Stephan Schwartzman

The End of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Government commitments and market transitions lay the foundation for an effort to save the forest and reduce carbon emission. Brazil has two major opportunities to end the clearing of its Amazon forest and to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions substantially. The first is its formal announcement within United Nations climate treaty negotiations in 2008 of an Amazon deforestation reduction target, which prompted Norway to commit

Social Movements and Large-Scale Tropical Forest Protection on the Amazon Frontier: Conservation From Chaos:

1 billion if it sustains progress toward this target (1). The second is a widespread marketplace transition within the beef and soy industries, the main drivers of deforestation, to exclude Amazon deforesters from their supply chains (2) [supplementary online material (SOM), section (§) 4]. According to our analysis, these recent developments finally make feasible the end of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which could result in a 2 to 5% reduction in global carbon emissions. The

Forest carbon in Amazonia: the unrecognized contribution of indigenous territories and protected natural areas

7 to

Nature and culture in Central Brazil: Panará natural resource concepts and tropical forest conservation.

18 billion beyond Brazils current budget outlays that may be needed to stop the clearing [a range intermediate to previous cost estimates (3, 4)] could be provided by the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) mechanism for compensating deforestation reduction that is under negotiation within the UN climate treaty (5), or by payments for tropical forest carbon credits under a U.S. cap-and-trade system (6).

Policy Update: Amazon deforestation and Brazil’s forest code: a crossroads for climate change

Amazon social movements arose, like many others globally, in conflicts with political and economic elites over land use and resource extraction. Amazon social movements have moved beyond protest to protagonize large-scale forest protection. The article examines the history of the Transamazon highway colonists’ movement and its articulation of an alternative vision of regional sustainable development, leading to successful advocacy for the creation of a 5.6 million-hectare reserve mosaic in the Xingu river basin. The mosaic connected two blocks of indigenous territories ultimately forming a 30 million-hectare protected forest corridor, halting frontier expansion. While much recent conservation literature critiques international environmentalist agendas in tropical forest conservation, the Transamazon movement’s alliance with environmentalists was mutually beneficial. Amazon social movements’ substantial role in a global increase in protected tropical forest areas since the 1970s merits more attention from both international conservation organizations and scientists.

Inhibition of Amazon Deforestation and Fire by Parks and Indigenous Lands

Carbon sequestration is a widely acknowledged and increasingly valued function of tropical forest ecosystems; however, until recently, the information needed to assess the carbon storage capacity of Amazonian indigenous territories (ITs) and protected natural areas (PNAs) in a global context remained either lacking or out of reach. Here, as part of a novel north–south collaboration among Amazonian indigenous and non-governmental organization (NGO) networks, scientists and policy experts, we show that the nine-nation network of nearly 3000 ITs and PNAs stores more carbon above ground than all of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia combined, and, despite the ostensibly secure status of these cornerstones of Amazon conservation, a conservative risk assessment considering only ongoing and planned development projects puts nearly 20% of this carbon at risk, encompassing an area of tropical forest larger than that found in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru combined. International recognition of and renewed investment in these globally vital landscapes are therefore critical to ensuring their continued contribution to maintaining cultural identity, ecosystem integrity and climate stability.

Rethinking Tropical Forest Conservation: Perils in Parks

The Panará, a Gê tribe of Central Brazil, were nearly exterminated when the government opened a road through the center of their territory in the early 1970s. The survivors were relocated, and 15 yr later returned to reoccupy their remaining territory. The story of the Panará is representative of the Brazilian Indians of the Amazon, who since the 1970s have won recognition of their rights to more than 1 million km2 or 20% of the Amazon—the largest expanse of tropical forest under any form of protection in the world. The article examines how Panará natural resource concepts have informed this process of dislocation and return, as well as their implications for the long-term sustainability of the Panará territory.

Tropical Deforestation and the Kyoto Protocol

Considerably more is at stake in the ongoing battle in Brazil’s Congress and government over the country’s core forest protection legislation, the Forest Code, than President Dilma Rousseff ’s political fortunes or Brazil’s international reputation. The Amazon, and Brazil, will likely have more effect on global climate change than is often realized – for better or worse. Decisive action now to consolidate Brazil’s gains in reducing Amazon deforestation is critical to keeping open the option of containing global warming within manageable limits. Recent field studies as well as comprehensive modeling suggest that the combined effects of climate change in tandem with deforestation and the resulting fires may be pushing the Amazon ever closer to large-scale forest dieback. If such dieback occurs it will not only accelerate GHG emissions, but limit the options for forest preservation in the future. Modeling suggests that changing rainfall patterns and more frequent, widespread fires may be pushing the Amazon forest vegetation in the eastern and southern Amazon from moist evergreen forest to seasonal forest and savanna. When such a change occurs it results in emissions of large amounts of GHGs to the atmosphere. Field studies over the last decade that address the relationships among deforestation, forest degradation, climate change and fires suggest that forest ecosystems historically too moist to burn, even during prolonged dry seasons, are becoming increasingly drought-stressed and susceptible to fires and, consequently, to degradation [1–5]. Forests once affected by fire are now more likely to burn a second time, such that the process may become self-reinforcing, leading to increasing degradation and loss of carbon stocks. Experimental data shows that a forests’ ability to function as a carbon sink is measurably reduced even after just two consecutive drought years [6]. In 2005 and 2010 [7] the Amazon experienced two 100-year droughts, requiring water supplies to be flown in to river-dependent communities and causing massive mortality in fish populations, while this year’s record-setting floods in the states of Acre and Amazonas inundated cities, leaving tens of thousands homeless. Predictions of the effects of climate change on the Amazonian region include increased precipitation and more drying. A meta-ana lysis of coupled global circulation models using 19 global climate models found increased drought stress in the eastern Amazon in the 21st century and climatic conditions more favorable to seasonal forests than moist tropical forests [8]. More recently, leading international climate and vegetation modeling groups under the coordination of the World Bank, using the Japan Meteorological Agency Earth Simulator, results from 24 general circulation models, the Lund-Potsdam-Jena Land Dynamic Global Vegetation and Water Balance Model, and Brazil’s Center for Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies (CPTEC) vegetation model, assessed probabilities of Amazon dieback under various IPCC global GHG emissions trajectories [9]. This is the first comprehensive effort to analyze the combined effects of climate “ Decisive action now to consolidate Brazil’s gains in reducing Amazon deforestation is critical to keeping open the option of