Model Shows Amazon Conservation Strategies Inadequate
April 10, 2006
Simulations of future Amazon deforestation show that current conservation strategies focusing on protected areas are insufficient, according to a report published March 22 in the journal Nature.
Researchers at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Woods Hole Research Center, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental dan Amazonia and Yale University’s environment school say “frontier governance,” which includes enforcement of mandatory forest reserves on private properties through a satellite-based licensing system, agro-ecological zoning of land use and the expansion of the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program, will slow current deforestation rates.
“With business as usual, even the Amazon will be a highly converted, fragmented and degraded tropical region with major global significance for climate, biodiversity and rural livelihoods, said Lisa Curran, associate professor of tropical resources at Yale and one of the co-authors of the report along with Daniel Nepstad who holds a Ph.D. from F&ES. “Moreover, even uninhabited frontier regions, such as Bornean protected forests, have been subjected to global market forces after 30 years of frontier development.”
Conservation measures simulated in the “governance” scenario would reduce the number of imperiled watersheds, eco-regions and mammalian species by about two-thirds, and would reduce carbon emissions to the atmosphere equivalent to two years of global human-induced emissions. The potential decrease in Amazon carbon emissions is more than eightfold the worldwide decrease in greenhouse gas emissions that will be achieved during the first period of the Kyoto Protocol, which proposes targets on the reduction of the carbon emissions of industrialized nations.
The researchers say that conservation achievements of this magnitude are unlikely to result from enforcement of environmental laws alone, but instead would become more likely as international markets impose higher environmental standards on beef, soy and other food commodities.
Expanding cattle ranching and soy industries aided by the construction of highways will eliminate 40 percent of Amazon forests by 2050, including at least two-thirds of the forest cover of six major watersheds and 12 eco-regions, releasing 8 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere. One-quarter of the 382 mammalian species examined will lose more than 40 percent of the forest within their Amazon ranges.
In the most optimistic “governance” scenario, the protected-areas network would expand to 41 percent from 32 percent and all of the forests in the protected areas would be preserved intact, with only 50 percent of the forests outside protected areas subject to deforestation (Brazilian regulations permit only 20 percent deforestation). In a business-as-usual scenario, new protected areas will not be created and 40 percent of the forests inside and 85 percent outside protected areas will be removed. In all of the model’s eight scenarios, future deforestation is concentrated in the eastern Amazon, where the density of paved highways will continue to be highest for several decades.
The researchers say the current Amazon protected-areas network maintains mammalian diversity, but impoverishment of critical watersheds and ecoregions will not be avoided in the face of growing development pressures. Regional rainforest ecosystems, they say, will collapse if lands outside protected areas are not conserved.
Researchers at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Woods Hole Research Center, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental dan Amazonia and Yale University’s environment school say “frontier governance,” which includes enforcement of mandatory forest reserves on private properties through a satellite-based licensing system, agro-ecological zoning of land use and the expansion of the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program, will slow current deforestation rates.
“With business as usual, even the Amazon will be a highly converted, fragmented and degraded tropical region with major global significance for climate, biodiversity and rural livelihoods, said Lisa Curran, associate professor of tropical resources at Yale and one of the co-authors of the report along with Daniel Nepstad who holds a Ph.D. from F&ES. “Moreover, even uninhabited frontier regions, such as Bornean protected forests, have been subjected to global market forces after 30 years of frontier development.”
Conservation measures simulated in the “governance” scenario would reduce the number of imperiled watersheds, eco-regions and mammalian species by about two-thirds, and would reduce carbon emissions to the atmosphere equivalent to two years of global human-induced emissions. The potential decrease in Amazon carbon emissions is more than eightfold the worldwide decrease in greenhouse gas emissions that will be achieved during the first period of the Kyoto Protocol, which proposes targets on the reduction of the carbon emissions of industrialized nations.
The researchers say that conservation achievements of this magnitude are unlikely to result from enforcement of environmental laws alone, but instead would become more likely as international markets impose higher environmental standards on beef, soy and other food commodities.
Expanding cattle ranching and soy industries aided by the construction of highways will eliminate 40 percent of Amazon forests by 2050, including at least two-thirds of the forest cover of six major watersheds and 12 eco-regions, releasing 8 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere. One-quarter of the 382 mammalian species examined will lose more than 40 percent of the forest within their Amazon ranges.
In the most optimistic “governance” scenario, the protected-areas network would expand to 41 percent from 32 percent and all of the forests in the protected areas would be preserved intact, with only 50 percent of the forests outside protected areas subject to deforestation (Brazilian regulations permit only 20 percent deforestation). In a business-as-usual scenario, new protected areas will not be created and 40 percent of the forests inside and 85 percent outside protected areas will be removed. In all of the model’s eight scenarios, future deforestation is concentrated in the eastern Amazon, where the density of paved highways will continue to be highest for several decades.
The researchers say the current Amazon protected-areas network maintains mammalian diversity, but impoverishment of critical watersheds and ecoregions will not be avoided in the face of growing development pressures. Regional rainforest ecosystems, they say, will collapse if lands outside protected areas are not conserved.
Image courtesy NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan
This image shows the extent of deforestation in the state of Rondonia, Brazil. Acquired by the Advance Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on August 24, 2000, the false-color image combines near-infrared, red, and green light. Tropical rainforest appears bright green, while pale green and brown areas represent cleared land. Black and gray areas have probably been recently burned. The Jiparaná River appears blue.
