of self-employment,
petty production, and trading offering at best meagre remu-
neration. The persistence of classes of farmers whose primary
aim is subsistence or simple reproduction (Bernstein et al.
2018) has encouraged a return to Chayanov’sanalysisofthe
dynamics and logic of peasant household economies (van der
Ploeg 2014), even if rural economies are now permeated by
wider class relations inherent to capitalist production. The
persistence of small farms that may contain secondary forest
points to the uneven development of capitalism in farming.
Since normative models of agrarian and forest transitions
do not fit with observed land use changes, examination of the
contrasts between Peru and Nepal allows us to focus on the
specific conjunctures that have generated the outcomes in
each context, which have been shaped by economic, agroeco-
logical, geographic, agronomic, social, and institutional ele-
ments, and their dynamic interaction over time (Li 2014:16) to
provide a selective account of distinctive context specific ele-
ments that may explain their specificforest outcomes and their
wider relevance.
Methods
We draw from long term research in Dolokha, Ramechhap,
and Chitwan districts in the mid-hills of Nepal, and the lower
slopes of the Andean range in the San Martín region of the
Peruvian Amazon, which are two core sites in an ongoing
research programme started in 2012 as a comparative enquiry
into forest and agricultural land use in relation to ecosystem
service management that evolved from 2015 into a broader
investigation into the dynamics of landscape change, forest
and agrarian transitions and the role of secondary forest in
land use systems. We discuss details of context, research sites,
forest types, and land use below (for Nepal: Marquardt et al.
2016; Khatri et al. 2018; Marquardt et al. 2020;forPeru
Egerlid et al. 2016; Marquardt et al. 2019).
In both Peru and Nepal, forest is closely connected to ag-
ricultural livelihoods and the research sites were chosen to
capture the diversity of the agroecological context, liveli-
hoods, land use pressures, degree of commercialisation of
farming and access to markets, and changes over a 20 year
period. By focusing on smallholders we aim to capture a broad
spectrum of forestry and agrarian transitions and landscape
change dynamics in the sites. Common to both countries has
been close collaboration with local research partners and the
use of qualitative methods that have combined village studies,
landscape mapping, and household and key informant inter-
views. Key areas of enquiry included household use of the
forest, natural resource management activities in relation to
water sources, soil fertility, use of non-timber forest products
(NTPFs), forest composition and landscape management and
how this has changed.
Nepal
Context
Until the nineteenth century, Nepal’s Hindu state had a strong
political control over its hill populations (Shneiderman 2010)
reflected in complex and extractive land rights and taxation
systems that evolved over time (Regmi 1977). Grounded on a
caste system that endures despite being abolished in 1963,
social differentiation between high and low castes, caste and
non-caste people, and distinctions between higher status hill
people and lower status terai (plains) people still affect liveli-
hood opportunities. These are reflected in income and con-
sumption poverty outcomes with those at the bottom of the
social hierarchy distinctly worse off. The World Bank
(2007:20) wrote: ‘differences in consumption levels can be
called the ‘penalty’that certain groups pay because of their
caste, ethnicity or religious identity.’Most rural households
do not have sufficient land to provide subsistence and
according to Alden Wily et al. (2009) up to 58% of
Nepalese farmers or 2.7 million rural households are function-
ally landless with less than 0.5 ha of farm land and depend on
access to forest resources for survival.
Forests have histories on which their current institutional
and social identities are built (Hecht et al. 2016). Although
Nepali law has historically recognised forests as a form of
state or communal property, forests became an expanding
source of revenue (Regmi 1988) for the Nepali state during
the nineteenth century with the export of Sal (Shorea robusta)
timber for railway construction in India by the British colonial
authorities. However, the allocation of private property rights
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through tax free grants to individuals connected to the ruling
elite meant that significant areasof forests land, possibly up to
a third of the total area both in the terai and hills were under
private ownership. After 1951 with the emergence of a dem-
ocratic movement, forests were nationalised in 1957 leading
to major deforestation. They remained state property after the
Private Forest Nationalization Act 1957 although the initiation
of Panchayat forests in the 1970s brought a degree of decen-
tralisation of forest management, promoted forest protection
and plantation, and contributed to the emergence of local com-
munity participation in forest management and secondary for-
est regeneration.
Until the late 1980s the main role of forestry officers was
revenue collection and conservation, but lack of effective con-
servation strategies led to a severe decline in forest cover
(Metz 1991). Following the 1989 Forest Master Plan, the
Forest Act of 1993, reflecting the move towards democracy
after the 1991 elections, provided the framework for the de-
centralisation of forest management to forest user groups and
the development of the Community Forest Programme
(Acharya 2002). By 2018 this covered more than one fourth
of the country’s forest area with over 22,250 Community
Forest Groups (CFUGs) managing about 22.2 million ha of
forests (DoF Hamro Ban 2018) and led to significant forest
recovery, particularly in the mid-hills, through forest planta-
tion and natural regeneration of tree cover (Yadav et al. 2003;
Niraula et al. 2013) that improved the supply of forest prod-
ucts such as fodder and fuel wood as well as the volume of
standing timber (Gautam et al. 2003;Adhikariet al. 2007;
Birch et al. 2014).
Governing the Forest
Paudel’s(2016) characterisation of the expansion of commu-
nity forestry in Nepal as a process of accumulation without
dispossession was based on the observation that CFUG devel-
opment has engaged communities that provide the labour to
manage the forests but on terms and conditions set externally.
CFUG governance has increasingly been driven by neo-
liberal market forces, i.e., management for carbon payments
(Khatri et al. 2018) and so-called scientific forest management
practices (see Rutt et al. 2015). Over time there has been a
gradual shift in the rhetoric from giving communities control
over their forests to forest resources as they have recovered
becoming increasingly commodified either for global
programmes addressing climate change such as REDD+
(Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation) (Khatri et al. 2018) or for revenue from timber
or high value non-timber farm products (Paudel 2016).
From the start the authority that CFUGs have over their
community forests has been circumscribed. The Forestry
Department has a strong focus on the technical management
of forest and communities have specified but limited rights
and authority (Ojha 2008; Nightingale and Ojha 2013).
When they are established and before they are entrusted with
specified forest areas, CFUGs are required to prepare a con-
stitution and submit a management plan for approval.
Generally, the CFUG constitutions’stated objectives are to
‘promote the scientificmanagement of the forest as prescribed
in the existing Act and Laws’and ‘to fulfil forest product
demand of the users by increasing the production of the
forest’.
1
Forest regulations (Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation
1995) established what should be included in the management
plan and these were backed up by Guidelines for the Inventory
of Community Forests (Ministry of Forests and Soil
Conservation 2000) ostensibly drawn up to assist CFUGs and
District Forest Office field staff in assessing the condition of the
forests, and that can best be described as classic forest invento-
ries. The exercise of estimating annual increment and allowable
cut has been largely fictional since the Forestry Department has
limited capacity to implement the guidelines. There are reports
that in preparing operational plans, foresters have admitted to
reducing the stated height and diameter of standing trees in the
inventory in order to reduce the estimate of allowable cut
(Chettry et al. 2003:69) to keep in line with regulations on upper
limits for growing stock volume (Baral et al., 2018).
Management plans cover five to ten years and require a renewal
process requiring technical skills that CFUGs are expected to
organize and fund. However, many smaller CFUGs have limit-
ed resources to hire expert assistance, and consequently a sig-
nificant number currently have no valid management plan,
restricting any approved use of their community forest.
The plans and objectives of community forests have
prioritised product and protectionobjectives and have not sys-
tematically addressed livelihood needs, designed effective
mechanisms for benefit sharing, or accounted for the employ-
ment or income generation objectives of different social
groups. Singularly absent has been any consideration for the
potential contribution of forests to food security (Khatri et al.
2017). As secondary forest has recovered in the mid-hills of
Nepal community forestry has been incorporated into the
agenda of an emerging global policy to address climate
change. This has reinforced the processes by which outputs
from the secondary forest recovery are being appropriated and
commodified and local governance of community forestry is
increasingly subjected to external forces (Khatri 2018).
Processes of Agrarian Change
There has been little debate about the drivers behind the in-
creasing forest through secondary forest regeneration and the
1
From the constitution of Dhuseri CFUG in Rupandehi, and common to all
the CFUG constitutions that were examined at that time (ODG and Norms
2003).
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degree to which community forest management has been key
to those changes (see Marquardt et al. 2016). There has also
been limited attention given to the changing role of forests in
the rural economy of the mid-hills. The literature has either
focused entirely on the forest to the neglect of its interrelations
with agriculture (Ojha et al. 2013; Pandey et al. 2014)or
adopted a model of forest dependency that reflects the struc-
ture of the agrarian economy two decades ago (Adhikari et al.
2007;Dhakalet al. 20,011; Maraseni et al. 2014). While ag-
riculture has stagnated, a global labour market has reduced the
role of agriculture in rural livelihoods in the mid-hills but led
to higher living standards for many. Changes in the agrarian
economy have profound effects not only on the role of agri-
culture but also through various interrelated mechanisms shift
demand for and use of forest products reflecting agroecology
and the location specific nature of agrarian and forest change
(Marquardt et al. 2016;Fox2018;Khatri2018).
While the forest boundary in the mid-hills of Nepal
retreated in the past under agricultural pressure, there is now
evidence of a reversal of this trend with forests extending into
the agricultural landscape. This may be due to overall shrink-
ing farm sizes –over one generation these have halved
(Marquardt et al. 2016) - and declining livestock numbers.
But there are also processes of input intensification linked to
on-farm secondary forest regeneration (through intensive live-
stock management systems and greater use of farmyard ma-
nure) that have resulted in increasing farm productivity. At the
same time a loss of labour from the rural economy through
out-migration is occurring (Marquardt et al. 2020). Along
with increased wildlife damage as a result of forest recovery,
this is leading to more marginal land being abandoned for
annual crop cultivation or converted to the management of
trees and fodder.
Social and Spatial Differentiation
Two mutually reinforcing processes have consolidated
existing patterns of social differentiation based on caste and
land ownership. The recovery of secondary forest has been in
part due to restrictions put on grazing and access to other
forest products that have contributed to a decline in livestock
numbers, a shift to improved breeds, and an increase in on-
farm tree cover for stall based livestock (Adhikari et al. 2007;
Dhakal et al. 2011; Khatri et al. 2017). However, for the many
landless households dependent on livestock extensive grazing
in community forests is critical, as is forest access for collec-
tion of fuel wood and other NTFPs for subsistence or income.
The increasing commodification of community forests,
whether through REDD+ payments (Khatri et al. 2018)or
the promotion of timber and NTFPs (Paudel 2016) has pri-
marily benefited village elites. There is often a lack of trans-
parency within the CFUGs and the poor are often unaware of
how decisions are made and who is making them (Khatri
2018). Where forest rents are high this may lead to a signifi-
cant black economy and capture of forest rents (Iversen et al.
2006). The view that increased income alleviates poverty,
reflected in so-called equity interventions promoted by exter-
nal programmes such as REDD, may in fact encourage poor
households to engage in the market through risky small live-
stock enterprises to their detriment (Nightingale 2017;Khatri
et al. 2018). Degree of social differentiation, commodifica-
tion, and their social consequences are village specific and
reflect both agroecology and specific forest types as well as
market penetration (Sugden et al. 2017).
In the mid-hill districts of Dolakha and Ramechhap, levels
of outmigration are high. In some places, subsistence farming
systems are gradually shifting to semi-commercial vegetable
farming. The farming systems are connected to secondary
forest through community forestry and trees on farmland as
fodder for livestock. However, in the more resource rich dis-
tricts in the Chure and terai areas, which consist of larger and
denser forests with high value timber species such as Sal
(Shorea robusta) and Asna (Terminilia), e.g., Sindhuli and
Chitwan, there is more commercialization of forest manage-
ment. The community forests are used not only to meet sub-
sistence needs but the CFUGs also harvest timber for sale in
the market. There is great interest from the forest bureaucracy
in control of community forest activities (Ojha 2008;
Nightingale and Ojha 2013). Forests in the Chure and terai
are at greater risk of deforestation as residents draw on them
for income, primarily from timber. However, in mountain dis-
tricts, there is also some extraction of NTFPs at commercial
scale.
Peru
Context
Peru has long been characterised by marked social distinctions
that reflect its colonial history and the social divides among its
coastal, Andean, and Amazonian territories where most of its
forests are located. Although forest clearance started in the
1940s, it was not until the 1980s that road development, state
sponsored colonization schemes, and market support led to a
systematic expansion of the agricultural frontier (Coomes
1996; Alvarez and Naughton-Treves 2003;Chávezet al.
2014). This encouraged significant in-migration of people
from the Andes escaping violence and land shortages
(Menton and Cronkleton 2019) that in San Martín has led to
a complex social mix of indigenous populations, a long-
resident mestizos of mixed ancestry who arrived in the nine-
teenth century, and more recent Andean migrants who may
now constitute nearly 50% of the region’spopulation(Pazy
Esperanza 2015). Naturally regenerated secondary forests
now comprise a significant portion of San Martín’s forest area.
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Prior to the 1980s agriculture in San Martín was divided
between small areas of semi-permanent cropping fields along
the river and road corridors and swidden agriculture practiced
by both mestizo and indigenous people in the forest areas (INEI
1997;Limachiet al. 2006). As agriculture has expanded from
the valley and river plains into the adjoining forested hills in-
digenous people have retreated further into the forest. These
shifts in the forest frontier have left land rights and forest access
insecure and contested among the regional government, indig-
enous groups, Andean migrants, and expanding large scale oil
palm plantations, and becoming a source of conflict.
Governing the Forest
Traditional swidden farming systems (de Jong 2001;Padoch
and Pinedo-Vasquez 2010;Coomeset al. 2017) in the San
Martín region (Marquardt Arevalo 2008) are based on selec-
tive forest clearance, and bio-diverse fallowing practices gen-
erate areas of semi-managed secondary forest. However, these
swidden systems have become increasingly differentiated
with respect to farm size and fallow durations and quality
(Marquardt et al. 2019). In more densely settled areas with
limited forest area some farmers are now deliberately planting
suitable tree species to shorten and improve fallow regenera-
tion (Marquardt et al. 2013).
Historically the indigenous communities were semi-
migratory living in the forest and drawing on its resources,
including extensive territories for hunting. Although they are
now primarily farmers, they culturally identify with the forest.
The ‘Law of Native Communities and Agrarian Development
in the Lower and Upper Rainforest’of 1975 (Decree-Law
22,175) was enacted to comply with the ILO Convention No
169 to protect the territories and rights of the indigenous peo-
ple, recognising them as communidad nativa (Crovetto
2007:11). Registration as a communidad nativa entitles vil-
lages to communal territory including forests, as well individ-
ual title for household properties. By 1997, however, few in
San Martín had obtained legal recognition of their community
status with forest territorial titles. A decade later driven by
pressure on their lands an increasing number have achieved
communidad nativa status, but without adjoining forest com-
munal title.
Underlying the reluctance of the regional government to
meet its legal obligations has been its programme to promote
forest conservation and its demarcation of 70% of its territory
as suitable for conservation apparently as a response to a target
set by Peru’s National Forest Conservation Program for
Climate Change (Gobierno Regional de San Martín 2016).
There are various categories of forest conservation areas in-
cluding regionally protected areas, national parks, areas for
ecosystem conservation, recovery and conservation conces-
sions, as well as native community recognition with commu-
nal forest title (Marquardt et al. 2019), all aimed at
maintaining or restoring primary forest areas but excluding
people and allowing restricted usesnot including fallow based
agricultural practices. These key conservation and ecosystem
recovery zones include areas that the indigenous communities
see as their ancestral territories and for which they have reg-
istered claims according to the law.
However, these designated protection and conservation
zones remain largely on paper and the limited power of the
regional government to create and enforce in practice them
has left powerful actors able to subvert them to the detriment
of indigenous communities. Kowler et al. (2016)havereport-
ed that oil-palm companies growing have been able to have
land designated for conservation reclassified as agricultural.
Some communities of migrants have been able to secure legal
tenure even though they are in conservation areas. Increasing
numbers of migrants have led to forest clearance and compe-
tition for land with indigenous and mestizo land holders.
Conservation zoning has become a threat to indigenous
communities who have limited means to resist rather than an
intervention that could support them in protecting their forest
areas. They also face constant incursions particularly by mi-
grant farmers into lands that they regard as their ancestral
territories, but they have limited means to resist such settle-
ment (Marquardt et al. 2019). The preferred path to secure
their land rights is to obtain recognition as a native community
and secure the land title to their community areas. But rather
than granting indigenous communities legal title that would
give them authority over their forest resources and land use,
the regional authorities instead strongly prefers to award na-
tive community status in combination with forest conservation
concessions for a fixed term and restricted use that do not
allow any form of agricultural practice or guarantee any per-
manence of the use rights. This has generated debate within
indigenous communities over whether they should continue to
pursue efforts to obtain their legal rights.
One Kechwa-Lamas village filed a lawsuit in August 2017
to challenge the legality of the land titling procedures being
pursued by the regional government in conservation areas. In
response the regional government threatened to suspend all
titling of Kecha-Lamas communities in the area in an effort
to dissuade them from pursuing their legal rights but was
finally forced to withdraw this threat under pressure from civil
rights groups and the Kechwa-Lamas themselves.
2
But there
are also NGOs, often with a focus on conservation rather than
indigenous livelihoods or human rights who are supportive of
the government measures (Egerlid et al. 2016).
Processes of Agrarian Change
There are multiple drivers underlying the competition for land
and retreat of the forest boundary and several government
2
http://www.forestpeoples.org/en/node/50283
254 Hum Ecol (2021) 49:249–258
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
policies have in effect supported the opening of the Amazon
through the construction of roads, promotion of settlement,
and support for the commercialisation of agriculture. Greater
access to land and the development of a cash crop economy
has provided a stimulus for the in-migration of the land poor
and driven land use change (Menton and Cronkleton 2019).
Government has actively promoted cultivation of perennial
cash crops, notably coffee, cocoa, and oil-palm, leading to a
significant expansion in their area and production (Gobierno
Regional de San Martín 2017;INEI2017). The area under
coffee has tripled since 2000 and cocoa production has in-
creased by a factor of 20. The assumption underlying the
promotion of these perennial crops is that they would stop
the expansion of the cultivation boundary, supplant the need
for extensive cultivation including swidden agriculture and
spare the forests. But this has not happened.
Instead in-migration supported by the availability of land
and the expansion of coffee and cocoa production have con-
tributed significantly to forest clearance. While the capital
intensive oil-palm plantations are largely confined to the low-
lands, there is evidence that they have often been established
in primary forest areas, and any further expansion is likely
push out existing smallholder settlements up into the forested
hills of the Amazon (Kowler et al. 2016).
Indigenous communities and other smallholders have in-
corporated both coffee and cocoa cultivation into their
cropping system (Marquardt et al. 2019, establishing perma-
nent agroforestry fields alongside their fallowing systems.
Where forest areas are more limited and fallowing systems
of short duration, non-farm labour often in neighbouring ur-
ban economies has become a key source of income, but many
households continue as part time farmers to meet their subsis-
tence requirements and as a means to reinforce their claims to
forest lands they consider their ancestral territory.
In sum the processes of agricultural intensification in San
Martín have had perverse effects in relation to the forests. The
establishment of perennial cash crops has led to a semi-
permanent loss of both primary and secondary natural forest
driven by market forces. The monocropping of these perennial
species bears no comparison with the biodiverse secondary
regeneration fallow systems of traditional smallholders
(Marquardt et al. 2013), which arguably contribute to the
maintenance of an Amazonian forest cover.
Patterns of Social and Spatial Differentiation
There is limited data on and understanding of processes of agrar-
ian differentiation and class structures with respect to land own-
ership within or between any of the indigenous, migrant, and
mestizo communities. Indeed, there are major challenges to mak-
ing such an analysis given the land extensive and transitory nature
of swidden land use systems, the limited degree to which small-
holders have secured legal land title and the rapid expansion of
informal migrant settlements. However, since agricultural mar-
gins are still expanding in San Martín and land titles are not firmly
established it is unlikely that major forms of class differentiation
based on land holdings are emerging. However, there is clearer
spatial patterning of differentiation with long-settled mestizo
communities concentrated in the river valleys and plains primar-
ily engaged in intensive annual crop production, indigenous com-
munities primarily concentrated in the more forested uplands
around the river valleys, and migrant communities pushing back
the forest/agriculture boundary. Despite smallholder engagement
in tree crop production, their primary focus is simple reproduction
and meeting subsistence needs, suggesting that market forces
have not yet fully penetrated San Martín’s rural landscape.
Discussion
Central to our discussion of the Nepal and Peru case studies
are the questions of what secondary forest is, where it should
be, what it should be used for, by whom, and how. We address
these issues from two perspectives. The first is a bureaucratic
perspective which sets the administrative and particular
knowledge framework regarding the forested rural
landscape. The second is the perspective of the practitioners.
Scott (1998) and Bhattacharya (2018), distinguished forest
from agriculture, primary from secondary forest, and “proper”
agricultural practices from “improper”ones. Swidden agricul-
ture in Peru and tree management in farmers’fields in Nepal
are regarded as “improper.”But for the people on the ground
what they actually do is simply common sense.
From the bureaucratic perspective the differences between
forest and agriculture, and primary and secondary forests are
established facts even though these categories are essentially a
priori concepts that are imposed on the facts on the ground. For
example, for taxation purposes in the Punjab the British colonial
authorities created categories of space, agrarian structure, and
land rights that were at variance with what was actually there
(Bhattacharya 2018). This is similar to the San Martín regional
government’s categories of land use created through remote sens-
ing techniques, although it lacks the coercive power to enforce
them, particularly in relation to migrants and agricultural capital,
and its own policies actually undermines them. In Nepal, where
there is a stronger bureaucracy, forests are delineated between
community and government, although community forests are
increasingly subject to scientific forest management or conserva-
tion standards that may disadvantage those without sufficient
resources to implement them.
In Nepal the focus is on generating revenue from forests,
including those under scientific forest management and those
that can be used for payments for ecosystem services. Despite
the diversity of secondary forests and the resources they pro-
vide to users, the interests of rural elites and the forest bureau-
cracy increasingly overlap to the detriment of local
255Hum Ecol (2021) 49:249–258
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
communities. In San Martín where the policy focus is on old
growth forest, secondary forest is not treated “proper”even
though it covers a greater area than primary forest (Kowler
et al. 2016) In Nepal trees outside the forest are regarded to be
on uncultivated land.
Specific political conditions generated the rise of commu-
nity forest as a model in Nepal. The movement of labour out
of the mid-hills altogether from 2000 onwards reduced pres-
sures on the forests and favoured their recovery. If the over-
seas labour market disappears or is significantly reduced as is
now happening with the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic
could have significant consequences for the forests.
Different global environmental narratives contributed to
the respective forest debates –Himalayan environmental deg-
radation in the 1980s and global climate change and the role of
the Amazon. The effects of global food regimes (McMichael
2013) and the promotion of tree crops for global markets that
are a significant force now in San Martín were not present in
Nepal in the 1990s. But in Peru these global processes have
been exacerbated by deep social and structural inequalities of
Peru, with marginalised populations in the both Andes and the
Amazon. In the latter, however, global recognition of the
rights of indigenous peoples have forced at least nominal con-
cessions from the P,eruvian state in terms of recognition of
their territorial rights. In San Martín the growth of the coca
economy during the 1980s and 1990s was linked to forms of
armed resistance to the state and transnational drug production
and market networks and may have encouraged state support
of in-migration and opening the region to global markets.
Migration is common to forest histories in both locations. In
the Amazon there has been in-migration and seasonal migration
for non-farm work. In Nepal demands of global labour markets
have fuelled out-migration. In both cases households remain ru-
ral but increasingly draw subsistence income from non-farm
sources. New forms of migration and the diversification of rural
livelihoods render classic models of agrarian and forest transition
redundant and point to the functional joining of forest and agri-
culture by rural households and the critical role of secondary
forest in securing their livelihoods (Hecht 2014).
Conclusion
Our findings from Nepal and Peru suggest current models of
forests and agrarian transitions no longer reflect the facts on
the ground, failing to recognise the diversity of secondary
forest types and uses and what underlies their creation and
maintenance within a landscape (Messier et al. 2015;
Chazdon et al. 2016). This requires rethinking the categories
of forest and agriculture and a greater focus on the integrity of
mosaic landscapes and the people who live in them (Pokorny
2013). Trees in the transition zone between forestry and agri-
culture may offer greater opportunities for managing
biodiversity and secure the future of both rural household
livelihoods and the forests at the same time (Marquardt,
2008; van der Ploeg 2014). However, will only be through
their ability to secure their legal rights that indigenous peoples
and other smallholders will be able to secure access to forest
resources in of the Peruvian Amazon, and rural households in
Nepal can achieve equitable access the (see Thompson 1975).
Funding Open access funding provided by Swedish University of
Agricultural Sciences. The research on which this paper is based was
funded by the Swedish Research Council (Grant No. 2011–39580–
84834-46).
Declarations
Conflict of Interest The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adap-
tation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as
you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, pro-
vide a link to the CreativeCommons licence, and indicate if changes were
made. The images or other third party material in this article are included
in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a
credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's
Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain
permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this
licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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