The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

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4.2.1 Local economy and social structures
The cultural context of biodiversity conservation
The rural economy revolves around subsistence farming. As the mainstay of livelihood
is based on agriculture, the majority of the Q'eqchi' are largely dependent on the
local natural resources. These form an indispensable part of life of the communities as
they are the main source of alimentation, medicine and housing. Economic and social
life revolves around the milpa system, which consists of the cultivation of maize produced
by cyclical swidden-farming and is generally carried out by single household
units on smallholdings. 30 It includes other crops such as beans, chillies and vegetables
that are cultivated in diverse forms of multi-cropping. Home gardens also provide a
wide range of crops raised for consumption and for sale at local markets. Their livelihood
is supplemented with small-scale forest extraction such as logging, hunting and
gathering of non-timber products in primary and secondary forests. The agricultural
and silvicultural production of most households is complemented by animal husbandry
on a modest scale, mainly for own consumption. Although the local economy
is based on subsistence activities, a large number of households are also linked to the
national market economy. Since the 1970s, coffee has increasingly been replaced by
cardamom as a cash crop and as a mainstay of the regional economy. 31
Traditionally, land tenure had been governed by a communal management system.
Due to the privatisation of communal territories since colonial times, which led
to the extremely unequal land distribution, temporal wage and migrant labour has become
a common source of monetary income. 32 Limited access to sufficient quantities
of arable land, the need for immediate income and growing demographic pressure entailed
continued clearing of primary forest for agricultural use and led to shorter rotation
cycles. Especially in the highlands, where villagers need three times as much land
for subsistence than in the lowlands with their richer soils and a more suitable climate,
the ideal fallow time of four to six years declined to shorter periods of restoration
(Wilson 1995: 42). 33 Consequently, severe erosion and the decline of soil fertility, crop
yields and farm-level biodiversity became common problems that peasant farmers
presently face in the area. 34
30 The term milpa derives from the Aztec language Nahuatl and means cornfield (Carter 1969: 16). As
the plots are not used for long-term farming, milpa is often described as shifting cultivation; when a
plot's fertility declines, usually after two to three years, farmers clear another section of forested land
and allow the older plot to return to forest.
31 Worldwide, Guatemala is the major producer of cardamom, which is mainly exported to the Arab
countries. The majority of the country's cardamom is produced in Alta Verapaz.
32 It is estimated that an average household in rural Alta Verapaz has a monthly income of US$ 100
(Reinoso et al. 2001).
33 Following the scheme provided by Furley (1998), I refer to lowlands as areas that range from 0 to
500 m in elevation, whereas highland implies a topography that is characterised by mountains and hills
from 500 to 2500 m.
34 Another major economic problem is the decreasing world coffee price, which worsened rural
poverty in recent years. For decades, coffee was one of the major cash crops widely grown by farmers
in Alta Verapaz.