My doctoral project examines the degradation of swidden-fallow agriculture in Indigenous territories of the Peruvian Amazon, where growing evidence shows that fallow cycles are shortening with serious consequences for both forest ecosystems and Indigenous food security. Rather than treating this as a local management failure, the project reframes secondary forest degradation as the outcome of broader political-economic processes enabled by the fragility of Indigenous territorial rights.
Despite political ecology's commitment to understanding environments as outcomes of complex political processes, its engagement with positivist methods like GIS and inferential statistics remains undertheorized. In collaboration with Prof. Deborah Martin, this project systematizes advances in critical mixed-methods research to propose a framework for integrating ecological and political analysis in ways that are both rigorous and epistemologically coherent.
Despite their central role in maintaining Amazonian ecosystems, Indigenous communities increasingly face resource sustainability challenges, including resource shortages and environmental degradation. This research project examines the pressing issue of land scarcity within Indigenous territories of the Peruvian Amazon, investigating its underlying causes beyond simple population growth and analyzing its far-reaching implications for communities and forest conservation.