The colonization of humid tropical areas is a difficult, and frequently unsuccessful, activity. While the conversion of these lands to pastures does offer some income to the country, it displaces labour and leads to a degeneration of land quality and a very low equilibrium level of agricultural productivity. Having made this caveat, it must also be recognized that colonization is a near universal process. While governments actively promote it in some cases, the majority of colonization takes place with a minimum of government motivation. The conclusions and recommendations made here derive from this second point and represent an attempt to suggest how the process of colonization in humid tropical lands might be improved and its deleterious effects on the environment ameliorated.
Colonization tends to be a force for continuity in the structure of the national economy.
This general, conservative tendency of colonization is sometimes obscured by the publicly declared ambitions and plans developed for new lands, but the set of social, legal, economic, and political conditions which have defined the structure of a national economy tend to reproduce themselves in new areas, leaving innovative colonization plans an uphill battle. Scarcities of funds, errors in planning and administration, and the lack of trained personnel all favour the establishment of traditional social and economic structures in new areas, and only through exceptionally successful execution are projects likely to overcome the culturally based factors which recreate traditional structures through the combination of activities of the hundreds, or thousands, or new inhabitants. The breakdowns in colonization project management, the ineffectiveness of government agencies in enforcing landuse legislation, the lack of funds for carrying out necessary extension and investigation activities-all combine to make individual farmers the real decision makers with regard to new lands. While this may not be the most desirable state of affairs, it is a reality which will persist until levels of funding and institutional capacities of responsible institutions in each country dramatically improve. Pragmatically, policy must be oriented toward the decision-making processes and criteria of individual farmers to have a broad impact on the environmental questions associated with colonization.