Philip M. Fearnside is a Research Professor in the Department of Ecology at the National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA) in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil. He is a permanent resident in Brazil where he has lived in Amazonia for over 30 years doing ecological research. He also has field experience in India, Indonesia and China. He completed his Ph.D. in 1978 in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Division of Biological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.
- Greenhouse effect
- Forestry
- Land-use change
- Forest environmental services
- Biodiversity
- Biomes
- Amapa mangroves
- Biological Diversity in the Atlantic Forest
- Forest biome
- Biodiversity and ecosystem services/a>
- Guyanan savanna
- Juruá-Purus moist forests
- Causes of forest land use change
- Dorothy Stang Sentence - More Than Symbolic?
- Brazil launches economic growth acceleration program
- Brazil to flood Amazon rainforest for hydroelectric power
- Interview with carbon finance analyst Johannes Ebeling
- Amazon dam project draws heated opposition in Brazil
- Amazon Drought Worst in 100 Years
- Rain douses Brazil’s Amazon fires
- ENGLISH
- Philip M. Fearnside Publications
- Amazonia
- Woods Hole Research Center
- International Rivers Network
- The Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA)
- Building Informed Civic Engagement for Conservation in the Andes-Amazon (BICECA)
- PORTUGUESE
- Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM)
- Socioambiental
- Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas (INPA)
- Ministerio do Meio Ambiente
- Greenpeace, Brazil
- Coordenacao-Geral de Observacao da Terra (OBT)
Introduction
Tropical forests in Amazonia are being cleared rapidly, representing an important contribution to land-use and land-cover change. While some processes are common to forests throughout the world, others are not. Amazonian clearing is dominated by large cattle ranchers, with an increasing role being played by soybeans. Small farmers and estate crops such as oil palm have less relative importance here than elsewhere. Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia has a significant contribution from “ulterior” motives such as land speculation, money laundering and tax evasion. Infrastructure projects, especially highway construction and improvement, represent key governmental decisions unleashing chains of activity that escape from government control. Deforestation sacrifices environmental services such as maintenance of biodiversity, water cycling and carbon stocks. The substantial impact of this deforestation on loss of environmental services has so far not entered into decision-making on infrastructure projects, making strengthening of the environmental assessment and licensing system a high priority for containing future loss of forest.
Deforestation has been a feature of Amazonian landscape since long before the arrival of Europeans in the 1500s. Indeed, no forest in the region can be considered “virgin” in the sense of being unaffected by past human activities. Prior to decimation of their populations by disease and violence from the Europeans, indigenous peoples maintained extensive areas of agriculture and they enriched the surrounding forest with useful species such as Brazil nuts. These human influences would be merged with forest regrowth during the lapse of three centuries before non-tribal populations reached levels sufficient to begin exerting significant pressure on the forest. Contrary to the claims of some, this history of past human disturbance in no way diminishes the rationale for conserving Amazonian forests today. Likewise, the exuberant forests that now stand on formerly cleared areas do not justify the myth of a future recovery-that forests being cleared today may one day regrow to their former stature. In practice, secondary forests are recleared for cattle pasture or other uses long before they regain the biomass and diversity of “primary” forests.
Ecoregions in Amazonia. (Source: Philip M. Fearnside)
In Brazil, deforestation over the course of several centuries destroyed the Atlantic forest of the south-central part of the country (note: the names of Brazil’s regions treat Rio de Janeiro as the “center” of the country). The pace of clearing was especially dramatic in the case of state of Paraná, where the forest was almost completely cleared in less than 30 years in the middle of the 20th century. At the beginning of this period prominent citizens frequently made statements to the effect that Paraná’s forests were so vast that human efforts would “never” put more than a dent in them. The similarity of these statements to those sometimes made today with reference to the Amazon forest is evident, as is the irony of their baselessness.
Deforestation in Amazonia has proceeded with a succession of different forces in different periods. The Amazon rubber boom lasted from the invention of the pneumatic tire in the 1880s to the beginning of commercial rubber production from plantations in Southeast Asia in 1914. During this period “agricultural colonies” such as those in the 35,000-square-kilometer (km2) Zona Bragantina near Belém, in the state of Pará, supplied the rapidly growing urban centers, and, to a certain extent, the population engaged full-time in exploitation of the natural rubber trees in the Amazonian interior. Much of the agricultural land was abandoned to secondary forest when the rubber boom collapsed. More recent clearing surges occurred with the opening of the Belém-Brasília Highway in the late 1950s, and especially the Transamazon Highway in 1970 (the event often taken as the beginning of the “modern” period of Amazonian clearing). The Transamazon Highway was settled by small farmers, many of whom were brought from other parts of Brazil by the federal government and settled in official colonization projects. This much-publicized initiative was soon overshadowed in terms of its impact on deforestation by the large cattle ranchers who received generous tax incentives and subsidized financing from the government though the Superintendency for the Development of Amazonia (SUDAM). Large and medium-sized ranchers continue to account for the bulk of clearing in Brazilian Amazonia. The relative role of small versus large actors is an important difference between different locations in Brazilian Amazonia, between different historical periods, and between Brazil and other countries.
Current rates and causes
Arc of Deforestation in the region of Terra do Meio. (Source: Philip M. Fearnside)
Global generalizations about the role of “poverty” in tropical deforestation generally do not apply to Brazil, where most clearing is done by the rich. Cattle ranching is the use put to the great majority of land cleared, either immediately upon clearing in the case of large ranchers, or after a harvest or two of an annual crop in the case of small farmers. Although the government incentives programs of the 1970s and 1980s have been either discontinued or have diminished in importance, government infrastructure investment and agricultural credit continue to encourage clearing. Logging has a key role in serving as a source of funds for landholders to pay for deforestation. Logging also provides initial access roads, which can then be used and improved by those who later deforest the areas. Unlike the clear cutting that is done for timber harvesting in temperate and boreal forests, logging in Amazonia is always selective because only a few species have commercial value. The disturbed forest that remains after logging is much more susceptible to fire than are unlogged forests.
Deforestation in Amazonia is often not “rational” from the normal financial perspective of paying an attractive return on money invested, at least when only legal money flows are considered. In practice, deforesters make their decisions based on the combined total of all benefit streams, including those that may be undeclared and/or illegal. Investment in Amazonian land can serve as a means of laundering money from illegal sources such as drug trafficking, corruption, sale of stolen goods and income from legitimate activities that is undeclared to tax authorities. For money from these sources the sale of any beef or other products produced in the Amazonian landholdings represents legal income, whereas the investment needed to produce it is highly variable and easily underdeclared to tax authorities.
“Ulterior” motives for clearing also include potential returns from land speculation. The value of land in Amazonia has generally climbed upward and invariably shoots to much higher levels where a road is built or improved. Buying land or claims to land at low prices and reselling it later at much higher prices can give greater returns to a landholder than do the ranching and agriculture that are undertaken during his tenure. Clearing a portion of the land is the only practical way to maintain claim to the area and avoid it being invaded by landless peasants, taken over by another large operator, or confiscated by the government for agrarian reform. Prior to the 1994 “Plano Real” economic reform, Brazil’s rate of inflation was much higher than it is today and land speculation represented a more powerful force, as was shown by the drop by over 50% in the deforestation rate in 1996 and 1997 in parallel with falling land values resulting from the removal of inflation as a driving force. Today, although there is no longer a need to invest funds in real estate as an escape from inflation, profits can still be made by individual landholders when infrastructure projects lead to increasing land values.
A state of lawlessness prevails in substantial areas in Amazonia, leading to distinctive “leaps” in the deforestation frontier. Most notorious is the “Terra do Meio”, or “Middle Lands” to the west of the Xingu River encompassing the Iriri River basin. This area, the size of Switzerland, has effectively been outside of the control of the Brazilian government and is the realm of drug traffickers, illegal loggers and grileiros, or large land thieves who appropriate land through fraudulent (and sometimes violent) means. Declaration of a series of reserves in the area in 2005, following the assassination of Sister Dorothy Stang, is a hopeful sign that the lawless condition is subject to change. The activities of grileiros continue in other locations, most recently increasing in the southern part of the state of Amazonas.