The driving force behind deforestation in Amazônia

More than 50% of the biome’s greenhouse gas emissions are caused by demand from the rest of Brazil and abroad for inputs produced in the region, finds study.

By Elton Alisson

Agência FAPESP – Brazil’s internal consumption and exports of soybean, beef and other primary products from the Amazon are responsible for more than half of the deforestation rate and greenhouse gas emissions of the biome.

These are the findings of a study conducted by researchers at the School of Economics, Business and Accounting at the Universidade de São Paulo (FEA–USP) under the auspices of the Thematic Project, conducted as part of the FAPESP Research Program on Global Climate Change (PFPMCG).

The results of the study were presented on September 12 during the 1st National Conference on Global Climate Change (Conclima), held by FAPESP in partnership with the Brazilian Research Network on Global Climate Change (Rede Clima) and the National Institute of Science and Technology for Climate Change (INCT-MC) in São Paulo.

“Half of the greenhouse gas emissions in Amazônia occur because of consumer demand outside the region for products to supply the internal market or for exports,” said Joaquim José Martins Guilhoto, a professor at FEA and one of the researchers on the project.

According to the data presented by the researcher, in 2005, Brazil emitted more than 2.1 gigatons of CO2 equivalent. The Amazon contributed more than 50% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. The data were obtained from the second National Inventory of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, covering the period 1990-2005 and published at the end of 2010.

To identify and understand the economic factors causing deforestation and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions in the Amazon in that year, the researchers made a map of the direct emissions by productive activity, separating the Amazon Region from the rest of Brazil, and calculated the CO2 equivalent contribution and export participation of each.

The calculations revealed that direct exports from the Amazon are responsible for 16.98% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the region. Exports to the remainder of the country are responsible for more than 6.29% of the Amazônia’s emissions because the products that come from the region are processed and exported by other Brazilian states.

Internal consumption, on the other hand, accounted for 46.13% of Amazon emissions; 30.01% of the total emissions were associated with consumption in the rest of the country, and 16.12% were associated with consumption in the Amazon region.

“The sum of these percentages shows that more than 50% of greenhouse gas emissions in the Amazon occur because of the consumption of goods that are produced in the region but consumed outside of it,” affirmed Guilhoto. “This finding indicates that external factors are more important than internal factors for explaining greenhouse emissions throughout Amazônia.”

According to the study, livestock, soybean products and other agricultural products contributed most to greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, the production of furniture and other products are very dependent on inputs produced in the region.

“The data obtained in the studies show that in general, although Amazônia has a much greater dependence on products produced by the rest of Brazil, the rest of Brazil’s dependence on this biome plays out in inputs strongly related to greenhouse gas emissions in the region,” sums up Guilhoto.

Reducing deforestation

Another study conducted by FEA researchers under the auspices of the Thematic Project found that between 2002 and 2009, there was a major expansion in Brazilian agriculture and livestock production and a drastic reduction in the deforestation of Amazônia.

Sugarcane, soy and corn accounted for 95% of the net expansion in the growing area, while the bovine herd saw a growth of 26 million head of cattle. In this same period, the rate of deforestation in Amazônia decreased by 79%.

To investigate the main vectors of deforestation in the country, because a portion of the growth in agriculture and livestock production occurred outside Amazônia, the researchers conducted a study of the country’s six biomes using integrated spatial analysis.

To conduct this analysis, the researchers used data on deforestation obtained from the Proedes Projeto, the Environment Ministry and the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama), in addition to georeferenced images obtained by the Landsat satellites of the U.S. space agency, NASA.

The study revealed that in the period 2002-2009, some 12.062 million hectares were deforested in Amazônia, 10.015 million hectares in the Cerrado, 1.846 million hectares in the Caatinga, 447,000 hectares in the Pantanal, 375,000 hectares in the Atlantic Rainforest and 257,000 hectares in the Pampa.

“The sum of these numbers indicates that in seven years, Brazil has deforested an area equivalent to that of São Paulo State and Minas Gerais Triangle or Great Britain,” calculated Rafael Feltran-Barbieri, a researcher at FEA and one of the authors of the study.

According to the researcher, one of the study’s main conclusions was that other biomes are serving as a type of “silencer” of deforestation in Amazônia.

“When we consider the expansion of agriculture and livestock in Brazil as a whole, we see that the majority of the reduction in deforestation rates in the Amazônia is due to the fact that other biomes are suffering these consequences [registering an increase in deforestation],” he affirmed.

Another of the study’s conclusions is that there is a synergistic impact of the vectors on deforestation in Brazil because the expansion of several agriculture and livestock activities, such as sugarcane and soybean growing and cattle raising, occurs concomitantly and because these activities compete for land.

In the case of sugarcane, one finding was that between 2002 and 2009, crops began to occupy areas deforested by livestock activities, although sugarcane production itself does not cause deforestation.

“We are realizing that there is an almost complementary formation between the expansion [in the different biomes], and this makes the effects deforestation correlated,” said Feltran-Barbieri.

“These findings lead to the conclusion that if Brazil intends to take a responsible position in relation to climate change – and this will depend on livestock – the country must carry out strategic planning for the area because sectorial planning is not enough to understand these synergistic effects,” he explained.