I've been talking to Krister about some papers he wants us to write together--I told him in an e-mail today that he needs to give me deadlines, or I'll spend my time doing interviews and trying out exotic Amazonian pizza toppings. I am, of course, half joking, but I want you all to know that my Quechua lessons came in handy today when I spotted the "Misky Pizza" on the menu at the local pizza joint. "Misk'y" is Quechua for "sweet." The pizza has fruit toppings on it (pineapple, peach, banana) and sweet condensed milk. It was good.
In other news, I got in another couple of interviews today--I'm not totally over this non-pig flu I've got, but I'm feeling a lot sharper, mentally, even though I probably sound like hell. At least this cold has given me the opportunity to use up the Cold-Eeze cough drops that Emily gave me way back in October and I've been dragging around with me since then.
Anyways, my thoughts about Pucallpa (the current case study) go like this:
Pucallpa is a pretty good case of a municipality where poor centralized government decision making has led to bad stuff happening. The central government has passed some laws that are just silly--making forestry concessions too big to permit local firms to compete, for example. The end result is that, well, they can't really not afford to be in the game, and nobody's really watching, anyways (they would be the ones watching, since they're the ones with a long-term stake in the region), so they pretty much do whatever they want.
And the result is lots of deforestation.
Pucallpa, in a phrase, could use a little bit more decentralization.
The good news is that there are a number of well-organized forestry users' groups in the city which are working pretty hard to get the government to change the policy. Hopefully, they'll be successful.
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