Natural insurance, forest access, and compounded misfortune: Forest resources in smallholder coping strategies before and after Hurricane Mitch, northeastern Honduras

Is the rural poor's ability to self-insure threatened when their access to forests is reduced? Drawing on a Honduran case study, I examine indigenous Tawahka smallholders' reliance on commercial extraction as they coped with multiple misfortunes following Hurricane Mitch. Although reliance on natural insurance was predicted to intensify under this scenario of aggregate shock, the state's post-Mitch enforcement of a commercial extraction ban instead led to net attrition from forest-based activities. Households that nevertheless continued to sell forest products to self-insure were those that had been unable to recoup their pre-Mitch landholdings. Results suggest that household attributes such as land wealth strongly condition how and when forest resources act as safety nets for the rural poor. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.