The impacts of coca cultivation and coca eradication on rates of humid tropical forest clearance were examined in the agricultural colonization zone of Chapare, Bolivia. Using satellite imagederived land-use maps, interviews with farmers, and analyses of economic data and policy documents, forest clearance rates were analysed in three contrasting communities from 1963 to 2003. Deforestation rates were very low from the late 1970s to the early 1990s when coca cultivation was widespread and anticoca policies were weakly enforced. Before and after this period, deforestation rates were significantly higher. This study provides the first detailed quantitative analysis of deforestation rates under different policy regimes in a coca source region. It provides weak support for the argument that labour constraints lead to a reduction in forest clearance rates during periods of coca cultivation advanced by Kaimowitz (1997); but stronger support for Henkel’s (1995) hypothesis that farmers would clear large areas of forest after abandoning coca to maintain household incomes. However, economic arguments based on household data alone are inadequate in explaining forest clearance in this region, and a political ecological approach that analyses economic drivers in a policy framework provides better explains deforestation dynamics.
