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Forest and livelihoods research in the Amazon biome: overview and directions

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Paulo Eduardo Massoca at Indiana University Bloomington
Paulo Eduardo Massoca
Lucy Miller
Lucy Miller
Lucy Miller
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Sacha M. O. Siani at Indiana University Bloomington
Sacha M. O. Siani
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Abstract

The Amazon biome is crucial for global climate regulation and the provision of a wide array of economic goods and non-market ecosystem services supporting livelihoods from local to global scales. As the largest continuous tropical forested landscape, the Amazon biome covers the territory of nine countries in South America and has long attracted attention by its social-cultural and environmental attributes. Over the last few decades, government projects and market forces have prompted population growth, infrastructure development, unplanned urbanization, and agricultural, mining, and logging expansion in the region. These macro-scale processes have been mediated by diverse social groups struggling for identity, land, and resource access at the local level. That interplay has shaped the region as a complex mosaic of juxtaposed social and environmental realities experiencing accelerated changes from which degradation and habitat loss have been salient outcomes impacting local livelihoods and the resilience of Amazonian ecosystems. We frame the Amazon region as a microcosm that depicts the accelerated changes that coupled human-environment forested systems have faced worldwide, challenging decision-makers and stakeholders to balance pressing social-economic demands and sustainable development. This essay reviews the studies framing the Amazon region in the annual FLARE conferences to shed light on the challenges and future directions the FLARE network may pursue in advancing its forests and livelihoods agenda.
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Forest and livelihoods research in the Amazon biome
overview and directions
Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes (CASEL)
Indiana University Bloomington
Paulo Massoca
IU School of Public Environmental Affairs
Lucy Miller
IU Dept. Anthropology
Sacha Siani
IU Dept. Geography
Prepared by Sacha Siani
0
50 00 0
10 00 00
15 00 00
20 00 00
25 00 00
30 00 00
35 00 00
40 00 00
1900 1950 1970 1990 2010
Cumulative Deforestation
[km2]
0
20 ,0 00, 00 0
40 ,0 00, 00 0
60 ,0 00, 00 0
80 ,0 00, 00 0
10 0, 000 ,0 00
12 0, 000 ,0 00
14 0, 000 ,0 00
16 0, 000 ,0 00
18 0, 000 ,0 00
20 0, 000 ,0 00
19 20 19 50 19 70 19 80 19 95
Cattle herd [#]
0
50 00 00 0
10 00 00 00
15 00 00 00
20 00 00 00
25 00 00 00
30 00 00 00
19 00 19 40 19 60 19 80 20 00
Total Population [#]
0
20 00 00 0
40 00 00 0
60 00 00 0
80 00 00 0
10 00 00 00
12 00 00 00
14 00 00 00
16 00 00 00
18 00 00 00
20 00 00 00
19 00 1940 19 60 19 80 20 00
Urban Population [#]
The Great Amazonian Acceleration
0
10 0
20 0
30 0
40 0
50 0
60 0
70 0
80 0
90 0
19 00 19 50 19 70 19 90 20 10
Cities & Towns [#]
0
10 00 0
20 00 0
30 00 0
40 00 0
50 00 0
60 00 0
70 00 0
80 00 0
19 00 19 50 19 70 19 90 20 10
Roads [km]
0
20 00 0
40 00 0
60 00 0
80 00 0
10 00 00
12 00 00
14 00 00
16 00 00
19 00 19 50 19 70 19 90 20 10
Unofficial Roads [km]
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1900 1950 1970 1990 2010
Indigenous /Conservation
Areas [#]
Brondizio 2013: A Microcosm of the
Anthropocene. Perspectives. IEA-Paris.
How are the topics and issues investigated?
Who is the community doing research in the Amazon?•
•Where have the studies been done?
What are the topics and issues approached?
•
•
Review on the abstracts presented in the previous FLARE conferences
co-authorship
45studies
~03
coauthors
inter institutional
33studies
organizations
~02
Organization n. authors
Academic institutions 84
Non-profit research and
policy institutions 33
Government research
centers, agencies, task-
forces
13
International research
networks 9
Financial institution 1
59STUDIES
11% of the total
authors
138
organizations
79 countries
21
authors
(by institutional
affiliation)
The FLARE community studying the Amazon
leading
authors
15
authors
(by institutional
affiliation) 18
local
organizations
10
studies
Global interest
vs.
Local voice
Representativeness
•4 in every 5 studies in Brazil and Peru
•70% of the biome
•No studies in Venezuela, Guyanas, and
Suriname
•14% of the biome
•Suriname and Guyanas entirely
covered by the Amazon biome
38
15
5
4
multi-site
studies
6
Brazil
Colombia
Bolivia
Peru
Ecuador
Venezuela Suriname
French Guyana
Guyana
Spatial analytical unit
18 studies
framing Protected Areas
and Indigenous Lands
WWF 2016
Living Amazon Report
Traditional use of the territory
Collective institutions
Social networks
Impacts from external programs
Role in preventing deforestation
communication
accessibility
education
new markets
new job opportunities
connectivity
urban
rural
governance of local territories?
increased rural-urban
connectivity and mobility
How has it changed:
•local people’s livelihood desires?
expectations for development?
•
relationships to natural
resources?
•
•
mesoscale framings
regional/national
scales
local scale
effect of macro scale forces
at aggregated scales
political and economic drivers
effects on, and responses
by agents at local scales
adaptations, bottom-up initiatives
mesoscale framings
regional/national
scales
local scale
effect of macro scale forces
at aggregated scales
political and economic drivers
effects on, and responses
by agents at local scales
adaptations, bottom-up initiatives
intermediate scales
lower administrative jurisdictions Diverse local realities
mediation of macro scale
factors
Aggregation of
local outcomes
25 most frequent words in the
previous FLARE Meetings
www.voyant.com
Tackling Deforestation at Subnational Scales in the Brazilian Amazon: Diverse Municipalities, Agents, and the Struggle for Collective Action in a Moving Frontier
Thesis
Full-text available
  • Dec 2020
The Brazilian Amazon is a mosaic of social-cultural and environmental realities, urban and rural. Home to 28 million people living across hundreds of municipalities, the region has been the stage for conflicting narratives and demands over conservation and development. How do agents across diverse municipalities respond to national anti-deforestation policies in the Amazon? This dissertation examined the development of the Brazilian forest legislation, the trajectory of colonization, territorial occupation, and development of Amazonian municipalities, and the implications of one emblematic national antideforestation policy targeting municipalities along the region’s expanding frontier: the List of Priority Municipalities (LPM). The LPM policy has imposed tough sanctions on municipalities considered hotspots of deforestation, being considered innovative for requiring both individual and collective actions to curtail deforestation. This research adopted a social-ecological systems’ perspective, drawing upon the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to guide systematic data collection, integration, and analysis. Mixed methods were combined to analyze archival documents, geospatial and official secondary datasets compiled for 530 municipalities in the Amazon biome, and in-depth case studies and interviews with diverse stakeholders. That provided complementary evidence to the multi-spatial and temporal analysis of three questions. First, the dissertation drew upon archival research and past forest regulations to ask how narratives and values about forests have evolved. Second, it compiled official secondary data at the municipal level and used logistic regression models to inquiry about the factors and local attributes affecting compliance with the LPM policy. Third, the research combined multivariate analysis and in-depth case studies to examine interactions both between the geographical context of listed municipalities and within the region’s moving frontier, as well as to analyze factors underlying collaboration among local agents. Findings show that forest legislation and narratives about the value of forests have expanded in scope, resulting in more stringent and comprehensive regulations. However, interest groups have recurrently contested the societal value of forests, undermining forest regulations that threaten sectoral activities. Further, results revealed that historical-geographical factors defined municipal attributes and conditions across the moving frontier that have either facilitated or hindered local responses to LPM sanctions. The location of municipalities in areas undergoing different phases of occupation and transformation significantly affected the ability of local agents and municipal governments to comply with policy criteria applied similarly across the region. The analysis highlights the importance of strengthening law enforcement and municipal environmental governance, and the relevance of inter-institutional cooperation among governments, markets, and civil organizations. The study shows both challenges and opportunities for balancing regional development and forest conservation through collaboration among diverse groups of agents and governance levels.
View
Halting deforestation in Brazil: Lessons from the “deforestation blacklist”
Presentation
  • Nov 2018
This presentation illustrates the preliminary findings of the dissertation project in which I analyze a policy instrument (List of Priority Municipalities) designed and implemented by the Ministry of the Environment to reduce forest loss in municipalities considered deforestation hotspots in the Brazilian Amazon. I look at how blueprint policies designed at the federal level interact with diverse local realities in complex and heterogeneous regions. I build upon case studies in municipalities located across a territorial gradient representing different stages of the agricultural frontier expansion in the state of Pará, northeastern Amazon. In spite of the positive outcomes reported for this policy instrument in reducing deforestation at the aggregated level, my analysis at the municipal scale reveals that municipalities and their respective actors (farmers, public officials, environmental and agricultural agencies) have responded in alternative ways to this environmental policy depending on local settings (biophysical, social-economic and political) linked to the historical context associated with the expansion of the agricultural frontier. The presentation concludes by highlighting the challenges faced by decision-makers addressing deforestation in highly diverse and dynamic social-ecological systems.
View
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