ABSTRACT
Conservationists are o�en very impatient people. The race to save species and habitats imposes a sense of urgency because of how rapidly biodiversity is disappearing and how quickly habitats are being made unfit to support species. But if a key element in the new conservation paradigm is the type of agro-ecosystem generated in the matrix, then the socio-political forces operative in that matrix are key to the entire conservation programme since they form the foundation upon which the agro-ecosystem evolves. For example, a rural development policy based on the industrial model is likely to reproduce what we today see dominating large parts of the San Joaquin Valley of California or of northern Iowa – a landscape that allows li�le room or opportunity for the survival of anything but the crops being produced. Much of the current agricultural development for soybeans and sugar cane (grown largely for ethanol fuel production) in Brazil follows this rigid industrial model that tends to obliterate biodiversity and provides a very low-quality matrix for movement and reproduction of organisms (Figure 4.1). As an alternative example, the exigencies created by the fall of the Soviet Union generated socio-political and economic forces in Cuba that forced a totally different model resulting in a rural environment on its way to the sort of high-quality matrix we advocate.1 Today there are a large number of rural social movements challenging the industrial agrarian system that we identify as beginning with the spread and dominance of the European powers. While it is understandable that conservationists are impatient to get on with the task, they cannot afford to ignore either the general conditions established in the process by which European nations and their heirs (e.g. the US) transformed the surface of a large share of the planet, or the specific conflicts and problems generated.
