J. Christopher Brown

Against the local trap: scale and the study of environment and development

This paper argues against what we call ‘the local trap’, in which development researchers and practitioners falsely assume that localized decision-making is inherently more socially just or ecologically sustainable. The local trap constrains research on a range of topics in development research, including productive conservation networks, agro-forestry, community-based natural resource management, common property regimes and community-based collaboration. We use recent research on scale in political and economic geography to argue that scales and scalar arrangements are socially constructed through political struggle; they are never ontologically given. In other words, there is nothing inherent about any scale or scalar arrangement. Therefore, an arrangement in which resources or decisions are controlled locally is no more likely to lead to ecologically sustainable or socially just outcomes than an arrangement in which the regional, national or global scale predominates. Because scales are produced through socio-political struggle, the outcomes of a given scalar arrangement are dependent on the political agenda(s) of those empowered by the arrangement. When we start from the assumption that there is nothing inherent about scale, we cannot assume the political and ecological dynamics of a particular scalar configuration. We must instead make those dynamics the object of critical inquiry. The paper uses a case study of beekeeping in the Brazilian Amazon to illustrate the range of both positive and negative outcomes that can result when decision-making is localized.

Soybean Production and Conversion of Tropical Forest in the Brazilian Amazon: The Case of Vilhena, Rondônia

Abstract The recent rise in Brazilian soybean production has generated concern among the environmental community and some authors that natural tropical environments of the Amazon Basin are being converted to soybean fields. Proponents of soybean production counter that soybeans represent a viable agricultural commodity for the region; environmental concern is unwarranted, because new soybean fields are replacing already deforested or otherwise transformed lands. Both arguments have been made without comprehensive study and measure of land-use/land-cover (LULC) in areas undergoing expansion of soybean production. This case study, conducted in the municipality of Vilhena, Rondônia, Brazil, in the southwestern Amazon Basin, uses remote sensing to evaluate the LULC accompanying this municipalitys large growth in soybean production from 1996 to 2001. Forests are being converted for soybean production, but most of the production increase appears attributable to slight expansion of already existing fields, conversion of already deforested land, and higher yields.

Left Turn on Green? The Unintended Consequences of International Funding for Sustainable Development in Brazil

This article presents the first attempt to examine the political consequences of internationally funded programs that target local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Although the purported mission of NGOs is often economic, humanitarian, or environmental, the authors suggest that their impact is also profoundly political. Injections of international resources into underdeveloped, often clientelistic societies can fundamentally change the nature of the local political arena, affecting access to economic resources, social benefits, and ultimately the quality of democratic representation. The authors analyze the impact external resources have on politics by examining a series of World Bank-funded projects based in the Brazilian Amazon from 1995 to 1997. They show that World Bank funding designed to channel resources to local groups had powerful effects in the political arena, increasing electoral support for the Left in the 1998 presidential race. This article has important implications for the growing role of NGOs and their influence on politics in the developing world.

Responding to Deforestation: Productive Conservation, the World Bank, and Beekeeping in Rondonia, Brazil

Productive conservation, a sustainable development concept for the Amazon, ideally leads to economic development in rural areas with conservation of rain forest ecosystems. This study evaluates the human and environmental dynamics of productive conservation in Rondonia, Brazil, using as a case study beekeeping, which has been promoted by the World Bank-funded Rondonia Natural Resources Development Project. Promoters of beekeeping have given little attention to basic ecological or political economic issues that determine whether the practice contributes to ideals of productive conservation. While beekeeping can generate significant increases in household income, beekeeping cooperatives may become overdependent on donor funds. Once the flow of productive conservation donor funds stops, organizations may fail, making it too difficult for beekeepers to maintain their operations. Beekeeping does not lead directly toward rain forest conservation. Moreover, beekeeping almost exclusively employs introduced Africanized “killer” bees, commercially exploitable in the Amazon only because deforestation has temporarily created suitable habitats for them. Given the human and environmental configuration of beekeeping in Rondonia, the paper suggests ways to direct beekeeping toward accomplishing the goals of productive conservation.

Promoting and Preventing Political Change Through Internationally Funded NGO Activity

A growing percentage of international aid is distributed through local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Scholarship is divided on how that aid affects domestic politics. One side argues that aid to NGOs reinforces the status quo. As NGOs become dependent on external funding, they lose sight of their original goals. The other side contends that channeling funds to NGOs generates associational activity, producing political change by empowering previously marginalized groups. We test these competing hypotheses in Rondonia, Brazil, measuring the impact of internationally funded NGO activity on voting behavior. We find that the impact of aid varies with the institutional environment. At the state level, more votes for the conservative governor came from municipalities whose NGOs received project money. In contrast, the same municipalities registered a significant shift to leftist candidates at the presidential level. The findings have broad implications for the impact international aid has on political competition, political change, and democracy. Actualmente, una creciente porción de ayuda financiera internacional se distribuye a través de organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONGs). La literatura académica se encuentra dividida en el análisis de los efectos que este tipo de ayuda financiera tiene en la política doméstica. Por un lado, se argumenta que la ayuda a las ONGs refuerza el status quo. Mientras que las ONGs devienen dependientes del financiamento externo, pierden de vista sus objetivos originales. Por otro lado, se argumenta que la distribución de financiamiento internacional a través de las ONGs genera actividades asociativas, las cuales a su vez fortalecen grupos previamente marginados produciendo cambio político. En este trabajo, evaluamos ambas hipótesis en Rodonia, Brasil, midiendo el impacto que las actividades de ONGs financiadas internacionalmente han tenido en el comportamiento electoral municipal. Encontramos que el impacto varía de acuerdo al contexto institucional. Los municipios con ONGs financiadas internacionalmente registraron una mayor cantidad de votos para los candidatos a gobernador conservadores a nivel estadual. Sin embargo, los mismos municipios registraron una mayor cantidad de votos para los candidatos de izquierda a nivel presidencial. En términos generales, nuestra investigación ilumina el impacto que la ayuda financiera internacional a ONGs tiene en cuanto a competencia electoral, cambio político y democracia.

Who Gives, Who Receives, and Who Wins? Transforming Capital Into Political Change Through Nongovernmental Organizations

How does international support for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) lead to political change in the developing world? Massive amounts of domestic government spending and international aid are now distributed through NGOs instead of state bureaucracies. Recent scholarship suggests that this decentralization of developmental aid to NGOs has unintended political effects on recipient communities, but the mechanisms driving political effects are unclear. In this article, the authors test whether NGO type affects the results of NGO aid, comparing the political impact of politicized and nonpoliticized NGOs. They do not find any difference between politicized and nonpoliticized NGOs. The results imply that to create political change, ideological predispositions held by individual NGOs are less important than is their ability to raise the level of social capital and civil society. Simply providing the infrastructure necessary to develop social capital and civil society can have a measurable political impact.

Estimativa de área agrícola por meio de séries temporais Modis NDVI no Estado do Mato Grosso

The objective of this work was to evaluate a simple, semi‑automated methodology for mapping cropland areas in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. A Fourier transform was applied over a time series of vegetation index products from the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (Modis) sensor. This procedure allows for the evaluation of the amplitude of the periodic changes in vegetation response through time and the identification of areas with strong seasonal variation related to crop production. Annual cropland masks from 2006 to 2009 were generated and municipal cropland areas were estimated through remote sensing. We observed good agreement with official statistics on planted area, especially for municipalities with more than 10% of cropland cover (R2 = 0.89), but poor agreement in municipalities with less than 5% crop cover (R2 = 0.41). The assessed methodology can be used for annual cropland mapping over large production areas in Brazil.

Soy moratorium impacts on soybean and deforestation dynamics in Mato Grosso, Brazil

Previous research has established the usefulness of remotely sensed vegetation index (VI) data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to characterize the spatial dynamics of agriculture in the state of Mato Grosso (MT), Brazil. With these data it has become possible to track MT agriculture, which accounts for ~85% of Brazilian Amazon soy production, across periods of several years. Annual land cover (LC) maps support investigation of the spatiotemporal dynamics of agriculture as they relate to forest cover and governance and policy efforts to lower deforestation rates. We use a unique, spatially extensive 9-year (2005–2013) ground reference dataset to classify, with approximately 80% accuracy, MODIS VI data, merging the results with carefully processed annual forest and sugarcane coverages developed by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research to produce LC maps for MT for the 2001–2014 crop years. We apply the maps to an evaluation of forest and agricultural intensification dynamics before and after the Soy Moratorium (SoyM), a governance effort enacted in July 2006 to halt deforestation for the purpose of soy production in the Brazilian Amazon. We find the pre-SoyM deforestation rate to be more than five times the post-SoyM rate, while simultaneously observing the pre-SoyM forest-to-soy conversion rate to be more than twice the post-SoyM rate. These observations support the hypothesis that SoyM has played a role in reducing both deforestation and subsequent use for soy production. Additional analyses explore the land use tendencies of deforested areas and the conceptual framework of horizontal and vertical agricultural intensification, which distinguishes production increases attributable to cropland expansion into newly deforested areas as opposed to implementation of multi-cropping systems on existing cropland. During the 14-year study period, soy production was found to shift from predominantly single-crop systems to majority double-crop systems.

Economic linkages to changing landscapes.

Many economic processes are intertwined with landscape change. A large number of individual economic decisions shape the landscape, and in turn the changes in the landscape shape economic decisions. This article describes key research questions about the economics of landscape change and reviews the state of research knowledge. The rich and varied economic–landscape interactions are an active area of research by economists, geographers, and others. Because the interactions are numerous and complex, disentangling the causal relationships in any given landscape system is a formidable research challenge. Limited data with mismatched temporal and spatial scales present further obstacles. Nevertheless, the growing body of economic research on these topics is advancing and shares fundamental challenges, as well as data and methods, with work in other disciplines.

Toward a Spatial Understanding of Staple Food and Nonstaple Food Production in Brazil

Brazilian agricultural census data at the municipal level are used to develop and map a simple index of staple food versus nonstaple food agriculture for Brazil over time (1996–2006). The results show spatial variation in the direction and degree of the shift toward or away from staple food cropping across Brazil. The index is presented as an important methodological step toward a systematic geographic understanding of crop share changes surrounding food versus fuel and other nonfood crop production.