Property-level assessment of change in forest clearing patterns: The need for tailoring policy in the Amazon
| Autor: | Pedro Pessoa, Clarissa Gandour, Juliano Assunção, Romero Rocha |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Amazon rainforest Natural resource economics business.industry Geography Planning and Development Environmental resource management 0211 other engineering and technologies 021107 urban & regional planning Forestry Monitoring system 02 engineering and technology Management Monitoring Policy and Law 01 natural sciences Geography Deforestation Scale (social sciences) Clearing Forest clearing Baseline (configuration management) business Georeferenced data 0105 earth and related environmental sciences Nature and Landscape Conservation |
| Zdroj: | Land Use Policy. 66:18-27 |
| ISSN: | 0264-8377 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.04.022 |
| Popis: | Once driven by large-scale clearings, Amazon deforestation now occurs mostly in small increments. Did this result from the emergence of a new group of agents or from a strategic adaptation in the behavior of those who led deforestation in the past? We address this question using georeferenced data on private rural properties and deforestation. We cross property-level and forest clearing data in an empirical setting designed to detect shifts toward clearing patches that were knowingly invisible to the monitoring system. We are therefore able to assess not only whether deforesters were responding strategically to stricter monitoring of deforestation, but also how this response differed across actor types. Results suggest that centralized policy efforts introduced starting in the mid-2000s inhibited medium- and large-scale deforestation, but had heterogeneous effects on small-scale deforestation. Although the relative participation of small deforestation polygons increased in both sample states, the relative participation of smallholders in total state deforestation increased in Para, while remaining constant in Mato Grosso. We interpret these results as suggestive — albeit not causal — evidence that landholders strategically responded to the monitoring system by adapting their forest clearings practices to elude monitoring in both Mato Grosso and Para. In the latter, however, the increase in smallholders’ share of annual deforestation suggests that their clearing practices were relatively less affected by what effectively contained deforestation in large properties. The apparent similarity in scale of deforestation across states conceals relevant baseline differences between the agents engaging in forest clearing in each locality. Tailoring policy to account for such differences could strengthen Brazilian conservation policy. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|
Full Text from ScienceDirect