It is often overlooked that shifting cultivation for most people, and
definitely for all indigenous peoples who practice it, is not simply a farming
technique but a way of life. However, precisely because shifting cultivation
is so closely interlinked with indigenous peoples’ lives and cultures, state
policies aimed at regulating it – if not banning it outright - have an impact
on indigenous peoples that goes far beyond mere economic intervention.
In all countries in South and Southeast Asia, government policies on shifting
cultivation are basically informed by environmentalist and
developmentalist rhetoric. With the official aim of protecting forests from
what is seen as an ecologically harmful practice, of modernizing what is
considered a backward form of agriculture, and of controlling and
integrating into the nation a population that is viewed with suspicion due
to its “nomadic” way of life, all of these policies seek to reduce or eradicate
shifting cultivation in one way or another.
The current climate change discourse has taken the debate on shifting
cultivation to another, a global level, reinforcing existing prejudices, laws
and programs with little concern for the people affected by them.
Now,
shifting cultivation is bad because it causes carbon emission and thus
contributes to climate change.