Stephen G. Perz’s research while affiliated with University of Florida and other places

The origins of roads often bespeak important lessons for those who later seek to pursue infrastructure projects. This is especially the case for routes through difficult landscapes. We use the case of the Interoceanic Highway in the Andes-Amazon transition of southeastern Peru in western South America to illustrate the perils that constitute the history of infrastructure. The journey to the Interoceanic Highway was a long one, involving INDIGENOUS cultures, the Incan Empire, Spanish conquistadores, missionaries, scientists, rubber barons, development agencies, construction companies, and ambitious politicians. All were motivated by the possibility of riches that a highway might permit, and all found the costs to be far greater than they anticipated. There are many chapters in the history of the journey to a road, and it is crucial to respect the lessons of the past to avoid paying dearly in the future.

Las desigualdades sociales en América Latina siguen siendo evidentes con respecto a los derechos sobre la tierra y la tenencia de recursos. Los proyectos de infraestructura constituyen un elemento clave de las políticas que sirven para mantener tales desigualdades, porque la planificación de la infraestructura está dominada por poderosos intereses y excluye a las partes interesadas subalternas. Esto ha motivado un enfoque en temas de gobernanza de la infraestructura y las estrategias de los grupos subalternos para influir en la planificación. Nos enfocamos en la Amazonía, el objetivo de muchos proyectos de infraestructura y el hogar de muchos grupos subalternos que se han movilizado para resistir la infraestructura y mejorar la gobernanza. Presentamos tres estudios de caso en los que las partes interesadas subalternas siguieron estrategias para intervenir en la planificación de la infraestructura. Dos casos se centran en estrategias instrumentales que buscan un impacto directo por enfoques legales y de comunicación. El tercer caso destaca la colaboración como una estrategia indirecta para apoyar estrategias instrumentales, presentando los factores que afectan la colaboración intercultural. Los casos ofrecen experiencias concretas de diferentes estrategias de los pueblos subalternos para intervenir en la planificación de infraestructura para mejorar la gobernabilidad.

The Household Life Cycle framework relates family demographic processes to land use-cover change, but also revealed limitations. We propose several modifications, featuring a focus on extended families instead of single households, to broaden the applicability to land use systems. In the process, we pay particular attention to temporal dynamics and the spatial distribution of families concerning demographic processes, going beyond fertility to focus on population distribution. To evaluate the extended family model’s explanatory value, we apply it to the Transamazon Highway region in Brazil. The analysis includes 330 families, which are often multi-generational and multi-sited, based on data from 402 lots (1997/8–2005). We present models for forest, secondary succession, annual crops, perennials and pasture. Explanatory variables feature nine demographic factors with five others controlling for exogenous forces. The findings show strong effects for family dynamics and spatial distribution variables in many equations. Time on lot (cohort effect), the complexity of family structure (age effect) and social integration into urban fabric (spatial effect) are demographic processes that deserve further attention in land use studies.

There is an extensive literature on environmental governance, which refers to multi-stakeholder processes to arrive at collective decisions about how natural resources will be managed. Recent work on environmental governance has focused on outcomes in terms of social-environmental sustainability. However, questions remain about the effectiveness of environmental governance in practice for yielding sustainable social or environmental outcomes. In cases where environmental governance processes prove ineffective, political ecology offers analytical approaches involving explanations that can account for unsustainable outcomes. In addition, an emergent literature on environmental governance provides frameworks to evaluate its effectiveness by unpacking it with regard to diverse criteria. These two literatures together permit analysis of how political ecology and other potential explanations can account for ineffective environmental governance in terms of specific unmet criteria. Analysis of ineffective environmental governance is likely to be especially valuable in a comparative perspective, in which multi-case studies can reveal the extent to which political ecology explanations predominate across cases. We focus on the Amazon, a large region with high social and biological diversity and where competing stakeholders engage in conflict over governance of natural resources. We pursue a comparative analysis of five cases where environmental governance has been ineffective in terms of sustainable outcomes. In each case, we identified five key explanations for ineffective environmental governance. We then coded those explanations with regard to whether they invoke issues highlighted by political ecology. We also coded them considering environmental governance evaluation frameworks to identify the unmet criteria for environmental governance to be effective. We then pursued a comparative analysis of similarities and differences across the cases. The findings indicate that political ecology issues are predominant among explanations for ineffective environmental governance across all five cases. The results also reveal which environmental governance evaluation criteria are most often unmet among the cases. The findings highlight the importance of political ecology for understanding ineffective environmental governance, and permit delineation of specific criteria for effective environmental governance that can be the focus of strategies to improve environmental governance for sustainability.

There is a large research literature on the impacts of roads and other infrastructure, which highlights the economic benefits, environmental harms and social problems. Most previous research on infrastructure impacts adopts a top-down approach, such as via the use of governmental or remotely-sensed data. This paper argues that a bottom-up approach that features stakeholder perspectives offers complementary advantages to understanding infrastructure impacts that can support improved planning and governance. We conducted stakeholder workshops about impacts of the Interoceanic Highway in the tri-national “MAP” frontier of the southwestern Amazon. The findings confirm previous research in several respects, but also indicate several contrasts. The range of impacts is much broader than topics featured in previous research, and some of the most commonly reported problems, such as diverse forms of crime, have been rarely studied as infrastructure impacts. We conclude by discussing the implications, in terms of criminological research on infrastructure impacts, synergies among diverse impacts of infrastructure, and improved planning of infrastructure for better governance of impacts.

The planning and implementation of infrastructure projects is a long-term enterprise that involves debates over the many positive and negative impacts. Previous work has examined questions about conditions for effective environmental governance of infrastructure, but has typically focused on individual projects and short time frames. We therefore pursued an historical approach to environmental governance of infrastructure projects across multiple cases, taking up examples of highways and dams in the Amazon. Through multi-stakeholder workshops, conservation partners developed historical timelines of events concerning governance of infrastructure in four regions within the basin. Timelines permit analysis to identify periods of particular dynamism, improvements and declines in governance effectiveness, identification of influential stakeholders and events, and conditions that define the effectiveness of governance. We conclude with lessons within and across cases about conditions and strategies for effective environmental governance of infrastructure. Key words: Amazon; Bolivia; Brazil; Colombia; governance; infrastructure; Peru; timeline

Tree mortality rates and the modes of tree death have recently been extensively investigated in the Amazon. However, efforts to describe these processes have not been well distributed across the basin. No study has yet investigated in depth tree mortality process in the unique low, open, bamboo-dominated forests of southwestern Amazonia, a region with a distinct climate and the epicenter of recent severe drought events. Here, we investigated the leading ways that trees die in the terra-firme forests of the southwestern Brazilian Amazon, to understand whether the dynamics of mortality differ from those recorded in other parts of the basin. Using data from six permanent plots located in southwestern Amazonia, we calculated the mortality rate for three main modes of tree death: standing, broken and uprooted. We thus identified the predominant mode of death over a 14 year period (2002–2016). We found that trees in the southwestern Amazon died mainly standing (325 trees, 0.8% year−1) and broken (362 trees, 0.8% year−1); significantly fewer trees died uprooted (156 trees, 0.4% year−1, equivalent to less than one in five of all trees dying). During the study period, the tree mode of death with the greatest proportion in the region alternated between standing and broken trees. Forest characteristics of the southwestern Amazon, like presence and high density of bamboo culms, and the fact that the region was subject to severe droughts in 2005 and 2010, may be affecting how trees die in southwestern Amazon. The presence of these factors makes the forest dynamics of the southwestern Amazon different from other regions of the Amazon basin.

Tree mortality rates and the modes of tree death have recently been extensively investigated in the Amazon. However, efforts to describe these processes have not been well distributed across the basin. No study has yet investigated in depth tree mortality process in the unique low, open, bamboo-dominated forests of southwestern Amazonia, a region with a distinct climate and the epicenter of recent severe drought events. Here, we investigated the leading ways that trees die in the terra-firme forests of the southwestern Brazilian Amazon, to understand whether the dynamics of mortality differ from those recorded in other parts of the basin. Using data from six permanent plots located in southwestern Amazonia, we calculated the mortality rate for three main modes of tree death: standing, broken and uprooted. We thus identified the predominant mode of death over a 14 year period (2002-2016). We found that trees in the southwestern Amazon died mainly standing (325 trees, 0.8% year−1) and broken (362 trees, 0.8% year− 1); significantly fewer trees died uprooted (156 trees, 0.4% year−1, equivalent to less than one in five of all trees dying). During the study period, the tree mode of death with the greatest proportion in the region alternated between standing and broken trees. Forest characteristics of the southwestern Amazon, like presence and high density of bamboo culms, and the fact that the region was subject to severe droughts in 2005 and 2010, may be affecting how trees die in southwestern Amazon. The presence of these factors makes the forest dynamics of the southwestern Amazon different from other regions of the Amazon basin.

Because many environmental threats span national boundaries, transboundary networks have emerged as a form of multi-stakeholder platform to support environmental governance (EG). There are transboundary networks in various ecologically important regions of the world such as the Amazon. However, there remains a need for systematic analyses to adequately evaluate the contributions of transboundary networks to EG. This paper takes up the case of the “MAP Initiative”, a transboundary network in the tri-national frontier of the southwestern Amazon that sought to support EG. We examine three key questions: 1) how do transboundary networks motivate participants to engage in collaboration across boundaries for EG, 2) how do transboundary networks evolve structurally as well as strategically to increase their impact on EG, and 3) can transboundary networks generate outcomes beyond information sharing for EG? The analysis draws on historical documents, participant observation, and key informant interviews about the MAP Initiative. The findings confirm that transboundary networks motivate cross-border exchanges in multiple ways, they evolve structurally in multiple ways that increase their capacity, and that evolution supports multiple forms of activities and outcomes that support EG. We conclude with a discussion of the contributions and challenges of transboundary networks regarding EG.