These environmental impacts are not a simple result of population growth. Anthropologists such as Susan Stonich and William Durham, who seek to understand the degradation of the environment in Central America, point to the inequality of access to resources an the basic cause of environmental degradation. The rich are encouraged by market demand and capital accumulation to expand the commercial production of beef cattle, cotton, melons, and other export products. This leads to deforestation and to the further concentration of land ownership when they buy up more land with their profits. The poor are pushed off these lands. Further impoverished, they intensify their own household production, using marginal lands such as those higher up the mountain slopes. These marginal lands then become deforested and eroded. Erosion exposes the slopes to the increased likelihood of landslides during the heavy rains that come with hurricanes. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer two positive feedback loops, both of which lead to more deforestation.
While Stonich and Durham regard inequality of access as a much more fundamental problem in Honduras than population growth, this