'Boom and bust' of deforestation in the Amazon

Richard Black, BBC News 11 Jun 09;

Cutting down Amazon forest for cattle and soy does not bring long-term economic progress, researchers say.

A study of 286 Amazon municipalities found that deforestation brought quick benefits that were soon reversed.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers say the deforestation cycle helps neither people nor nature.

They suggest that mechanisms to reward people in poorer countries for conserving rainforest could change this "lose-lose-lose" situation.

Jumbled paths



The Brazilian government has long had a twin-track approach to the Amazon, which contains about 40% of the world's remaining rainforest.

While the land development agency Incra settles people in the region as a way of giving them land and livelihoods - a policy that dates from the 1970s - the environment ministry is trying to reduce the rate of deforestation.

Last year the environment ministry named Incra as the country's worst illegal logger.

The Science study suggests that the settlement and expansion policy is not producing real benefits for people.

Ana Rodrigues and colleagues assessed the development status of people in 286 municipalities using the UN's Human Development Index (HDI), which combines measures of standard of living, literacy and life expectancy.

Some of the municipalities were in areas of virgin forest.

Others had already lost all their trees, and some were in the process of being deforested.

Areas in the initial stage of deforestation yielded HDI scores above the average for the region.

But once the period of deforestation had passed, scores returned to the values seen in areas that had not yet been logged.

"It is generally assumed that replacing the forest with crops and pastureland is the best approach for fulfilling the region's legitimate aspirations to development," said Dr Rodrigues

"We found although the deforestation frontier does bring initial improvements in income, life expectancy, and literacy, such gains are not sustained."

The "boom and bust" pattern was the same for each of the three aspects of the HDI, showing that even a straight economic benefit was not maintained.

REDD dawn

As the study emerged, UN climate negotiators are meeting in Bonn to discuss aspects of a follow-on treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which is suppposed to be finalised by the end of the year.

One of the aspects of the new treaty will be a mechanism that rewards local communities for keeping carbon-absorbing forests intact - a mechanism known as REDD (Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and forest Degradation).

Andrew Balmford, a co-author of the new study, said REDD and other proposals could change the current situation, which he described as disastrous for local people, wildlife and the global climate.

"Reversing this pattern will hinge on capturing the values of intact forests... so that local people's livelihoods are better when the forest is left standing than when it is cleared," said the Cambridge professor of conservation science.

"Discussions being held in the run-up to this December's crucial climate change meeting in Copenhagen... offer some promise that this lose-lose-lose situation could be tackled, to the benefit of everyone - local Brazilians included."

The research was possible only because Brazil has good data on human development and on deforestation, which these days is measured by satellites.

But Ana Rodrigues believes the conclusions probably hold true for other countries stocked with tropical forests in southeast Asia or west Africa.

"I would be very surprised if we didn't see this boom and bust pattern emerging in these areas as well," she told BBC News.

President Lula is currently debating whether to ratify a bill that would grant legal status to illegal settlers and loggers in the Amazon region.

Environmentalists say the bill would increase the rate of land-grabs, with a knock-on rise in illegal logging likely.

Amazon deforestation leads to development 'boom-and-bust'
Study challenges argument that chopping down trees improves economic and social conditions, writes Alok Jha
Alok Jha, guardian.co.uk 11 Jun 09;

Chopping down the Amazon rainforest to make way for crops or cattle has no economic or social benefit for local people in the long term, according to a major new study.

The finding undercuts the argument that deforestation, which causes 20% of the globe's greenhouse gas emissions, leads to long-term development.

Conservationists showed communities develop rapidly but temporarily when forests are cleared. But rates of development quickly fall back below national average levels when the loggers move on and local resources near depletion.

More than 155,000 square kilometres of Amazonian rainforest in Brazil have been cleared for timber or burned to make way for agricultural land since 2000. Every year, around 1.8m hectares are destroyed — a rate of four football fields every minute. The Amazonian rainforest is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world, guarding against climate change by absorbing CO2 and maintaining geochemical cycles.

But some argue that local communities, which are among the poorest in Brazil, should be able to benefit from the local resources by creating farms or logging the trees. To calculate these potential benefits of deforestation for local communities, a team of international scientists analysed the life expectancy, literacy and income of people living in 286 areas around the Brazilian Amazon.

Their results, published today in Science, showed that the quality of life for local communities improved rapidly when a forest first cleared. "The monthly average income started out at 74 Reals per month," said Rob Ewers of the department of life sciences at Imperial College London, a member of the study team. "Then it went up to as much as 196 Reals per month in the middle [of the deforested area] and then to 82 once the resource is gone. Literacy went from 68% at the frontier [of the forest] up to a maximum of 83% then dropped down to 69%."

The researchers said that the cycle occurred because, at first, the newly available natural resources in an area of cleared forest attract investment and infrastructure. New roads can lead to improved access to education, medicine and an increased overall income gives people better living conditions.

But once the timber and other resources dry up, things change. "A lot of the agricultural land is only productive for a few years so once you lose that, you also lose that as a source of income," said Ewers. "On top of that you tend to have much higher populations because a lot of people have been attracted to the area."

This higher population has to survive on ever-dwindling local resources, pushing the standard of living right down again.

Ana Rodrigues of the Centre of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in France, and lead author of the study, said: "The Amazon is globally recognised for its unparalleled natural value, but it is also a very poor region. It is generally assumed that replacing the forest with crops and pastureland is the best approach for fulfilling the region's legitimate aspirations to development. This study tested that assumption. We found although the deforestation frontier does bring initial improvements in income, life expectancy, and literacy, such gains are not sustained."

Greenpeace forests campaigner Sarah Shoraka said the research undermined any arguments that deforestation tackles poverty. "Slashing and burning rainforest to make way for cattle ranches or soya farms is simply not sustainable, because profits are short lived and the big companies simply move elsewhere. Instead we need sustained international funding to protect this massive natural resource, to make trees worth more alive than dead."

Andrew Balmford of the University of Cambridge said that the "current boom-and-bust trajectory of Amazonian development is therefore undesirable in human terms as well as potentially disastrous for other species, and for the world's climate. Reversing this pattern will hinge on capturing the value of intact forests to people outside the Amazon so that local people's livelihoods are better when the forest is left standing than when it is cleared."

This could be achieved in part, he said, by international schemes where rich countries could pay Brazilians to maintain their forests, which would lock up the carbon contained within them in a bid to tackle climate change but also provide locals with an income.