Alisson Flávio Barbieri

Changes in Population and Land Use Over Time in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

This paper draws upon a detailed longitudinal survey of households living on agricultural plots in the northern three provinces of the Ecuadorian Amazon, the principal region of colonization by migrants in Ecuador since the 1970s. Following the discovery of petroleum in 1967 near what has subsequently come to be the provincial capital and largest Amazonian city of Lago Agrio, oil companies built roads to lay pipelines to extract and pump oil across the Andes for export. As a result, for the past 30 years over half of both Ecuadors export earnings and government revenues have come from petroleum extracted from this region. But the roads also facilitated massive spontaneous in-migration of families from origin areas in the Ecuadorian Sierra, characterized by minifundia and rural poverty. This paper is about those migrants and their effects on the Amazonian landscape. We discuss the data collection methodology and summarize key results on settler characteristics and changes in population, land use, land ownership, technology, labor allocation, and living conditions, as well as the relationships between changes in population and changes in land use over time. The population in the study region has been growing rapidly due to both natural population growth (high fertility) and in-migration. This has led to a dramatic process of subdivision and fragmentation of plots in the 1990s, which contrasts with the consolidation of plots that has occurred in most of the mature frontier areas of the Brazilian Amazon. This fragmentation has led to important changes in land tenure and land use, deforestation, cattle raising, labor allocation, and settler welfare.

Contrasting Colonist and Indigenous Impacts on Amazonian Forests

To examine differences in land use and environmental impacts between colonist and indigenous populations in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon, we combined data from household surveys and remotely sensed imagery that was collected from 778 colonist households in 64 colonization sectors, and 499 households from five indigenous groups in 36 communities. Overall, measures of deforestation and forest fragmentation were significantly greater for colonists than indigenous peoples. On average, colonist households had approximately double the area in agriculture and cash crops and 5.5 times the area in pasture as indigenous households. Nevertheless, substantial variation in land-use patterns existed among the five indigenous groups in measures such as cattle ownership and use of hired agricultural labor. These findings support the potential conservation value of indigenous lands while cautioning against uniform policies that homogenize indigenous ethnic groups.

Heterogeneity of malaria prevalence in alluvial gold mining areas in Northern Mato Grosso State, Brazil

This paper analyzes factors affecting the risk of malaria among individuals working in wildcat gold mining camps (garimpos) in northern Mato Grosso State in the Brazilian Amazon. Historically, such mining camps have the locations with the highest malaria prevalence in the Brazilian Amazon. However, little attention has focused on understanding the disease from the internal perspective of the mining camps themselves, such as the mining populations characteristics and its spatial organization. This paper adopts a stepwise logistic model to identify spatial, occupational-exposure, and cultural factors that affect malaria prevalence. According to the results, differences among individuals working and/or living in the gold mining areas could produce different exposure to the disease and thus to different risk of malaria prevalence. Understanding these differences may provide an important tool for identifying risk profiles in the gold mining and related population and for informing programs for prevention and treatment of malaria in the Amazon.

Poverty Dynamics, Ecological Endowments and Land Use among Smallholders in the Brazilian Amazon

Rural settlement in previously sparsely occupied areas of the Brazilian Amazon has been associated with high levels of forest loss and unclear long-term social outcomes. We focus here on the micro-level processes in one settlement area to answer the question of how settler and farm endowments affect household poverty. We analyze the extent to which poverty is sensitive to changes in natural capital, land use strategies, and biophysical characteristics of properties (particularly soil quality). Cumulative time spent in poverty is simulated using Markovian processes, which show that accessibility to markets and land use system are especially important for decreasing poverty among households in our sample. Wealtheir households are selected into commercial production of perennials before our initial observation, and are therefore in poverty a lower proportion of the time. Land in pasture, in contrast, has an independent effect on reducing the proportion of time spent in poverty. Taken together, these results show that investments in roads and the institutional structures needed to make commercial agriculture or ranching viable in existing and new settlement areas can improve human well-being in frontiers.

Agricultural change and limits to deforestation in Central America

In this chapter we discuss trends in agricultural land use in Central America between 1961 and 2001, and how they point in the coming decades to changes in regional production patterns, changes in agricultural systems, and regional forest cover. First, we introduce some concepts of sustainable agricultural development and its significance for the transformation of agricultural land use, and consequently the sustained wellbeing of coupled human and natural systems. We then discuss limits to deforestation in Central America as a result of trade-offs between agricultural production and natural resource conservation, in the light of efforts to achieve sustainable rural development, and review some recent trends among the peninsular Central American nations (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama). In particular, we explore trends in agricultural intensification, with capital and land intensive practices in food production, as an increasing response to land scarcity, and thus constituting an important factor in efforts to minimize agricultural extensification, the increase in food production through the expansion of farmland usually at the expense of forest conversion. Finally, we examine regional and national food production and forest cover trends over the last several decades in Central America. Forest cover change is based on FAO estimates of forest and woodlands while changes in agricultural production are examined jointly with its key inputs: land, labour, and capital for the period 1961 to 2001. How to achieve a balance between socioeconomic development and the quality and quantity of environmental resources for present and future generations? This is the sustainable development conundrum. Whether current notions of sustainable development offer viable alternatives to antagonistic positions of doctrinaire development advocates and strict environmental conservationists cannot be foretold. But the intentions are clear as presented by Brundtland Report’s (1987) definition as: ‘development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to 6

Road Impacts in Brazilian Amazonia

We examine the evidence on Amazonian road impacts with a strong emphasis on context. Impacts of a new road, on either deforestation or socioeconomic outcomes, depend upon the conditions into which roads are placed. Conditions that matter include the biophysical setting, such as slope, rainfall, and soil quality, plus externally determined socioeconomic factors like national policies, exchange rates, and the global prices of beef and soybeans. Influential conditions also include all prior infrastructural investments and clearing rates. Where development has already arrived, with significant economic activity and clearing, roads may decrease forest less and raise output more than where development is arriving, while in pristine areas, short-run clearing may be lower than immense long-run impacts. Such differences suggest careful consideration of where to invest further in transport.

The Human Dimension in the Espinhaço Mountains: Land Conversion and Ecosystem Services

The Espinhaco Mountains and their rupestrian grasslands hold significant historical, cultural, and economic value. The discovery of large gold deposits in Espinhaco in the 1700s started an enduring extractive tradition that persists until today. Since then, other important extractive-economic cycles took place in the region; for example, gold (18th and 19th centuries), diamond (19th and 20th), iron ore mining, gemstones, ornamental stones, sand, and plant extractivism (20th and 21st). Mining generated wealth for the Portuguese Crown and Brazil at a considerable environmental cost. However, in the 20th century, the Espinhaco Mountains developed additional values, focused on treasures of another kind. An astonishing and unique biodiversity occurs (with some of the world’s highest richness values and several endemic species) over the colossal mineral deposits, especially in the rupestrian grasslands. This biodiversity contributes to cultural activities, provides people with medicines, raw materials and water, and maintains three major Brazilian river basins. Recent studies have translated into monetary metrics some of the services that these mountain ecosystems deliver to humans and encouraged more sustainable practices. Here, we offer conservation mechanisms to maintain biodiversity, as well as a proposal for land use management to promote sustainable using the wealth generated by mining.

People, Land, and Context: Multilevel Determinants of Off-farm Employment in the Ecuadorian Amazon

This paper investigates the factors that motivate decisions of settler colonists to engage in off-farm employment (OFE) in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon (NEA). Overall, OFE, as a type of population mobility, may increasingly become a dominant demographic factor in rural frontier regions. Although OFE decisions are primarily a matter of individual choice, factors associated with the farm household and the local community also play key roles in this decision-making. This paper applies a multilevel conceptual framework and uses a multinomial, multilevel statistical model to study OFE in the NEA in 1999 as a result of factors at the individual, farm household, and community levels. The results show important differences between OFE participation choices in personal characteristics, human capital, farm household life cycle, land use, land management, farm environmental conditions, transportation accessibility, community size, and structure of local labor markets. The paper also identifies the effects of policy-relevant variables on choices to engage in OFE in local community, other rural, or urban areas of destination.

Dinâmica populacional, uso da terra e geração de renda: uma análise longitudinal para domicílios rurais na Amazônia equatoriana

The Northern Ecuadorian Amazon, the principal region of colonization of migrants in Ecuador since the 1970s, has been experiencing major changes in recent years, including a rapidly growing population, fragmentation of agricultural plots, changes in land use, and increasing off-farm employment, all of which are affecting farm household incomes and well-being. In this paper we use detailed data from a longitudinal survey of migrant settlers in 1990 and 2000 in Ecuador to first estimate farm household incomes, on-farm and off-farm. We then compute Gini coefficients for both land distribution and household income, and evaluate factors responsible for changes in household income in the 1990s. The article ends with a discussion of the policies that could reduce poverty and lead to a more sustainable standard of development.

Considerações teóricas sobre as migrações de idosos

Contrary to the literature in developing countries, there is a lack of studies on elderly migration in Brazil, where the need for such studies stem from the ageing process faced by its population. This paper provides insights about the adequacy of the international literature on elderly migration (based on countries at advanced stages in the demographic transition) to the Brazilian case. We argue that elderly migration is mostly explained by specific characteristics of individual life cycles at later ages such as retirement and search for family support and reunion. Using data from population censuses, we show that these factors are also relevant in the Brazilian case, but other aspects related to the retirement system and family support are also powerful to explain elderly migration in Brazil. We found two main groups of elderly migrants in Brazil: one with better health and income conditions composed by individuals who migrate without relevant need for family or institutional support; and another group composed by individuals with poorer health and financial conditions who migrate to places where some support is available. We finally analyze the policy implications of these different types of elderly migration.