Labor migration and sustainable resource management : A case of the Philippines

本研究试图记录高原地区的环境退化和居民的生存策略。以下是主要发现。大量的人从低地迁移到高地地区，在过去的几十年里，那里的森林被商业采伐所砍伐。(2)我们的农村-高地迁移假说得到了明确的支持。虽然从低地来的移民一开始实行粗放式农业，但一旦引进经济作物，他们就会加强土地利用。(4)森林消失的罪魁祸首不是人口增长，而是政府的森林开发政策、鼓励商业采伐以偿还外债、森林特许经营者圈地、修建木材公路、吸收伐木工人就业等。(5)促进高原人口迁移的因素有：现代土地所有权制度剥夺土著居民的土地权利、地主驱逐佃农、农业商业化、农用地转为城郊工业园区发展。

This study attempts to document the environmental degradation and survival strategies of inhabitants in upland areas. Followings are major findings.(1) A great number of people have migrated from lowland to upland areas where deforestation was done by the commercial logging opperations for the past decades.(2) Our rural-upland migration hypothesis is clearly supported.(3) Although migrants from lowlands start practicing swidden agriculture at the beginning, they intensify their land use once they introduce commercial crops.(4) Major culprits for forest disappearance are not population increase, but the government policies on forest development, encouragement of commercial logging for the external debt payment, enclosure of public land by forest concessionaires, construction of timber road, employment absorption of logging workers.(5) Factors that accelerate upland migration are deprivation of land rights of natives by modern system of land ownership, eviction of tenant farmers by landlords, agricultural commercialization, conversion of agricultural land for the development of industrial estates in suburban areas.