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Contentious Land Change in the Amazon's Arc of Deforestation

2011; American Association of Geographers; Volume: 102; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00045608.2011.620501

1467-8306

Stephen Aldrich, Robert Walker, Cynthia Simmons, Marcellus M. Caldas, Stephen G. Perz,

Land Rights and Reforms

Abstract Land change in the Amazon is driven by numerous factors including fiscal incentives, infrastructure, transportation costs, migration, and household decision making. Largely missing from the story to date, however, is the role of contentious social processes, including contention over land resources. By employing a case study of land conflict over a largeholding in southeastern Pará, Brazil, and a regional-scale statistical model, we describe contentious land change (C-LC) in an area with a long history of antagonism between largeholders and the rural poor. We fuse the conceptual frameworks of political ecology with the methodological approaches of land change science to show that deforestation in the area of study is enhanced due to the interaction of diverse and adversarial agents rather than the independent actions of isolated land managers deforesting according to the dictates of microeconomic optimization. C-LC is a process of global reach and must therefore be added to the topical range of land change science. A combination of the explanatory richness of political ecology with the methodological rigor of land change science greatly enhances our understanding of land change processes. Numerosos factores intervienen en el proceso de cambios de la tierra en el Amazonas, entre los cuales se cuentan los incentivos fiscales, la infraestructura, costos de transporte, migración y la toma de decisiones a nivel familiar. Sin embargo, hasta la fecha aparece en gran medida ignorado el papel que tienen procesos sociales polémicos, incluyendo el debate sobre los recursos de la tierra. Mediante un estudio de caso sobre un latifundio del sur de Pará, en Brasil, y de un modelo estadístico a escala regional, describimos el cambio disputado de la tierra (C-LC) en un área que tiene un largo historial de antagonismo entre latifundistas y los campesinos pobres. Fusionamos el marco conceptual de la ecología política con los enfoques metodológicos de la ciencia de transformación de la tierra para mostrar que la deforetación en el área de estudio se incrementa más por la interacción de agentes diversos y antagónicos que por las acciones independientes de aislados administradores de tierras que deforestan de acuerdo con los dictados de la optimización microeconómica. El C-LC es un proceso de alcance global y tiene por eso que agregarse al ámbito temático de la ciencia de la transformación de la tierra. Combinando la riqueza explicativa de la ecología política con el rigor metodológico de la ciencia de la transformación de la tierra se fortalece grandemente nuestra comprensión de los procesos del cambio de la tierra. Key Words: Amazondeforestationland change scienceland reformpolitical ecology关键词: 亚马逊森林砍伐土地变化科学土地制度改革政治生态Palabras clave: Amazonasdeforestaciónciencia de la transformación de la tierrareforma agrariaecología política Acknowledgments This article was based on data collected through the support of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grant 193247145, Geography and Regional Science (GRS) program. Some data presented were collected under NSF-GRS 0522062, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Large-Scale Biosphere–Atmosphere experiment in Amazonia (NCC5–694). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or other statements are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the agencies that helped support this work. The authors would like to acknowledge the helpful suggestions of the reviewers and editor and thank them for their assistance. We also acknowledge and thank the employees of the City of Marabá's Municipal "Casa da Cultura" and the organizers of the Exposição de Agropecuária de Marabá for allowing us access to the resources and events they planned while we conducted our work. Finally, Stephen Aldrich would like to thank Rosalie Aldrich and Carl Klarner for their comments on drafts of this article. Notes 1. Brazil's legal code also provides for similar outcomes for certain criminal infractions (Aldrich Citation2009). 2. In other words, as a category of land change, C-LC would expand the land change science "drivers" of land change, focusing on how processes of land change involve social interaction between agents of interest; contentious actions and reactions lead to land change in many conflict areas (in places we would label "war zones" and in less contentious zones such as our own neighborhoods, cities, and towns). For example, many parts of the United States are currently experiencing a low-level conflict over land uses and land covers as service-based economies replace production-based ones, and suburban and exurban sprawl continue. P. A. Walker and Fortmann (Citation2003) showed these conflicts as commonplace in the western United States, as rural residents and exurbanites clash over land use. Another current example is illegal logging in Afghanistan; in a strange reversal, landscape conservation attempts have turned forests into funding sources for insurgency (Trofimov 2010). 3. Bala do Sul and Machado are pseudonyms meant to avoid singling out a property and a family, respectively. The events referred to are real and pertain to one specific property and family (i.e., they are not assembled from multiple examples) but provide a good overall narrative of DALR and largeholder responses to it. Titles for bibliographic references explicitly mentioning these entities have also been modified, but the corresponding author is willing to provide unmodified references on request. Figures showing land cover change on the property have been modified to avoid a similar focus on a single property given that most properties experiencing contention in the region display similar land cover trends. 4. In 1986 a national forestry code was established through the passage of Law 7.511 of 7 July, which itself was a slightly altered version of Law 4.771 of 16 September 1965. The initial forest code mandated that a forest reserve equaling 20 percent of the total property size be maintained on all properties in the forested portions of the Legal Amazon, an officially designated region consisting of the states of Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, and about half of Maranhão. In 1989 the forest reserve requirement was increased to 50 percent of the property (Law 7.803 of 18 July) and remained at that level until provisional measure number 2.166–67 of 24 August 2001 increased the required forest cover proportion to 80 percent. 5. With the exception of 2003, land-cover data have cloud cover standardized across all time periods, meaning the percentages reported do not include areas where cloud cover obscured the classification of remotely sensed imagery. For 2003, extra cloud cover overstates deforestation somewhat, although substantial clearing does appear to take place. 6. There are many types of agrarian reform settlement designations in Brazil, including ones specifically established for extractive uses, but in the southeastern part of Pará the most common settlement is a Projeto de Assentamento (PA) or Settlement Project.