| This dissertation explores the primary proximate and underlying causes of deforestation in the Sierra de Lacandón Park (SLNP), Petén, Guatemala. To explore the first cause of this phenomenon, farmer land use, I collected data from community leaders in twenty-eight communities and from 279 settler farmers and 221 women in nine communities in the SLNP. To address the second cause of deforestation in the SLNP, migration, I conducted interviews with community leaders in twenty-eight communities of SLNP settler origin.; In explaining variability in forest clearing, scholars of environmental change have focused almost exclusively on in situ (or “on-farm”) resource use, while population scholars have largely ignored rural-to-rural migration. The way in which household responses to the human and physical environment in one place may affect land cover change in another place has been inadequately explored.; Results from the SLNP revealed several factors positively related to forest clearing at the farm level: family size, contact with government or non-government agencies, secure land title, duration on the farm, agricultural intensification through the cropping of mucuna pruriens (or “velvet bean”, a nitrogen-fixing legume) or the application of herbicides, and identification as a speaker of a native Maya language. The strongest predictor of deforestation on the farm was farm size. Farmers with large agricultural plots cleared much more forest (though a smaller percentage of forest) than did farmers with small parcels.; The following factors were inversely related to forest clearing: household population density (i.e., family size relative to farm size), farm distance to the nearest road, education of the household head, off-farm employment (for the household head), and renting land. Soil quality and topography insignificantly predicted farmer land use. Results from areas of origin of migrants to the SLNP suggest that larger families, Q'eghí Maya families, landless households, families with small plots or environmentally degraded land, households with poor access to labor and produce markets, the least educated, and the exceptionally poor run the greatest risk for migration to the frontier. Evidently, attention to both migration origin and destination areas enhances options for policy interventions aimed at sustainable rural development and forest conservation. |
