Development paradigms contributing to the transformation of the Brazilian Amazon: do people matter? (original) (raw)
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Highlights - We emphasize the end of the boom-and-bust development pattern in the Brazilian Amazon. - Deforestation and socio-economic development follow an inverted U-shape relationship. - Household incomes are greater in stabilized areas than in areas undergoing deforestation. - Environmental governance efforts fostered the emergence of EKC. Abstract Socio-economic development in the Brazilian Amazon is currently reaching national averages although deforestation activity has been declining for a decade. As a consequence, recent studies rejected the widely agreed boom-and-bust development hypothesis that deforestation first generates an economic boom, which is then followed by a collapse as forest resources are depleted. Here, we confirm these studies that there is no boom-bust cycle and suggest that a new pattern of relationship between deforestation and socio-economic development has emerged following an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). In this scenario, environmental degradation increases in the early stages of economic development and decreases in later stages as the economy develops and wellbeing increases. To validate this assumption, we conducted the first sub-municipal analysis of socio-economic development and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon for the 2000–2010 period. Our results confirm the emergence of an EKC relationship with a turning point beyond which socio-economic growth does not appear anymore to be a driver of deforestation. We also emphasize that areas subjected to active deforestation in 2010 present lower socio-economic indicators than stabilized areas, pointing to the precarious socio-economic situation of areas still undergoing active deforestation. We put these results in perspective by considering Brazilian efforts to ensure a transition in environmental governance with the objective of promoting land use sustainability through control of deforestation at the same time as supporting socio-economic development.
Forests and Sustainable Development in the Brazilian Amazon: History, Trends, and Future Prospects
Annual Review of Environment and Resources
Ongoing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is the outcome of an explicit federal project to occupy, integrate, and “modernize” the region. Although there have been isolated periods of deforestation control, most recently between 2004 and 2012, the overall trajectory of the region since the colonial period has been one of forest loss and degradation. Addressing this challenge is especially urgent in the context of adverse climate-ecology feedbacks and tipping points. Here we describe the trends and outcomes of deforestation and degradation in the Amazon. We then highlight how historical development paradigms and policies have helped to cement the land use activities and structural lock-ins that underpin deforestation and degradation. We emphasize how the grounds for establishing a more sustainable economy in the Amazon were never consolidated, leading to a situation where forest conservation and development remain dependent on external programs—punitive measures against deforestat...
Ambio
With the Brazilian military governments of the 1960s, systematic economic development of the Amazon began. Social and environmental concerns have entered Amazonian discourses and policies only since the 1990s. Since then, reports of threats to forests and indigenous people have alternated with reports of socio-economic progress and environmental achievements. These contradictions often arise from limited thematic, sectoral, temporal, or spatial perspectives, and lead to misinterpretation. Our paper offers a comprehensive picture of discourses, policies, and socio-environmental dynamics for the entire region over the last five decades. We distinguish eight historical policy phases, each of which had little effect on near-linear dynamics of demographic growth and land-use expansion, although some policies showed the potential to change the course of development. To prevent local, national, and international actors from continuing to assert harmful interests in the region, a coherent l...
IT'S ALL ABOUT POWER:. The Political Economy and Ecology of Redefining the Brazilian Amazon
The Sociological Quarterly, 1999
What happens to rural communities in remote raw materials-rich regions when their definitions of the region's natural resources are confronted with competing and incompatible definitions presented and enforced by external actors? The social constructionist approach in environmental sociology provides an essential counterbalance to environmental determinism, but this article argues that in many contexts social construction is actually a process of the imposition of external actors' material interests over the objections of local groups. New historical materialism, via an interdisciplinary and multimethod research strategy, analyzes the changing definitions and uses of the Brazilian Amazon as a revelatory case study of the political economy and ecology of this process and its consequences for nature, rural communities, and indigenous peoples.
Journal of environmental management, 2018
The discussions about sustainable development in the Amazon region, in particular the rubber tree social movement against deforestation and the struggle for land ownership, culminated in the implementation of conservation units for direct use, with the main reference being the "Chico Mendes" Extractive Reserve, located in Xapuri-Acre-Brazil, representing some kind of agrarian reform in the forest. The objective of the present work is to evaluate some of the lessons learned in the last two decades related to the guarantee of land ownership and the social reproduction of extractivists. The ASPF methodology of research project from the Federal University of Acre was used, based on social indicators such as schooling, access to land and housing time; economic indicators, such as economic efficiency and living standards in monetary terms; and environmental indicators such as land use and deforestation. The results indicate that housing turnover has decreased significantly in th...
2008
In the Brazilian Amazon, governance and sustainability of Indigenous Lands are threatened by deforestation and urbanisation, even in the most remote areas. In this study, we analyse the transformations in indigenous common property resource management due to urbanisation. Data were obtained from ethnographic and agro-economic interviews (n=75), combined with a GIS analysis of population, land tenure and landscape distribution in the periurban zone of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, the main town of Upper Rio Negro. In the region, members of a community usually share a territory composed by a large range of resource use rights, ranging from exclusive ownership to common property. Ethnic specializations and individual mobility ensure complementarities in time and space among production activities. Urbanisation was stimulated by missionary, military and trade activities. Private ownership has become the main land-use right in the periurban area. Recognition of the Rio Negro Indigenous Lands, which occurred in 1998, did not, for the most part, question individual rights. Currently, 80% of the 13,000 inhabitants of the town of São Gabriel are indigenous. Because of increasing scarcity of available resources, they have to negotiate landuse rights within their large kinship networks. 73% of the urban families have a multilocal strategy. Due to circular mobility, they have various residences and production units, which are distributed in the urban, periurban and forest areas. They have different land-use rights, including access to communal territory. Diversification of land-use arrangements provides the necessary leeway to guarantee food security in a context of income variability. This multilocal land-use system is an indicator of the resilience of indigenous common property regimes. Since urbanisation processes are intensifying all over Amazonia, sustainable resource management in remote areas depends on the participation of indigenous populations in both urban and forest planning.
The sustainability challenges of indigenous territories in Brazil's Amazonia
COSUST, 2015
The overall context of Indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon has changed dramatically since the 1980s. After the adoption of the 1988 constitution, large tracts of Indigenous lands have been recognized, which now cover more than 21% of the Brazilian Amazon. Well conserved for the most part, they play a key role in deterring deforestation and in climate change mitigation, while also undergoing drastic economic and social changes. There are many factors challenging the sustainability of Indigenous territories today, including the deficient enforcement of Indigenous rights. The injunction that Indigenous peoples should protect the environment is complicating the definition of which economic activities they are entitled to develop inside their territories. The focus of this paper is to review the current situation of Indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon, providing historical context and pointing out current challenges and the debates surrounding their sustainability.
Land use governance in the Brazilian Amazon has undergone significant changes in the last decade. At the national level, law enforcement capacity has increased and downstream industries linked to commodity chains responsible for deforestation have begun to monitor some of their suppliers’ impacts on forests. At the municipal level, local actors have launched a Green Municipality initiative, aimed at eliminating deforestation and supporting green supply chains at the territorial level. In this paper, we analyze the land use transition since 2001 in Paragominas—the first Green Municipality—and discuss the limits of the governance arrangements underpinning these changes. Our work draws on a spatiallyexplicit analysis of biophysical variables and qualitative information collected in interviews with key private and public stakeholders of the main commodity chains operating in the region. We argue that, up to now, the emerging multi-level scheme of land governance has not succeeded in promoting large-scale land use intensification, reforestation and rehabilitation of degraded lands. Moreover, private governance mechanisms based on improved product standards, fail to benefit from potential successful partnerships between the public and private sector at the territorial level. We propose a governance approach that adopts a broader territorial focus as a way forward.
Protected Areas in the Amazon: forest management, conflict and social participation
Problems of environmental degradation worldwidehave generated different environmental policies, especially in protected areas. In the state of Amazonas, Brazil, about 50% of the territory is under the order of protected area, including 27% Indigenous Reserves and 23% of state and federal managementreserves. However, many of the conflicts generated over time in these reserves aredue to the limited participation of social subjects in the planning and implementation of various activities in the process of territorial and environmental management. The analysis of territorial disputes arising from forest management in reserves in the state of Amazonas should be based on management plans. It can be inferred that the demarcation process and institutionalization of the protected areas are generating territorial disputes, but along the deployment of the politics and governance, these differences are reduced to the minimum by means of the social participation of stakeholders. The authoritative processes in the delimitation of these areas have been characterized by endogenous planning practices and land use in protected areas with the participation of social subjects, evidencing favorable results of this policy for the state of Amazonas mainly forcultural and environmental preservation. Áreas protegidas na Amazônia: manejo florestal, conflitos e participação social RESUMO. Os problemas de degradação ambiental, no cenário mundial, têm gerado diferentes políticas ambientais, com destaque para as áreas protegidas. No Estado do Amazonas, Brasil, cerca de 50% do território está sob a ordem de área protegida, de diferentes tipologias: sendo 27% de terras indígenas e 23% de áreas protegidas federais. No entanto, muitos dos conflitos gerados ao longo do tempo nestas reservas são devido à limitada participação dos sujeitos sociais no planejamento e execução de diversas atividades no processo de gestão territorial e ambiental. A análise dos conflitos territoriais, decorrentes do manejo florestal, nas reservas do Estado do Amazonas, foi baseada nos planos de gestão. Pode-se inferir que o processo de demarcação e institucionalização das áreas protegidas está gerando conflitos territoriais, entretanto, ao longo da implantação desta política de governança, esses conflitosforam significativamente reduzidos, por meio da participação social dos diferentes sujeitos sociais. Os processos de gestão, na delimitação dessas áreas, têm se caracterizado por práticas endógenas de planejamento e uso da terra em áreas protegidas, a partir da participação dos sujeitos sociais, evidenciando os resultados favoráveis dessa política para o Estado do Amazonas, com destaque para a preservação cultural e ambiental.