Peter Mann de Toledo

Biodiversity, Ecosystem and Commodities in Amazonia

The Amazonian Region has undergone constant pressure from human activities in the past 100 years, with dramatic changes in the landscapes caused by significant impacts on a great number of rainforest biotic communities. Historical data show that the last pulse of expansion of the forest, which initiated 4-5,000 years ago (Burnham & Johnson, 2004; Bush & Silman, 2007), has been permanently halted due to intensification of land use and occupation along the southern ecological contact zone between the forest and savanna ecosystems. Such a pristine environment, in similar scale and richness as witnessed by the first Europeans who arrived in South America and wrestled the land from the Native South Americans, can no longer be preserved or even restored to its original state. Almost twenty percent of the primeval Amazon tropical forest has been altered or destroyed in Brazil, the country that encompasses most of this diverse biome. An important portion of this original information is now preserved in maps, natural history and anthropology books and scientific collections (Moran & Ostrom, 2009). Such documentation showing different pathways from these past 500 years is crucial to understand and learn from experiences of success and failure. Resiliency, adaptation and modification of a tropical environment rich in biodiversity have shaped a dynamic biome that shifted in magnitude and intensity in the past decades due to human activity (Joels & Camara, 2001; Buckeridge, 2008). Understanding these successive events is one of the most important challenges facing the modern scientific community. Accurate information on science and technology can potentially improve the future management of a complex tropical environment. The current trend of environmental awareness as reflected in the conservation, ecological services, global change and sustainable activities at odds with economic growth and tensions caused by social injustice in tropical regions have placed Amazonia under a worldwide spotlight in terms of collective consciousness for nature preservation. To reduce human impact and simultaneously preserve indigenous and other traditional cultures have been top priorities in the agendas of most Non Governmental Organizations. The level of scientific publications on different aspects of biological diversity in Brazilian Amazonia has been constantly improving. Similarly, public and private institutions are experiencing new

Desenvolvimento sustentável do Marajó, Pará: uma visão a partir do Barômetro da Sustentabilidade

Este trabalho apresenta uma analise da sustentabilidade de 16 municipios que compoem a mesorregiao do Marajo, Para. A pesquisa utilizou o Barometro da Sustentabilidade (BS) como ferramenta de analise e empregou 20 indicadores para o bem-estar humano (dimensao socioeconomica) e 06 para o bem-estar ecologico (dimensao ambiental). A abordagem do Barometro da Sustentabilidade indicou que os municipios do Marajo variam de “potencialmente insustentavel” a “intermediario”. O Marajo mostrou um quadro de desequilibrio em relacao ao nivel de sustentabilidade dos municipios, e a isso associamos a ineficacia dos resultados de politicas publicas integradas aliada a discrepância dos diferentes modelos de gestao municipal.

The Socioecological Implications of Land Use and Landscape Change in the Brazilian Amazon

The search for a sustainable model of development for the Brazilian Amazon has underpinned an increasing number of public policy decisions and new legislation governing how land is managed in order to conserve and maintain ecosystem functions and services. ‘Socio-environmentalism’ constitutes a relatively recent paradigm of Brazilian public policy that emerged in the 1990s as a response to poorly planned infrastructure projects and continued deforestation that undermined the conservation of biodiversity and the resilience of the socioecological system established by traditional and indigenous communities. However, the rapid development of agribusiness across many parts of the region, together with a large number of new major infrastructure developments including mega-dams, roads and large mining projects, continues to generate conflict with traditional populations and smallholders and cause widespread ecological degradation. This chapter presents an overview of land use systems in the Brazilian Amazon and analyses two development models associated with starkly different historical trajectories of landscape change: landscapes dominated by community-based projects and small farmers (termed ‘social-nature landscapes’, strongly influenced by the socio-environmentalist movement) and landscapes dominated by large-scale agriculture (‘neo-nature’ landscapes, strongly influenced by the agribusiness sector). We discuss the social and ecological implications of these two contrasting models for sustainable development in the region.