Deforestation Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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- Brazilian Studies, Brazil, Amazonia, Land Use
- by Philip M Fearnside
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- Higher Education, Brazilian Studies, Brazil, Brazil

This study explores Norman Myers's concept of the "hamburger connection" as a form of ecologically unequal exchange, where moredeveloped nations are able to transfer the environmental costs of beef consumption to less-developed nations. I used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to test whether deforestation in less-developed nations is associated with the vertical flow of beef exports to more-developed nations. An interaction term also examines whether this relationship is more pronounced in Latin American nations, as posited by Myers. The sample includes all nondesert, less-developed nations for which there are available data across all indicators (N = 48). Overall, the results confirm the tested hypotheses. The findings also provide unique contextual support for ecologically unequal exchange theory by demonstrating that unequal trade relationships can operate at the level of a single commodity type. * I would like to thank Edward Kick, Brett Clark, Andrew Jorgenson, Feinian Chen, Laura McKinney and the anonymous reviewers at Rural Sociology for their advice and helpful comments on many fronts.

- by Kelly Austin
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- Political Economy, Deforestation, Dependency Theory

Tree loss and its effect to well-being, society, and energy are the inevitable results of rapid economic breakthroughs. Civilization has to constantly adapt to change, and while economic modifications commence society has to deal with preexisting issues on environmental health decline. While Amy Chillag’s CNN Article provides facts, allusions and statistics, there are particular details in the article that needs to be considered...

- by Trixie Joyce Martinez
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- Forestry, Ecosystems Ecology, Environmental Studies, Rhetorical Analysis

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are amongst the most common work-related problem in Europe. In forestry yards we find all the conditions which expose workers to MSD risks: hard environmental conditions (low temperatures, slippery and uneven ground), heavy works (manual handling of loads, back flexed and twisted) and dangerous tools and machineries such as chainsaws. The high manual work load can therefore cause MSDs amongst the loggers. This pathology risk increases with the component 'vibration' induced by chainsaws, tractors, skidders and other machineries. In this study we have considered two different logger groups working in public forestry yards and we have analyzed their MSD risk exposure, controlling both the posture of each worker and measuring the induced vibration on the handarm system and on the back. The OWAS (Ovako Working-posture Analysis System) technique has been used to evaluate the load MSD risk and the 2002/44/EC Vibration Directive has been used to detect the exposure to vibration. In the first loggers group, mechanical trees felling (using chainsaw) and manual deforestation were the performed tasks; in the second, the operations were mechanical trees felling and log stacking (using also a tractor). The work of eight loggers was analyzed, evaluating all risk types. The result was that both the OWAS index and the vibration indicators were quite high. But others risk parameters came out that are not included in the OWAS or in the 2002/44 EC directive methodology: for example, the work related neck and upper limb disorders, which may be detected using the OCRA procedure in the case of driving powerful forestry machines.

- by Angela Calvo
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- Ergonomics, Case Studies, Vibration, Deforestation
- by Philip M Fearnside
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- Landscape Ecology, Brazil, Amazonia, Ecohydrology
- by Helen Suich
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- Business, Geography, Environmental Science, Design

Many developing southeast Asian governments are not capturing full rent from domestic forest logging operations. Such rent losses are commonly related to institutional failures, where informal institutions tend to dominate the control of forestry activity in spite of weakly enforced regulations. Our model is an attempt to add a new dimension to thinking about deforestation. We present a simple conceptual model, based on individual decisions rather than social or forest planning, which includes the human dynamics of participation in informal activity and the relatively slower ecological dynamics of changes in forest resources. We demonstrate how incumbent informal logging operations can be persistent, and that any spending aimed at replacing the informal institutions can only be successful if it pushes institutional settings past some threshold.

- by John Asafu-Adjaye
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- Forestry, Applied Economics, Informal Sector, Conceptual Model

The aim of this paper is to develop an econometric model of deforestation in Indonesia using time series analysis based on the annual data from 1961 to 2000. From the model, we should be able: (i) To examine the forces of agricultural and timber sectors to forest decline; (ii) To distinguish the sources, direct and underlying causes of deforestation; and (iii) To identify macro-level economic factors that give pressures on deforestation. In order to achieve these purposes, a two-stage methods for the recursive system is chosen. The robustness of the estimation is checked to ensure there are no serial correlation and heteroskedasticity in all our equations. The main findings of model estimation show that, the forest product exports and the change in cereal cropland are the main sources of deforestation in Indonesia. Therefore, the factors determining the two sources become important to be taken into consideration. However, further examination on the underlying factors of deforestation in Indonesia are adversely affected by poor estimators given by the model.

- by Muhammad Zikri
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- Time series analysis, Deforestation, Forest Decline, Forest Products
- by Pablo Puertas
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- Evolutionary Biology, Archaeology, Anthropology, Conservation

 Brazil’s planned reconstruction of the BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) Highway
paralleling the Purus and Madeira rivers would give deforesters access to about half of
what remains of the country’s Amazon forest, and so is perhaps the most consequential
conservation issue for Brazil today.
 The highway route is essentially a lawless area today, and the lack of governance is a
critical issue in the battle over licensing the highway reconstruction project.
 The BR-319 upgrade would link the current “arc of deforestation” to central Amazonia,
allowing movement of deforestation actors to all forest locations with road links to
Manaus, while a planned BR-319 connecting road would open the vast forest area
between the BR-319 and the Peruvian border.
 The BR-319 Environmental Impact Assessment has many flaws, including ignoring
impacts beyond those adjacent to the highway. The EIA also contains passages
admitting to some disastrous project impacts.

- by Philip Fearnside
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- Brazil, Amazonia, Rainforests, Tropical forest

In this paper, we review some critical issues regarding carbon cycling in Amazonia, as revealed by several studies conducted in the Large Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA). We evaluate both the contribution of this magnificent biome for the global net primary productivity/net ecosystem exchange (NPP/NEE) and the feedbacks of climate change on the dynamics of Amazonia. In order to place Amazonia in a global perspective and make the carbon flux obtained through the LBA project comparable with global carbon budgets, we extrapolated NPP/NEE values found by LBA studies to the entire area of the Brazilian Amazon covered by rainforest. The carbon emissions due to land use changes for the tropical regions of the world produced values from 0.96 to 2.4 Pg C year À1 , while atmospheric CO 2 inversion models have recently indicated that tropical lands in the Americas could be exchanging a net 0.62±1.15 Pg C year À1 with the atmosphere. The dif-ference calculated from these two methods would imply a local sink of approximately 1.6-1.7 Pg C year À1 , or a source of 0.85 ton C ha À1 year À1 . Using our crude extrapolation of LBA values for the Amazon forests (5 million km 2 ) we estimate a range for the C flux in the region of À3.0 to 0.75 Pg C year À1 . The exercise here does not account for environmental variability across the region, but it is an important driver for present and future studies linking local process (i.e. nutrient availability, photosynthetic capacity, and so forth) to global and regional dynamic approaches. entini R, von Jouanne J, Waterloo M (2002) Biogeochemical cycling of carbon, water, energy, trace gases and aerosols in Amazonia: the LBA-EUSTACH experiments. J Geophys Res 107(D20):8066-8091.

- by Antonio Donato Nobre
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- Climate Change, Carbon Dioxide, Carbon, Photosynthesis

The present study reveals that horticultural crops i.e. mango, guava, banana, pineapple, etc. in remote agency area of Andhra Pradesh state, productivity of horticulture helps to reduce an extensive deforestation. The qualitative data collected from 45 key informants both sexes belonging to tribal population of the Kurnool, Prakasam, Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam districts. For data collection, observation and interview methods employed.

- by Appalanaidu Pappala
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- Horticulture, Social Sciences, Deforestation, Social Science
- by Raghuveer Sharma
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- Accounting, Economic Growth, Cancer, Environmental Health

Field notes from Aarey forest in Mumbai, 18th May 2018.

- by Michael Leung
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- Social Movements, Participatory Research, Organic agriculture, Anarchism

In recent decades, climate change has been accelerated by anthropogenic activity and became a currently issue on global discussion. Due to the importance that Brazil has a global supplier of food, this article aims to verify the representativeness of the emissions in the Brazilian agribusiness and the different roles to be played in agriculture to reduce GHG emissions. As methodological approach, a literature review was realized based from 124 articles related to the keywords “climate change” and “agribussiness” in the database. Firstly, we analyses the history of international meetings on climate change, as the Meadows Report (1968), Brundtland Report (1987), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1988), the United Nations Framework Convention (1992), the Kyoto Protocol (1997), the Stern Report (2006) and Report GHF (2009). The situation created the need for targets to reduce GHG emissions for major world economies, as in the case of Brazil, where it is almost impossible to exc...

- by Clandio Ruviaro
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- Agribusiness, Deforestation, Climatic Change, Greenhouse gases

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

- by Anna Reva
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- Climate Change, Climate Change Adaptation, Economic Growth, Carbon
- by torben bonde
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- Carbon Cycle, Nitrogen Cycle, Biological Sciences, Environmental Sciences

Amazonian forests are experiencing rapid, structure, composition and microclimate, and are highly vulnerable to droughts and fires -alterations unprecedented changes that are having major impacts on wildlife, regional hydrology and the... more

- by William F. Laurance
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- Zoology, Hydrology, Ecology, Forest Fragmentation

Renó, V. F.; Novo, E. M. L. M.; Suemitsu, C.; ; Rennó, C. D.; SILVA, Thiago S. F. (2011). The floodplain forests bordering the Amazon River have outstanding ecological, economic, and social importance for the region. However, the... more

- by Vivian Renó and +3
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- Remote Sensing, Ecological Economics, Image Analysis, Object Oriented Analysis
- by Lisa Gezon
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- Demography, Economics, Anthropology, Remote Sensing
- by Doris Sayago
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- Deforestation, Developpement Durable, Amazonie
- by Philip Fearnside
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- Biology, Brazil, Amazonia, Multidisciplinary

The Principal Investigator and his team would also like to highly appreciate the comments and valuable suggestions provided by all other stakeholders during consultation meetings and personal communication. Finally, the cooperation , active participation and valuable suggestions rendered to this study by other consultants also working for PAF activities are highly appreciated and acknowledged.

- by Nawa Raj Khatiwada
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- Bioengineering, Environmental Science, Water Pollution, Soil Erosion

Les forêtstropicales rendentdes services environnementaux àlaplanètee ntière,mais dépendent d'Étatss ouverains,quil es utilisentavantt out comme des ressources économiques etcomme réserves foncières. L'exploitation non régulée dubois d'oeuvre estplusr entable pourl es exploitantsq uecelle pratiquée dans le cadre d'unaménagementetd'une gestion certifiée. La conversion des terres forestières en pâturages ouen espaces artificialisés estplusi ntéressante financièrementquel 'exploitation durable,et afortiori quel ac onservation,c omptetenudes systèmes dep rixetder émunération existants. Dans les avancéesdifficiles vers lac onstitution d'unh ypothétique" régime international" del 'environnement,laquestion des forêtsr eprésente unp ointdef riction Nord-Sudoùconvergentpratiquementt ousl es problèmes dudéveloppement durable :tensions entre lac roissanceé conomiquee tlapréservation del ab iodiversité,tension entre le temps long del arégénération des écosystèmes etles horizons financiers,incertitudes ur les droitsdep ropriété,incertitudes etpolémiques surl econtenumême del anotion dedura-bilité… Ainsi,l'absenced'autorités upranationale reconnuecompliquel 'ambition dep arvenir à une gestion internationale susceptible dem aintenir des services environnementaux globaux que rendentles écosystèmes forestiers. Dufaitducaractère globaldel eurs fonctions etservices,les forêtss ontsouventqualifiées de" patrimoine commun" del 'humanitéo u,d em anière plus savante,d e" bien publicmondial" (BPM). Considérer les forêtsm ondiales comme relevantdel a catégorie des BPM ne seraitpass ans conséquences url ep landes relations internationales. Cela constituerait,notamment,unargumenten faveurd'une convention internationale spécifique.

- by Alain Karsenty
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- Macroeconomics, Forestry, Globalization, International Trade
- by Philip Fearnside
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- Climate Change, International Trade, Amazonia, Deforestation
- by john perlin
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- History, Culture, Global Environmental Change, Multidisciplinary

After decades of civil war, the Colombian government has recently declared the Amazon as a model region for green growth and low carbon development. The Amazon Vision programme, launched by the Colombian government in 2016, seeks to contribute to forest conservation, climate mitigation, poverty reduction and peace building. The Amazon Vision fundamentally reframes the Colombian Amazon from a ‘narco frontier’ that needs to be liberated from guerrilla influence, organized crime and peasants destroying forests for coca cultivation, to a net CO2 sink with enormous potential for green growth and poverty reduction. Drawing on historical and empirical qualitative research in Guaviare and complemented by a quantitative land cover classification, this article builds on the concept of ‘green territoriality’ to investigate the extent to which the shift towards conservation affects property rights and the ability of indigenous groups and peasants to access land and natural resources. We illustrate how the reframing of peasants from protagonists of development and frontier expansion to villains, and of indigenous communities from underdeveloped forest dwellers to environmental guardians, has created land conflicts and affected the legitimacy of their respective property rights. In both cases, the Amazon Vision strengthens conservation policies and challenges existing land rights but also creates new windows of opportunity for the land claims of indigenous communities while reinforcing conceptualizations of social differentiation among dwellers of the Amazon.

- by Carlos Del Cairo and +2
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- Political Ecology, Tropical forest, Deforestation, Amazon
- by Philip Fearnside
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- Climate Change, Water, Agribusiness, Brazil

The effects of habitat fragmentation on diverse tropical tree communities are poorly understood. Over a 20-year period, we monitored the density of 52 tree species in nine predominantly successional genera (in fragmented and continuous Amazonian forests. We also evaluated the relative importance of soil, topographic, forest-dynamic, and landscape variables in explaining the abundance and species composition of successional trees. Data were collected within 66 permanent 1-ha plots within a large (ca. 1,000 km 2 ) experimental landscape, with forest fragments ranging from 1-100 ha in area.

- by Philip M Fearnside and +1
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- Climate Change, Water, Brazil, Amazonia
- by Craig Meisner
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- Economics, Natural Resources, Poverty, Air pollution

Networks of protected areas (PAs) form the backbone for biodiversity conservation worldwide. The effectiveness of protected areas has been studied and it has been shown that confounding factors, such as remoteness and accessibility , correlated with both presence of protection and extractive behaviors, affect the outcomes. We investigated the effectiveness of Madagascar's PA network in decreasing deforestation pressures, using a novel counterfactual methodology, accounting for distance to roads, rivers, major cities and altitude, slope and annual rainfall. The assessment was independently conducted for two different time periods, 1990–2000 and 2000– 2010, and for Madagascar's three major forest types. We found that PAs were effective to some extent in reducing deforestation and that some of this decrease can be attributed to the presence of PAs, not just to the confounding factors rendering the land assigned for protection less likely to be deforested. We found differences in PA effectiveness between the two time periods, and in general lower deforestation in the later time period has meant that the PAs have less pressures to resist. However, in the spiny forest, even if deforestation had overall diminished, the pressure on reference areas used to compare PAs seemed to have increased showing that PAs have indeed a mitigation effect and thus increased in effectiveness in the second time period. Our study highlights the alarming trend of what happens once enough forest has been lost in easily accessible areas and the pressures starts to spread to also more remote areas and lands comparable to PAs (remote and inaccessible).

- by Ricardo Rocha
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- Conservation Biology, Protected areas, Madagascar, Tropical forest

Political-economic sociologists have long investigated the dynamics and consequences of international trade. With few exceptions, this area of inquiry ignores the possible connections between trade and environmental degradation. In contrast, environmental sociologists have made several assumptions about the environmental impacts of international trade, but the assumptions lack theoretical specificity and are thus empirically underinvestigated. Bridging these two complementary areas of macrosociology, the present study proposes and tests a structural theory of unequal ecological exchange. The theory posits that more-developed countries externalize their consumption-based environmental costs to less-developed countries, which increase forms of environmental degradation within the latter. To test a key assertion of the theory, a weighted index of vertical trade is created that quantifies the relative extent to which exports are sent to more-developed countries. Using the index, cross-national panel analyses of deforestation, 1990-2000 are conducted to test the hypothesis that less-developed countries with higher levels of exports sent to more-developed countries experience greater rates of deforestation, net of other factors. Results of the analyses confirm the hypothesis, providing support for the theory of uneven ecological exchange. Additional findings correspond with other sociological studies of deforestation, particularly those that focus on the effects of rural and urban population growth as well as level of capital intensity and rate of economic development.

- by Noé U de la Sancha and +1
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- Landscape Ecology, Zoology, Museum Studies, Conservation Biology

- by Shaikh Rahman
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- Climate Change, Carbon, Carbon Sequestration, Climate

Understanding the effect of anthropogenic disturbance, and its interaction with carnivores and their prey, is crucial to support the conservation of threatened carnivores, particularly in rapidly changing landscapes. Based on systematic camera-trap sampling of four protected areas in Riau Province of central Sumatra, we assessed the habitat occupancy and spatiotemporal overlap between people, potential carnivore prey, and four threatened species of medium-sized or large carnivores: Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae), Malayan sun bears (Helarctos malayanus), dholes (Cuon alpinus), and Sunda clouded leopards (Neofelis diardi). To assess spatial overlap of target species, we used single-species occupancy models and applied a Species Interaction Factor (SIF) to conditional two-species occupancy models. We also used kernel density estimation (KDE) to assess temporal overlap among these species. Our habitat use models showed that altitude (elevation) strongly influenced the occupancy of all large carnivores and potential prey species. Except for Sunda clouded leopards, the occurrence of large carnivore species was positively related to the spatial co-occurrence of humans (SIF > 1). In addition, we found that sun bears and dholes both exhibited high spatial overlap with tigers, and that sun bears alone exhibited high temporal overlap with people. Our findings contribute to an improved understanding of the contemporary ecology of carnivores and their prey in rapidly changing, southeast Asian landscapes. Such knowledge is important to the conservation and recovery of large carnivores in conservation hotspots that are increasingly dominated by humans across Sumatra, as well as globally.

- by Anthony J Giordano
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- Indonesia, Wildlife Conservation, Large Carnivores, Felidae

... Ambiental, Biodegradación, Restauración Ecológica, Conservación y Protección Ambiental, Ecosistemas, Botánica, Micología, Botánica, Microbiología, Ecología, Tecnología, Política Agraria, Política Ambiental, Ingeniería Sanitaria,... more

- by W. Pengue
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- Geography, Agroecosystems, Genetic Engineering, Latin America

In this paper, the potential use tf spaceborne polarimettic synthetic aperture radar (SAB) data in mapping landcover tripes and monitoring d@restation in tropics is studied, ttere, the emphasis is placed on several clearing practices a~d forest regeneration that can be characteri:.ed by usi~,g the sensitivity of SAB channels to vegetation biomass and canopy str~lcture. A supervised Bayes-Jan classifier designed fi)r SAIl signal statistics is employed to separate five classes: primar*j fi)rest, second-ar~j fi)rest, pasture-crops, quebradao, and disturbed forest. The Land C-band polarimetric SAIl data acquired during the shuttle imaging radar-C (SIII-C)/X-SAB space-shuttle ntission in 1994 are used as input data to the class{tier, The results are verified by field observation and comparison with the LancLsat data acquired in August (f 1994. The SAB data can delineate these five classes with approxinmtely 72% accuracy. The confusion arises wher~ separating old secondary fi)rests from primary .tim'st aad the young ones from pasture-crops. It is shown that Landsat and SAg data camj contplenwntary information about the vegetation structure that, when used i1~ sy~u¢r~,ism, may increase the classification accuracq over secondar~j fi~rest regrowth. When the number (f land-co~)er types was reduced to three classes including primanj fi~rest, pasture-crops, and regrowth-disturbed fi~rest, the acc~tracy of classification increased to 87%. A dinwnsionality anahjsis of the classifier showed that the accurac~j can be fi~rther improved to 92% by reducing the feature space to L-band HH and HV chantwls. Comparison of SIIl-C data acquired in April (wet period) a~ld October (dr~j period) indicates that multi

- by João Vianei Soares
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- Radar, Temporal Data Mining, Amazonia, Dimensional Analysis

HIGHLIGHTS • Database attractiveness is independent of data quality. • Global forest products databases have different levels of quality. • Since many data users are not data professionals or statisticians, the quality of a database is not the decisive factor. • A combination of technical, political and developmental factors can explain the increasing discrepancy between the African export and Chinese import forest products trade data. • Global forest statistics providers may be motivated to put more effort into improving database attractiveness and related incentives rather than quality. SUMMARY What drives discrepancies and inconsistencies in global forest statistics? The use of global statistics has influenced academic research and sectoral policies of forest ecosystems since the first global forest assessment was conducted in 1948 or even earlier. Very little work has been done to provide a comprehensive analysis of the governance structure and the quality of predominant international forest databases. Furthermore , very little is known about the attractiveness and/or repulsiveness of global forest statistics platforms to scholars, policy-makers and other users. To reduce knowledge gap, this article examines the governance structure and strategies of three major databases which provide data on global forest products trade including timber export/import flows data, namely FAOSTAT, the United Nations Comtrade, and Chatham House's Resource Trade Earth. This paper uses conceptual and theoretical frameworks of data governance and nudge theories are used to study the production, quality, attractiveness and repulsiveness of global forest statistics and the related platforms through research on a qualitative and quantitative methodological approach. The main findings show that among the above three data platforms, only Comtrade received first-hand data directly from UN producing member states' offices, while the other organisations depend on Comtrade, transform secondhand data. More importantly, the article reveals that the levels of quality and attractiveness of the forest databases in our study are unequal and that database attractiveness is not based on quality. As a result, global forest statistics providers may be motivated to put more effort into improving database attractiveness rather than quality, which is more challenging. Consequently, it is likely that the governance structure and strategies reported in these databases can substantially affect the reliability of numbers used in academic research and policy-decisions since they are generated from the related global forest statistics. Gouvernance des statistiques forestières globales: étude de cas du commerce des produits forestiers entre Afrique Sub-Saharienne et Chine Y. ZHAO, Y.M. KROTT et S. ONGOLO Quelles sont les causes des écarts et incohérences observées dans les données statistiques globales sur les forêts? l'utilisation des données statistiques globales exerce une influence sur les travaux de recherche académique et les politiques publiques sectorielles relatives aux écosys-tèmes forestiers, au moins depuis le premier rapport de l'état globale des forêts publié en 1948. Très peu d'études ont été conduites pour fournir une analyse approfondie sur le système de gouvernance et la qualité des bases de données majeures de production des statistiques globales forestières. De même, il existe assez peu de connaissance sur l'attractivité et/ou répulsivité des plateformes globales des données statistiques forestières pour les chercheurs, décideurs politiques et autres usagers de ces données dans la société. Afin de réduire ce manque de connaissance, cet article examine le système de gouvernance et les stratégies de trois bases de données majeures qui fournissent des données quantitatives sur le commerce global des produits forestiers y compris les flux d'exportation/importation des grumes de bois: il s'agit de FAOSTAT, la base de données Comtrade des Nations Unies et Resource Trade Earth de l'organisation Chatham House. Le cadre conceptuel et théorique de cet article mobilise la théorie de la gouvernance des données et la théorie du 'coup de pouce' afin de questionner les processus de production, la qualité, l'attractivité et/ou la répulsivité des données statistiques globales sur les produits forestiers et des plateformes qui y sont associées. L'approche

- by Symphorien Ongolo
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- African Studies, Development Studies, Forestry, Sociology of Knowledge

In 2019 Brazil recorded the highest wildland fire occurrence South America has seenfor the last 15 years. Added to the Amazon, the Brazilian savanna (Cerrado) faces changes in fire regimes. Climatic changes and the recent weakening of environmental law enforcement are factors, but historic and large-scale trends and drivers of fire regimes must be analyzed. We discuss ecological and policy drivers of recent changes in fire regimes in the Cerrado, in order to highlight management strategies. The Cerrado has evolved with natural fires and anthropogenic fires are also common for millennia. In the past 50 years, wildfires tend to be concentrated in the late dry season and to occur every two / three years, causing serious damage in fire-sensitive vegetation. Apart from climatic variations, the drivers of wildfires are deforestation and fire suppression policies. Nearly half of the original vegetation of the Cerrado biome has disappeared largely due to agribusiness expansion. Fire is associated with deforestation in two ways: vegetation conversion to monocultures, and lack of fire management in the remaining native vegetation. Indeed, the attempts to exclude fires from this fire-prone ecosystem disrupted traditional fire management. Fire suppression policies lead to increased wildfire risks due to fuel load and the multiplication of sources of ignition (conflicts, roads). The recent advances in Integrated Fire Management in protected areas in the Cerrado are evident. However, the recent budget cuts by the Brazilian government in environmental management and research undermine the chances of decreasing occurrences of wildfires in this biodiversity hotspot.

- by Ludivine Eloy
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- Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Fire Management, Protected areas, Deforestation

Understanding patterns of tropical deforestation is a crucial issue for Mexico, a country that has lost more than 95% of its original rainforest cover. This paper examines the causes of accelerated deforestation in the Sierra Santa Marta, Veracruz, Mexico, by looking at settlement history and the evolution of productive schemes in the villages of Venustiano Carranza and Magallanes. Both settlements were founded in the 1960s, after the government donated land to landless peasants. Conversion of forests into pastures, after several agricultural enterprises failed, resulted in more than 80% of the original tropical rainforests being removed in both communities between 1960 and 1998. The process of deforestation in the villages differed from models proposed for the Amazon and Central America, in which deforestation responded to capitalintensive efforts to open up the tropical frontier. In the villages, transformation of forests into pastures was, from the beginning, a smallholder phenomenon. Misguided policies and institutional malfunctions appeared to direct households toward deforestation. Nevertheless, environmental deterioration could not only be explained by external causes. Inside the communities, demographic pressure over land, the modification of traditional land tenure systems and the cultural adoption of cattle as a way to overcome poverty were significant factors in the relationship between colonization and forest clearance. Deforestation at Venustiano Carranza and Magallanes cannot be considered an ecologically destructive practice performed by peasants. In fact, the process reflects not only a lack of environmental awareness in national development policies, but also the intricate interaction of ecological, cultural, social and economical variables.

- by Isaac Goldstein and +1
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- Human Geography, Deforestation

The purpose of this study is to analyse the role of law enforcement on deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon in the last 10 years compared with the influence of economic and political factors. In order to achieve this, political discussions, several economic indicators and law enforcement methods were analysed and compared with deforestation rates over time. The findings revealed that the economy and politics still affect, in some degree, deforestation rates in the Amazon region, however, the study showed that new law enforcement methods and the new policy of repression of loggers has proven to be effective in reducing the effect of high prices of agricultural products on forest destruction, which led deforestation rates to reach their lowest level since the Amazon started to be monitored in 1988.

- by Raquel Taitson Queiroz Bevilaqua
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- Brazil, Law Enforcement, Deforestation

The role of different agroforestry systems in the conservation of plant diversity and forest structure has not been directly compared in many agricultural dominated landscapes. In this study, we investigated tree diversity and forest structure in a complex agroforestry landscape traditionally grown for cocoa and mixed food crops and compared these to the natural forest in southeastern Ghana. The study

- by Daniel Tetteh
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- Management, Sustainable agriculture, Strategic Management, Agroforestry

By reflecting on how agricultural development and conservation policies have greatly changed in focus, methods, goals and sensibility in the last decades, and through the analysis of the implementation of recent programme Sembrando Vida in the Selva Lacandona, Chiapas, Mexico, this dissertation reflects on the aims, narratives and limits of a contemporary rural development programme. The insights of this writing stem from an understanding of agricultural production and conservation as two aspects of the same issue: the sustainable management of the territory. This is coupled with a conception of the indigenous farmers’ condition that rejects essentializing characterization and dichotomies, and tries to expose how local attitudes towards agricultural innovation, government intervention and conservation are situational and ultimately reflect a strive for prosperity in a set of asymmetric dynamics through which they have historically been penalized. In this framework, I will show how the premises and success of the programme Sembrando Vida are closely related to state subsidies and adaptation to new agricultural technologies, as well as to pressure of environmental conservation and processes of environmentality.

- by Edoardo Superchi
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- Conservation, Agroecology, Sustainable agriculture, Rural Development

Se pretende observar y analizar el impacto social y ambiental, que las personas indígenas viven en el Amazonas, determinando que la mayor amenaza contra esta comunidad es la destrucción del bosque tropical más grande del mundo.

- by El Baul De Diana Sánchez
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- Deforestation

This paper is based on the fieldwork research in the Ecuadorean Amazon among territories set up on the main terrestrial communication infrastructure, the so-called Via Auca. The research activity was developed in the influence area of the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve in which hydrocarbon reserve production projects, agricultural activities and indigenous territories are overlapped in the same geographical space. The research project investigate the dimension of the environmental conflict in a "learning environment"context, using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The preliminary results show the velocity and the spatial expansion of the oil frontier towards the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve in which new components are dynamizing the environmental conflict in a very complex arena

- by Salvatore Eugenio Pappalardo
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- Indigenous Studies, Amazonia, Oil and gas, Biodiversity