Sustainable Settlement in the Brazilian Amazon

by Almeida, Anna Luiza Ozorio De; Campari, Joao S.; World Bank

• ISBN13: 9780195211047
• ISBN10: 0195211049
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-02-22
• Publisher: World Bank

Summary

This study is based on field surveys conducted in the Brazilian Amazon and covers twenty years of settlement experience. Its findings reveal that much of the Amazonian frontier land deforested by pioneers in the 1970s is becoming agriculturally unproductive. In response to the Brazilian economic crisis of the 1980s, a growing urban middle class began buying such land and holding it as a store of value, causing original settlers to leave and migrate to new frontiers within the Amazon. The authors conclude that for small farmers to be prevented from moving on and clearing new frontiers, they must be rewarded for staying in the old ones. This requires promoting good farming, punishing speculation, and directly penalizing deforestation, through the innovative use of economic policies and new forms of cooperation between environmental and economic agencies at the local, national, and international levels, including the World Bank. Paradoxically, sustainable farming in the Amazon world would not likely attract migrants from outside the region, but unsustainable farming is sure to continue fueling intra-regional migration, even if the general economic crisis were to subside during the 1990s. Consequently, there is increasing urgency to devise policies that protect the forest by providing poor farmers with economic alternatives to encroachment.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction and Principal Findings	p. 1
Population Shifts in the Amazon during the 1980s	p. 11
Economic Shifts in the Amazon during the 1980s	p. 21
Land Markets and Sustainable Frontier Farming	p. 37
Productive and Speculative Deforestation by Frontier Small Farmers	p. 63
Policy implications: Institutional Improvements for Sustainable
Settlement in the Amazon	p. 75
App. A. Descriptive Tables	p. 87
App. B. Empirical Procedures	p. 133
App. C. A Model of Amazonian Deforestation	p. 139
App. D. Econometric Results	p. 151
Bibliography	p. 169
Index	p. 185
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