The Effect of Economic Development in the Clearance of Old Growth Forest Among Chimane Amerindians, Bolivia

人类学家已经证明，市场向传统社会的扩张降低了人类的福利，损害了环境，但自然资源经济学家说，一旦人们的收入超过了一个门槛，经济发展就会改善保护。 本提案检验了关于市场参与和森林砍伐的假设：一个家庭的年劳动收入或从事非农业工作的天数与清除原始森林的数量呈负相关，而销售的收获份额或销售收入与清除原始森林的数量呈正相关，通过市场和销售作物和劳动力的现金收入实现的一体化与森林砍伐之间存在非线性关系，这种关系起初会上升，但一旦家庭收入超过一个门槛，就会下降。 这些假设将与来自低地玻利维亚的奇曼美洲印第安人的数据进行测试，这些数据由一位人类学家、一位保护生物学家和三位人类学博士生得出。 这项研究将有助于促进我们对土著社会市场参与和保护之间关系的理解，并通过培训学生实地方法和多元数据分析来促进文化人类学的科学。 它还将提高我们社会对世界这一重要地区的专门知识。

Anthropologists have shown that the expansion of markets into traditional societies lowers human welfare and hurts the environment, but natural resource economists have said that economic development improves conservation once people move beyond a threshold of income. This proposal tests hypotheses about market involvement and deforestation: that the amount of annual labor income or number of days spent working in non-farm jobs by a household will be negatively related to the clearance of old-growth forest, and that the share of the harvest sold or income from the sales will be positively related to the clearance of old-growth forest, and that integration through markets and cash income from the sale of crops and labor will bear a non-linear relation to forest clearance, rising at first but then declining once households passed a threshold of income. The hypotheses will be tested with data from the Chimane Amerindians in lowland Bolivia, elicited by an anthropologist, a conservation biologist, and three doctoral students of anthropology. This research will help advance our understanding of the relation between market involvement and conservation in Indigenous society, and will advance science in cultural anthropology by training students in field methods and multivariate data analysis. It will also improve our society's expertise about this important region of the world.