Jill L. Caviglia-Harris

Household production and forest clearing: the role of farming in the development of the Amazon

Global tropical deforestation continues to be a critical environmental issue and nowhere in the world is the issue more pronounced than in Brazil. This paper examines the land-use choices of small-scale farmers in Ouro Preto do Oeste, RondA´nia, Brazil and investigates how agricultural production impacts deforestation levels. The data used to explore these issues consist of a panel collected from 152 households in 1996 and 2000. Overall, the empirical models indicate that access to credit, wealth, lot size, product markets, and off-farm labor opportunities, largely influence deforestation and production decisions. Among other things, the results suggest that more sustainable production methods are unlikely to be adopted by a majority of households under current conditions because the production of milk has rapidly advanced due to its moderate labor requirements and existing market infrastructure. Households with greater levels of wealth have focused on milk while those with access to credit have focused on crops. Since the production of crops is largely influenced by access to credit, similar incentives may be proposed to support more sustainable production activities to help reduce deforestation.

Demand-side policies for environmental protection and sustainable usage of renewable resources

Abstract Since many renewable resource systems such as tropical and temperate forests, coral reefs, and wild fisheries are often exploited at unsustainable rates, studies aimed at reducing these trends have focused on the market failures associated with over-exploitation. Within this framework, the literature devised what we term supply-side policies to correct these market failures. Here we introduce demand-side policies into the mix of renewable resource and environmental management policies. These policies are designed to increase the demand for goods produced in a sustainable fashion by: (1) promoting the long-term conservation of natural capital assets, (2) promoting the attainment of economic efficiency, and (3) providing greater political acceptability relative to supply-side policies.

Introducing Undergraduates to Economics in an Interdisciplinary Setting

Abstract Introducing economics to undergraduates with courses that incorporate various elements of economic fields at an introductory level has the potential to increase the appeal of economics classes. The author provides a model for teaching such courses using an environmental economics class as an example. This approach incorporates introductory economics concepts into an interdisciplinary class that includes three disciplines focused on a central theme. In this course, called environmental perspectives, the economics section covered the principles of microeconomics, the fundamentals of environmental economics, and linked these applications to the topics covered in the ecology and philosophy sections of the class. A discussion of the methods for applying this model to other courses that include economics is included.

Improving Household Surveys Through Computer-Assisted Data Collection Use of Touch-Screen Laptops in Challenging Environments

Data on land use change and socioeconomic dynamics in developing countries are often collected via paper-and-pencil interviewing (PAPI). This article reviews a computer-aided personal interviewing (CAPI) methodology adopted for the fourth wave of a panel survey administered in a remote region of the Brazilian Amazon in 2009. Ruggedized touch-screen laptops were used to address challenges associated with survey administration in this setting as well as limitations associated with the PAPI method. The authors discuss hardware and software considerations, methodological innovations, and tests for mode effects on missing item response rates and enumerator learning effects.

The Impact of Settlement Design on Tropical Deforestation Rates and Resulting Land Cover Patterns

Policymakers in the Brazilian Amazon face the challenge of meeting environmental and developmental goals as cities and towns within these tropical forests continue to face migration pressure. Alternative government planning strategies have been implemented to address forest clearing in conjunction with meeting social agendas. This paper uses panel estimation methods to investigate the impact of settlement design on land use. Results indicate that new settlement designs developed to further social interaction have had a negative impact on land cover and land use transformation. Thus, while new settlement designs appear to positively impact stated social goals, including greater contact between families and access to water and services, these social advances have come at the expense of environmental goals.

Modeling land use and land cover change in an Amazonian frontier settlement: strategies for addressing population change and panel attrition.

Research on tropical deforestation has been prolific, yet few studies have assessed the long-term dynamics of frontier migration and the resulting impacts on deforestation. These lacunae arise from the difficulty of obtaining the panel data required to evaluate the dynamic socioeconomic and land use processes of the advancing and aging frontier. Furthermore, the quality and design of household surveys reported in the land use literature are often not transparent, limiting possibilities for comparing results. This article first describes a three-round spatial panel survey of households in a settled and heavily deforested Amazon frontier region. We detail several methods that are employed to ensure and assess data quality. Second, we estimate forest clearing at the agent (household) level, using several sets of explanatory variables and sub-samples that would be generated by applying different field methodologies. We find the definition of the panel agent and the sampling frame to influence our estimations.

Detecting and interpreting secondary forest on an old Amazonian frontier

Land uses that replace tropical forests are important determinants of terrestrial carbon storage and biodiversity. This includes secondary forest growth after deforestation, which has been integrated into the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) concept as a means to enhance current forest carbon stocks. Incorporating secondary forest into climate change mitigation efforts requires both accurate measurements and a means to target interventions to achieve additionality. We demonstrate how remote sensing and household survey data can be combined to meet these requirements in ‘old frontiers’ of the Brazilian Amazon and introduce the idea that annual land-cover transitions − measured at the pixel level and over time − can serve as leading indicators of secondary forest regrowth. The patterns we observe are consistent with the suggested tension between equity and additionality in REDD+: the poorest households on the poorest quality lots already allow forest regeneration. Policy interventions to encourage regeneration are likely to have the greatest additional impact on higher quality lots owned by better capitalized households.

Interdisciplinary Teaching: Analyzing Consensus and Conflict in Environmental Studies.

This paper is a discussion of a team‐taught interdisciplinary course that was designed to provide cohesion between the 12 departments that participate in the environmental studies major at Salisbury University. This course provides a model for addressing several positive and negative tendencies at work in interdisciplinary programs, and provides students with a first‐hand experience in how multiple disciplines can work together to provide a more developed picture of a particular field or interest. This paper presents a discussion of the teaching experiences of faculty involved in the environmental studies course for two years. A framework for the development of such courses is included, as well as a discussion of the agreements and disagreements that can arise when students and faculty work within an interdisciplinary context.

Characterizing land-use change over space and time: applying principal components analysis in the Brazilian Legal Amazon

We apply a principal component analysis to characterize the dimensions of spatio-temporal change in agriculture within the Brazilian Legal Amazon for the period 1996–2006. Around 80% of spatio-temporal variation across a broad set of descriptors could be explained by four trajectories well observed in the region: large-scale ranching, inactive forested property, small-scale farming, and mechanized agriculture. Spatial clustering based on these trajectories reveals a shift in the characteristics of the agricultural frontier, and provides quantitative method for distinguishing functional sub-regions previously suggested in the literature. Our analysis suggests a marked growth in agriculture over the decade between 1996 and 2006, with agricultural development encroaching toward the interior of the Brazilian Amazon not only from the south and southeast, but also from the west.

Agricultural development and the industry life cycle on the Brazilian frontier

The occupation of the last remaining tropical forests has been an initiative of many developing nations that is debated by the global community due to impacts on soil erosion, biodiversity loss and contributions to global climate change. Arguments against development range from the irreversible nature of tropical deforestation to the synergistic losses associated with environmental degradation and continued poverty. The focus of this paper is to determine if evidence of market advancements and growth can be found in an Amazonian settlement, thus providing counter-evidence for the boom–bust pattern of development that has been predicted for much of the Amazon. Using panel survey data (for four survey waves between 1996 and 2009), we find trends that are consistent with the industrial life cycle, suggesting a pattern that is more consistent with growth, development and consolidation.