پویایی فقر، موقوفات محیطی، و استفاده از زمین در میان خرده مالکان در آمازون برزیل

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.

In recent decades, poverty and inequality appear to have declined across the Amazon, in tandem with rapid, increased deforestation (Guedes et al., 2012; Ludewigs et al., 2009). Because deforestation is an immediate and highly public impact of human activities on the tropical rainforest, environmental and social scientists have expressed concern about its pace across the region. These concerns are focused especially on the conversion of primary forest to land uses such as slash-and-burn agriculture or extensive pasture for cattle (Walker et al., 2000). The environmental impacts of these land-use decisions have pushed some policy makers to propose public and state interventions aimed at curbing deforestation, notably, the reduction of investments in road-building with the aim of reducing accessibility to farms in the Amazon, increasing transportation costs, and decreasing urban–rural interaction (Fearnside, 2005). Despite these efforts, continued recent road network expansion projects have increased market accessibility throughout the Amazon (IIRSA, 2009 and Pfaff et al., 2009). The expansion of infrastructure projects and agribusiness in the face of political resistance suggests a lack of consensus regarding how to create opportunities for sustainable development (Lima et al., 2011).