Country case studies investigate key factors that influence the economics of tropical deforestation and land use. Articles illustrate how innovative economic models can be used effectively to investigate a range of important influences on tropical land use changes in a variety of representative developing countries. The countries covered are: Brazil, India, Malaysia, Panama, the Philippines, Thailand, and Uganda.
Changes in the use of land reflect a variety of environmental and social factors, necessitating an equally varied suite of data to be used for effective analysis. While remote sensing, both from satellites and air photos, provides a central resource for study, socio-economic surveys, censuses, and map sources also supply a wealth of valid informati
The Amazonian territories of Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador encompass nearly half of the world's remaining tropical rainforest and contain a wealth of biodiversity whose value we have only begun to appreciate. This book is an authoritative analysis of the socioeconomic and biophysical factors operating at local, national and global levels that serve to promote deforestation in this delicate region.
A multi-disciplinary team of authors analyze the economics of Brazilian deforestation using a large data set of ecological and economic variables. They survey the most up to date work in this field and present their own dynamic and spatial econometric analysis based on municipality level panel data spanning the entire Brazilian Amazon from 1970 to 1996. By observing the dynamics of land use change over such a long period the team is able to provide quantitative estimates of the long-run economic costs and benefits of both land clearing and government policies such as road building. The authors find that some government policies, such as road paving in already highly settled areas, are beneficial both for economic development and for the preservation of forest, while other policies, such as the construction of unpaved roads through virgin areas, stimulate wasteful land uses to the detriment of both economic growth and forest cover.
This provocative new book presents the results of twenty years of research on deforestation in the Amazon. By carefully observing the changing character of human settlements and their association with deforestation over such a prolonged period, the author is able to reject much of the 'perceived wisdom'.
Since the 1970s, federal policies promoting migration and encouraging agricultural development of large farms, logging, and ranching have led to the deforestation of vast areas of the Amazon rainforest.Though these policies have largely been replaced, deforestation continues. What effects do current macroeconomic and regional policies and events have on deforestation and on the well-being of settlers on the agricultural frontier? This report identifies the links between the agriculture and logging sectors in the Amazon, economic growth, poverty alleviation, and natural resource degradation in the region and in Brazil as a whole.It considers the effects of currency devaluation, building roads and other infrastructure in the Amazon, property rights, adoption of technological change, and fiscal incentives and disincentives to deforest.The results are sometimes counterintuitive, but shed new light on why slowing deforestation is so difficult and on the trade-offs between environmental and economic goals.
The book is intended for a general audience, as well as for students, researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders who are interested in learning more about the problem and the potential of the Amazon forest. The book aims to raise awareness and generate action for reducing deforestation and promoting forest conservation and sustainable development in the Amazon, for the benefit of the planet and its people.
This Encyclopedia of Land Use, Land Cover and Soil Sciences is a component of the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. Land is one of our most precious assets. It represents space, provides food and shelter, stores and filters water, and it is a base for urban and industrial development, road construction, leisure and many other social activities. Land is, however not unlimited in extent, and even when it is physically available its use is not necessarily free, either because of natural limitations (too cold, too steep, too wet or too dry, etc.) or because of constraints of access or land tenure. This 7-volume set contains several chapters, each of size 5000-30000 words, with perspectives, applications and extensive illustrations. It carries state-of-the-art knowledge in the fields of Land Use, Land Cover and Soil Sciences and is aimed, by virtue of the several applications, at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students, Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers and NGOs.
This working paper uses remote sensing data and methods to characterize land cover change in four sites in the lowland Peruvian Amazon over a period of three decades (1987-2017). Multi-village landscapes were purposefully selected to include road accessible sites and others only accessible by river. Landscape analysis focused on buffers around the selected villages used to approximate the areas of influence of farmers in these communities. Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon has been commonly attributed to agriculture expansion by smallholders. This belief falls short in acknowledging that the contribution of smallholder deforestation is mediated by others decisions around infrastructure development. In this analysis, road connected landscapes experienced greater loss of closed-canopy forest while closed canopy forest remained mostly stable in the river sites over the thirty year study period. Results indicated that closed canopy forest loss occurred in parallel with agricultural expansion at the road sites. The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of local land use dynamics and the role of regional infrastructure development as a driver of forest loss.
