ABSTRACT
Amazonia
has tremendous quantities of primary resources. Resources include traditional
commodities such as minerals, hydropower, agriculture and ranching, timber,
non-timber forest products, and tourism.
In addition, benefits are obtained through cultural, scientific and
environmental resources. Environmental
services include biodiversity maintenance, carbon storage, and water cycling.
In
many cases, exploitation of traditional commodities brings little benefit to
local populations in the region. Limits
of various kinds restrain the area and the intensity of resource
exploitation. Use of one resources often
precludes obtaining the benefits of other resources, the most widespread
instance being loss of benefits of forest when it is converted to cattle
pasture. Environmental services of
standing forest represent a major potential source of value that is presently
unrewarded by the world economy. The
challenge of turning environmental services into a means of supporting the
human population in the region and maintaining the forest should be the top
priority in efforts to develop Amazonian resources.
Key Words: Amazonia, Resources,
Environmental Services, Rain Forest, Global Warming, Biodiversity
RESUMO
A
Amazônia possui grande quantidade de recursos primários. Recursos incluem mercadorias tradicionais
tais como, minerais, energia hidrelétrica, produtos agropecuários, madeira,
produtos florestais não madeireiros, e turismo.
Além disso, benefícios são obtidos através de recursos culturais,
científicos e ambientais. Serviços
ambientais incluem a manutenção da biodiversidade, o armazenamento de carbono e
a ciclagem de água.
Em
muitos casos, a exploração de mercadorias tradicionais traz pouco benefícios às
populações locais na região. Limites de
vários tipos restringem a área e a intensidade de exploração dos recursos. O uso de um determinado recurso
frequentemente elimina a possibilidade de obter os benefícios de outros
recursos, um bom exemplo disto é a perda dos benefícios da floresta quando esta
é convertida em pastagens. Os serviços
ambientais da floresta em pé representam uma fonte de valor potencialmente
grande que atualmente fica sem recompensa pela economia mundial. O desafio de tornar os serviços ambientais em
um meio de sustentar a população humana da regiao e de manter a floresta deve
ser a primeira prioridade nos esforços para desenvolver os recursos amazônicos.
I. INTRODUCTION
A.
WHAT IS AMAZONIA?
Depending
on definition, 4-7 million km2 in area, including in Brazil
the Tocantins/Araguaia basin (which drains into the Pará
River, interconnected with the
mouth of the Amazon) and the small river basins in Amapá that drain directly
into the Atlantic.
Forests drained by coastal rivers in French Guiana,
Suriname and Guyana
are also often considered as part of Amazonia, sometimes
called "Greater Amazonia." The
Amazon River watershed totals 7,350,621 km2,
of which 824,000 km2 (11.2%) are in Bolivia,
4,982,000 km2 (67.8%) are in Brazil,
406,000 km2 (5,5%) are in Colombia,
123,000 km2 (1.7%) are in Ecuador,
5,870 km2 (0.1%) are in Guyana,
956,751 km2 (13.0%) are in Peru
and 53,000 km2 (0.7%) are in Venezuela
(TCA, nd [1992]: 9). In addition,
"Greater Amazonia" encompasses Suriname
(142,800 km2), French Guiana (91,000 km2),
and the part of Guyana
outside of the Amazon River watershed (211,239 - 5870 =
205,369 km2), bringing the total area of "Greater
Amazonia" to 7,789,790 km2.
In
Brazil, the
"Legal Amazon" is a 5 million km2 administrative region
comprised of 9 states (Figure 1). One
million km2 of the region was not originally forested, being covered
by various kinds of savanna (especially the cerrado, or central
Brazilian scrub savanna). The Legal
Amazon was created in 1953 and slightly modified in extent in 1977. Because special subsidies and development
programs apply within the region, its borders were drawn just far enough south
to include the city of Cuiabá (Mato Grosso), and just far enough east to
include the city of São Luís (Maranhao) (both outside of the portion that is
geographically Amazonian).
[Figure
1 here]
B.
WHAT IS A RESOURCE?
What
is a "resource?" The term is
usually used to refer to something that is useful to humans. The 'thing' in question normally has to be in
short supply; for example, people don't think of air as a resource unless it is
made unavailable, as through pollution.
An
important area of inconsistency is whether items are considered resources if
they are not usable now, but might become useful in the future. This condition applies to many potential
resources in Amazonia today, such as much of the
region's germplasm, the secondary compounds in plants and animals, presently
unused timber species, and mineral deposits and hydroelectric sites that would
not be profitable if exploited today.
Valuation of potential resources can be based on a Baysian approach,
multiplying the monetary value of the item if used by probability of its being
used, in order to obtain the expected monetary value (EMV) (cf. Raiffa, 1968). In some cases, it would be appropriate to
apply discounting based on the time that monetary benefits would accrue, but in
other cases the responsibility of national governments to ensure the well-being
of future generations of citizens is inconsistent with a decision-making
framework based on discounted financial values (as is done by corporate or
individual investors) (see Fearnside, 1989a).
People
often fail to appreciate that resources have value when this value is not
recognized by our current market economy.
Non-monetary benefits (for example for drugs) are often more important
that the money that may be garnered from selling them. Environmental services performed by natural
ecosystems, such as maintaining biodiversity and climate, are currently hardly
recognized at all by the economy, yet represent a major resource in the case of
Amazonia.
Interactions
among resources are important determinants of whether the benefits of the
different potential resources will be reaped.
Some of the most important land uses in Amazonia
represent either/or choices. Forest
versus pasture is the most important case: one can only have the benefits of
one or the other, not both. Such choices
do not apply to all situations: the benefits of both minerals and forest may be
obtainable in some cases, although the frequency of mistaken predictions
(invariably at the expense of forest) is discouraging.
The
definition and evaluation of resources depends on, first of all, for whom the
resources are expected to serve. The question
of "Resources for whom?" is often left unasked and unanswered,
leaving the implicit assumption that the benefits are from the perspective of
economic actors in the national (or international) economy. The interests of native inhabitants and other
forest peoples are often not well served by extraction and sale of the
'resources' identified in this way, and decisions about what is a resource
would be very different if the interests of these groups were given top
priority.
An
important question in assessing resources is whether one counts 'resources,'
such as timber, that are located in national parks, indigenous lands and other
areas where exploitation is prohibited.
By presenting figures and maps that imply that such 'resources' are
'available,' one is, in fact, encouraging the alteration of legislation or
creation of loopholes in order to allow the 'resources' to be exploited. This concern has, in fact, led the
Ecological-Economic Zoning (ZEE) maps produced by the Brazilian Institute for
Geography and Statistics (IBGE) for the zoning effort coordinated by the
Secretariat of Strategic Affairs (SAE) to not indicate such resources
within protected areas, leaving these areas blank on the maps.
II. TYPES OF RESOURCES
A.
MINERALS
Amazonia
has significant mineral resources, including iron, aluminum, copper, gold, tin
and kaolin, as well as some rare minerals such as niobium. Oil and gas deposits, especially in western Amazonia,
are substantial. In Brazil, the most
comprehensive survey was that conducted by the RADAMBRASIL Project in the 1970s
using side-looking airborne radar (SLAR) supplemented by field sampling
(Brazil, Projeto RADAMBRASIL, 1973‑1982).
A review of mineral resources in Brazilian Amazonia has been compiled by
dos Santos (1981). More recent discoveries are contained in
Kashida et al. (1990) and Brito (1995).
Mining,
while destroying relatively little forest directly, is a significant influence
in other ways. These include the
building of roads to mineral-rich areas, and the processing of ores in the
region in ways that consume forest.
Carajás, with the world's largest high-grade iron ore deposit, is
coupled to a regional development plan that produces pig iron from some of the
ore. Charcoal, used both as a reducing
agent and as an energy source, comes largely from native forest wood--contrary
to the claims of the steel mill owners (Fearnside, 1989b). If fully implemented, supplying charcoal to
this scheme would require deforesting as much as 1500 km2/year (Anderson,
1990).
B.
HYDROPOWER
Hydropower
generation sites, and water resources in general, represent a major potential
resource about which many key decisions are still pending. Exploitation of much of the potential would
have heavy environmental costs and would flood large areas of indigenous land
(Fearnside, 1989c, 1995a). The 2010 Plan
(Brazil, ELETROBRÁS, 1987) suggested that 100,000 MW of installed capacity
could be implanted in Brazilian Amazonia if all sites were exploited. Subsequent revisions of the plan have successively
postponed the dates for given dam-building projects, but have not altered the
ultimate total, which would flood 10 million ha, or about 3% of the Amazonian
forest (Brazil, ELETROBRÁS, 1987: 150; see Fearnside, 1995b).
C.
AGRICULTURE AND RANCHING
The
vast area of Amazonia means that the region could
represent a major source of food if productive agriculture and/or ranching
could be implanted and maintained in a significant part of the region. However, the vast areas are deceptive because
of severe limiting factors restraining the expansion and the per-hectare yields
of agriculture and ranching systems.
These include poor soils, limited sources of fertilizer (especially
deposits of phosphates), markets for products, and the environmental impacts of
forest removal.
A
report on Brazil's phosphate deposits published by the Ministry of Mines and
Energy indicates that only one small deposit exists in Amazonia, located on the
Atlantic coast near the border of Pará and Maranhão (de Lima, 1976) (Fig. 2). In addition to the deposit's small size, it
has the disadvantage of being made up of aluminum compounds that render its
agricultural use suboptimal, but not impossible if new technologies were
developed for fertilizer manufacture (dos Santos, 1981: 178). An additional deposit has been reported at
Maecuru, Pará, but estimation of its size is incomplete (Beisiegel and de
Souza, 1986). Almost all of Brazil's
phosphates are in Minas Gerais, a site very distant from most of Amazonia. Brazil as a whole is not blessed with a
particularly large stock of phosphate‑‑the United States, for
example, has deposits about 20 times larger (de Lima, 1976). In Peru,
the country's phosphates are located on the Pacific
Coast, in the state of Piura
(Fenster and León, 1979). On a global
scale most phosphates are located in Africa (Sheldon,
1982). Continuation of post‑World
War II trends in phosphate use would exhaust the world's stocks by the middle
of the next century (Smith et al., 1972; United States, CEQ and
Department of State, 1980). Although
simple extrapolation of these trends is questionable because of limits to
continued human population increase at past rates (Wells, 1976), the conversion
of a substantial portion of Amazonia to fertilized
pasture would greatly hasten the day when stocks of phosphate are exhausted in Brazil
and in the world. Brazil
would be wise to ponder carefully whether its remaining stocks of this limited
resource should be allocated to Amazonian pastures.
[Figure
2 here]
Assumptions
regarding the potential of Amazonia as an agricultural
resource are key factors in global estimates of human carrying capacity
(Fearnside, 1986a). Roger Revelle (1976)
calculated that the earth could support 40 billion people, assuming large
increases in per-hectare yields and use of all land that he thought 'available'
(including Amazonia).
Revelle's assumptions regarding high input agriculture in Amazonia
are at variance with a number of known limitations in the region (see Revelle,
1987; Fearnside, 1987a). The Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) suggested that the earth
could support 36 billion if uncultivated areas (including Amazonia)
were converted to US-level agriculture (Pawley, 1971). Denevan (1973), in a reaction to the FAO
estimate's assumption of an Amazonia completely
converted to agriculture, raised the alarm against the "imminent demise of
the Amazon rain forest." Estimates
such as those of Pawley (1971) and Revelle (1976) may be the origin of former
US president Ronald Reagan's belief that 'farm studies' had shown that the
earth could support 28 billion people (Holden, 1980: 989).
In
the early 1980s, FAO, together with the United Nations Fund for Population
Activities (UNFPA) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
(IIASA), calculated that Brazil
could support 7 billion people if Amazonia were
converted to high-input agriculture (Higgins et al., 1982: 104). Unfortunately, a variety of limitations are
overlooked that prevent widespread conversion to high-input agriculture (see
Fearnside, 1990). One of the factors
leading to the high carrying capacity values the FAO/UNFPA/IIASA study ascribed
to Amazonia is the assumption that land quality in
uncultivated areas is equal to that in already cultivated ones. The study goes so far as to claim that
"there is evidence that the productivity of the reserves may be higher,
but, for the sake of simplicity, it is assumed that the potential productivity
of the unused land is the same as that of the land under cultivation"
(FAO, 1984: 43). Unfortunately, as is
true in most parts of the planet, the best land is brought into cultivation
first, with land quality progressively declining in new settlement areas until only
very marginal lands remain. In Rondônia,
for example, 42% of the land in colonization projects settled in the 1970s was
classified by a government soil survey as "good for agriculture with low
or medium inputs;" for projects started in the first half of the 1980s,
15% of the land was so classed, while for planned areas the amount is a
minuscule 0.13% (Fearnside, 1986b).
Land-use
decisions based on permitting the maximum intensity that physical conditions
will allow can quickly pass limits in other spheres when individual allocations
are considered together. One may examine
each cell in a grid in a geographical information system (GIS), comparing the
soil, rainfall, etc., with the demands of a given crop, and conclude that each
individual cell can be allocated to the use in question, and yet arrive at a
global conclusion that is patently unrealistic.
This, for example, is the main explanation of the astronomical figures
mentioned earlier for human carrying capacity estimates for Amazonia
and the world. The implied possibility
of converting all or most of the Amazon region to high‑input mechanized
agriculture runs up against limits of resource availability to supply the
inputs. Amazonia
has virtually no deposits of phosphates; transporting them is expensive and,
when the vast extent of Amazonia is considered, quickly
enters into conflict with the absolute limits of this resource. The temptation is strong to view Amazonia
as a potential cornucopia capable of solving population and land distribution
problems; the limits of applying the intensive agriculture suggested make this
a cruel illusion. These limits are best
illustrated by the inviability of applying to any significant part of Amazonia
the "Yurimaguas technology" for continuous cultivation (see
Fearnside, 1987b, 1988; Walker et al., 1987).
The
"Yurimaguas technology" is the project to develop continuous
cultivation undertaken by North Carolina State University (NCSU), in
conjunction with Peruvian institutions, at Yurimaguas,
Peru (Sánchez et al.,
1982; Nicholaides et al., 1985).
Soil depletion is a fundamental problem that becomes increasingly
expensive and problematic to correct as time proceeds under continuous
cultivation. All nutrients removed in
harvested crops or lost through erosion, leaching and other processes must be
replaced in the form of fertilizers. The
cost of replacing them includes not only the substantial expense of purchasing
fertilizers and transporting them to the site, but also the expense of
identifying which elements are missing, and in what amounts, for each field,
and communicating this information to the farmer in time to allow correction of
the deficiencies before yields are affected.
Input limitations set strict bounds on the expansion of all
fertilizer-demanding agricultural systems, including agroforestry systems
(Fearnside, 1995c).
Markets
for the products would restrict the expansion of many land uses (especially
perennial crops, such as cacao) that might otherwise be desirable choices from
the standpoints of sustainability and environmental impact. Market limits, reflected in falling cacao
prices since 1977, make the advantages of cacao (e.g. Alvim, 1981; Smith
et al., 1995) unlikely to continue for long even in the small portion of
Amazonia that is presently devoted to this land use, let
alone in other areas that might be zoned for expansion of cacao plantations.
The
most obvious limit to expansion of agriculture and ranching in Amazonia
is the area of forest that must be maintained intact. The different forms of land use imply
environmental impacts (with distinct levels of impact depending on whether the
land use proves to be sustainable). The
impact of converting forest to another land use depends not only on the patch
of land for which conversion is being considered, but also on what has been done
with the remainder of the region. As the
cumulative area cleared increases, the danger increases that each additional
hectare of clearing will lead to unacceptable impacts. For example, the risk of species extinctions
increases greatly as the remaining areas of natural forest dwindle. The role of Amazonian forest in the region's
water cycle also implies increasing risk with the scale of deforestation: when
rainfall reductions caused by losses of forest evapotranspiration are added to
the natural variability that characterizes rainfall in the region, the
resulting droughts would cross biological thresholds leading to major impacts
(Fearnside, 1995c). These thresholds
include the drought tolerance of individual tree species and the increased
probability of fire being able to propagate itself in standing forest. Fire entry into standing forest in Brazilian
Amazonia already occurs in areas disturbed by logging (Uhl and Buschbacher,
1985; Uhl and Kauffman, 1990). During
the El Niño drought of 1982/1983, approximately 45,000 km2 of
tropical forest on the island of Borneo
burned when fires escaped from shifting cultivators' fields. Of the 35,000 km2 of this area in
the Indonesian province of East
Kalimantan, at least 8,000 km2 was
primary forest, while 12,000 km2 was selectively logged forest
(Malingreau et al., 1985). In Amazonia,
'mega-El Niño' events have caused widespread conflagrations in the forest four
times over the past 2000 years (Meggers, 1994).
The effect of large-scale deforestation is to turn relatively rare
events like these into something that could recur at much more frequent
intervals. How these dangers are
incorporated into land-use decisions greatly influences the carrying capacity
of the region for humans. If one assumes
that the entire region could be converted to agricultural use without
unacceptable consequences, then the carrying capacity one would calculate would
be much higher than if one assumes that enough forest must remain intact to
keep the risk of environmental catastrophes within defined limits.
D.
TIMBER
Amazonia
has a substantial fraction of the remaining tropical timber resources in the
world. The number of sawmills and level
of timber extraction activity has increased dramatically in recent years, but
is still much less than in forest areas in Asia. This is because southeast Asian forests are
characterized by a higher density of commercially valuable trees. Southeast Asian forests are dominated by a
single plant family (Dipterocarpaceae), making it possible to group the vast
number of individual tree species into only a few categories for the purposes
of sawing and marketing. In addition,
most Asian woods are light in color, making them more valuable in Europe
and North America where consumers are accustomed to light
woods such as oak and maple. Amazonia's
generally dark colored, hard‑to‑saw, and extremely heterogeneous
timber has therefore been spared the pressure of large multinational timber
corporations. Asian woods are usually of
lower density than Amazonian ones, making them more suitable for peeled veneer
(Whitmore and da Silva, 1990). The
approaching end to commercially significant stocks of tropical timber in Asia
can be expected to change this situation radically. FAO data indicate that, as of 1985, only 2%
of internationally traded hardwoods came from all of Latin America,
versus 57% from Asia.
Before the year 2000, Asian forests are expected to be depleted to the
point where they can no longer supply global markets; it seems likely that
technologies would be developed to use Amazonian woods--whether consumers like
them or not. In 1996, entry of Asian
firms began in earnest: Brazil's
Central Bank registered the entry of foreign capital totaling US$ 300 million
during the first 10 months of 1996 for investments in the logging industry in
Brazilian Amazonia, including land purchases (Amazonas em Tempo, 30
October 1996). Logging firms from Malaysia
and China have
purchased a total of 4.5 X 106 ha of forest land in the state of
Amazonas (Amazonas em Tempo, 2 August 1996). While this author views increasing timber
demand as a major threat to Amazonian forests, an alternative view holds that
world demand for tropical forest timber may decline due to substitution from plantations
(Vincent, 1992).
E.
NON-TIMBER FOREST PRODUCTS
What
is known in Brazil
as 'extractivism,' or the harvesting of non-timber forest products (NTFPs)
without cutting down the trees, has been practiced in the Amazonian interior
since the period of the rubber boom (1888-1913). These systems now form the basis for
proposals for 'extractive reserves' as a means of maintaining forest
(Allegretti, 1990; Fearnside, 1989b).
The major justification for promoting the system is its potential for
safeguarding the environmental services of the forest, as the resident
extractivists have a greater stake than hired guards in defending the forest
against ranchers, squatters and loggers.
Non-timber
forest products have commercial value, but the serious economic hardships that
rubber tappers are now suffering in Brazil
with the fall in prices for natural rubber latex is testimony to the limited
flows derived at present. Even so, NTFPs
can compare well with the dominant human use of most deforested areas in Brazil:
cattle pasture. In the Rio Acre Valley
in the state of Acre, 62% of deforestation is for pasture, but this produces
only 7% of the tax on circulation of merchandise (ICM) collected in this area;
by contrast, extractivism resulted in 8% of the deforestation and 84% of the
ICM collected (FUNTAC, 1990: 177). It
should be noted, however, that the value of extractive products varies
tremendously among different parts of Amazonia. Acre is one of the
richest places for extractive products marketed at present, such as rubber and
Brazil nuts.
An
atypical case is the high productivity and local marketing of wild fruits in
the area of Iquitos, Peru
(Peters, 1990; Vasquez and Gentry, 1989).
This situation is exceptional, where a hectare of forest located only 35
km from the second largest market in Amazonia for
perishable wild fruits was the source of an estimate that has been widely
publicized that a very high monetary value can be obtained from presently
marketed products coming from extractivist activities (Peters et al.,
1989). A net present value of US$
6,820/ha was calculated from timber and non-timber products, managed in
perpetuity and discounted at an annual rate of 5%. Only US$ 490 of this total was from
wood. Unfortunately, such a high value
for non-timber products cannot be extrapolated to most of Amazonia. Even so, the value of extractivism is
substantial (Clay and Clement, 1993; Fearnside, 1989b). In 1980, production of 12 Amazonian
extractive commodities had a combined value of US$ 85.0 million, of which
rubber and latex represented US$ 43.5 million, piassava fibers US$ 15.7
million, Brazil nuts US$ 12.8 million, and hearts of palm US$ 8.4 million
(calculated from IBGE data by Allegretti, 1995: 24-26).
F.
CULTURAL RESOURCES
Human
societies, especially indigenous peoples, are highly diverse in Amazonia. The cultural practices and knowledge of these
groups have value, both as sources of traditional 'products' (such as knowledge
of medicinal and other uses of natural species) and as values that need to be
protected independent of foreseeable benefits with market rewards.
G.
TOURISM
Tourism
is one way that intact natural ecosystems can generate monetary flows. Although the flows can be substantial, the
fact that most tourists can be satisfied by seeing only relatively small areas of
forest poses a limit to this use for vast areas of Amazonia.
H.
SCIENTIFIC RESOURCES
The
value of rainforest as a resource for fundamental scientific research has been
argued (Budowski, 1976; Jacobs, 1980; Janzen, 1986; Poore, 1976). Like a number of other values of natural
ecosystems, this value is only partially reflected in potential market rewards.
I.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES
1.)
Environmental Services as Resources
At
present, economic activities in Amazonia almost
exclusively involve taking some material commodity and selling it. Typical commodities include timber, minerals,
the products of agriculture and ranching, and extractivist products like
natural rubber and Brazil nuts. The
potential is much greater, both in terms of monetary value and in terms of
sustainability, for pursuing a radically different strategy for long-term
support: finding ways to tap the environmental services of the forest as a
means of both sustaining the human population and maintaining the forest. Estimates of areas of forest in Amazonia
are for each country in Table I.
[Table
I here]
At
least three classes of environmental services are provided by Amazonian
forests: biodiversity maintenance, carbon storage, and water cycling. The magnitude and value of these services are
poorly quantified, and the diplomatic and other steps through which such
services might be compensated are also in their infancy. These facts do not diminish the importance of
the services nor of focusing effort on providing both the information and the
political will needed to integrate these into the rest of the human economy in
such a way that financial forces act to maintain rather than to destroy the
forest (Fearnside, 1997a).
2.)
Biodiversity Maintenance
Biodiversity
has many types of value, from financial value associated with selling a wide
variety of products, to the use value of the products, to existence values
unrelated to any direct 'use' of a species and its products (Ehrenfeld,
1976). People disagree on what value
should be attached to biodiversity, especially those forms of value not
directly translatable into traditional financial terms by today's
marketplace. While some may think that
biodiversity is worthless except for sale, it is not necessary to convince such
people that biodiversity is valuable; rather, it is sufficient for them to know
that a constituency exists today and is growing, and that this represents a
potential source of financial flows intended to maintain biodiversity. Political scientists estimate that such
willingness to pay already surpasses US$20/ha/year for tropical forest
(Cartwright, 1985).
3.)
Carbon Storage
Carbon
storage, in order to avoid global warming through the greenhouse effect,
represents a major environmental service of Amazonian forests. The way that this benefit is calculated can
have a tremendous effect on the value assigned to maintaining Amazonian
forest. As currently foreseen in the
Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), maintaining carbon stocks is not
considered a service--only deliberate incremental alterations in the flows of
carbon. Even considering only this much
more restrictive view of carbon benefits, the value of Amazonian forests is
substantial. In 1990 (the year to be
used as a baseline for assessing changes in greenhouse gas emissions), Brazil's
13,800 km2/year rate of deforestation was producing net committed
emissions of 263 million tons (t) of CO2-equivalent carbon per year
(Fearnside, 1997b). The benefit of
slowing or stopping this emission is, therefore, substantial. For comparison, the world's 400 million
automobiles emit 550 million t of carbon annually (Flavin, 1989: 35).
Although
a wide variety of views exists on the value of carbon, already enacted carbon
taxes of US$ 45/t in Sweden and the Netherlands and US$ 6.1/t in Finland
indicate that the 'willingness to pay' for this service is already
substantial. This willingness to pay may
increase significantly in the future when the magnitude of potential damage
from global warming becomes more apparent to decision-makers and the general
public. At the level indicated by
current carbon taxes, the global warming damage of Amazon deforestation is
already worth US$ 1.6-11.8 billion/year.
The value of the global warming damage from clearing a hectare of
forested land in Amazonia (US$ 1,200-8,600) is much higher than the purchase
price of land today (see Schneider, 1994).
The calculations in the present paper use US$ 7.3/t C as the value of
permanently sequestered carbon (the 'medium' value from Nordhaus, 1991).
On
many fronts, one of the major challenges to finding rational uses for Amazonian
forest lies in gathering and interpreting relevant information. Making environmental services of the forest
into a basis for sustainable development is, perhaps, the area where
information is most critical. When
comparisons are made among options for combating global warming, avoiding
deforestation is much less frequently the approach chosen than, for example,
planting trees in silvicultural projects.
Even though the potential benefit of avoiding deforestation may be many
times higher and the cost per ton of carbon much lower than in tree-planting
schemes, the latter is more convincing to those who make the choice, in part
because of the greater certainty associated with plantations. Past experience allows reasonable assurance
that investing a given amount in tree planting will sequester the promised
amount of carbon, whereas no such assurance can be had that after investing in
trying to slow deforestation there will be a given number of hectares less
clearing in Amazonia.
Providing better understanding of the dynamics of deforestation, as well
as understanding of deforestation's impacts on biodiversity, carbon storage and
water cycling, is a necessary starting point on the long road to turning
environmental services into a basis for sustainable development in Amazonia.
4.)
Water Cycling
Water
cycling is different from biodiversity and carbon in that impacts of
deforestation in this area fall directly on Brazil
rather than being spread over the world as a whole. Several independent lines of evidence
indicate that about half of the rainfall in the Brazilian Amazon is water that
is recycled through the forest, the rest originating from water vapor blown into
the region directly from the Atlantic Ocean (Shukla et
al., 1990). Because recycled water
is 50%, the volume of water involved is the same amount as one sees flowing in
the Amazon River.
The Amazon is by far the world's largest river in terms of water
flow--over eight times larger than the second largest, Africa's Zare River. Part of the water vapor is transported to Brazil's
Central-South Region, where most of the country's agriculture is located. Brazil's
annual harvest has a gross value of about US$ 65 billion, and dependence of
even a small fraction of this on rainfall from Amazonian water vapor would
translate into a substantial value for Brazil. Although movement of the water vapor is
indicated by global circulation models (Eagleson, 1986; Salati and Vose, 1984),
the amounts involved are as yet unquantified.
III.) TURNING RESOURCES INTO
DEVELOPMENT
Total
annual values of environmental services for biodiversity, carbon and water
cycling are summarized in Table II. The
total value of US$ 55 billion/year for the forests of Greater Amazonia is
sufficient to serve as a basis for sustainable development, even if the amounts
that can be collected and applied should be considerably lower than the value
calculated here.
[Table
II here]
The
term 'development' implies a change, usually presumed to be in the direction of
improvement. What is developed and whom
the improvement should benefit are items of widely differing opinions. This author holds that in order to be
considered 'development,' the change in question must provide a means to
sustain the local population.
Infrastructure that does not lead to production is not development (such
as swimming pool complexes built for small towns in the interior of Roraima
prior to a recent election), nor is a project that exports commodities from the
region while generating minimal employment or other local returns (perhaps
aluminum processing and export provides the best example).
Production
of traditional commodities often fails to benefit the local population. Conversion of forest to cattle pasture, the
most widespread land-use change in Brazilian Amazonia, brings benefits that are
extremely meager (although not quite zero).
High priority must be given to redirection of development to activities
with local level returns that are greater and longer lasting. Tapping the value of environmental services
offers such an opportunity. Keeping
benefits of these services for the inhabitants of the Amazonian interior is the
most important challenge in turning these services into development (Fearnside,
1997a).
IV.) CONCLUSIONS
Amazonia
has tremendous resources, but, in many cases, exploitation of these brings
little benefit to local populations in the region. Limits of various kinds restrain the area and
the intensity of resource exploitation.
Use of one resource often precludes obtaining the benefits of other
resources, as when the benefits of forest are lost when areas are converted to
cattle pasture. Environmental services
of standing forest represent a major potential source of value that is
presently unrewarded by the world economy.
The challenge of turning environmental services into a means of
supporting the human population in the region and maintaining the forest should
be the top priority in efforts to develop Amazonian resources.
V.) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This
was a paper for presentation at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA)
XX International Congress, Guadalajara, Mexico,
17-19 April 1997. Some of the discussion
of limiting factors included here was presented at the Workshop on 'The
Sustainable Biosphere Initiative: Amazon Basin Case Study,' Manaus,
Amazonas, 18-20 May 1996.
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FIGURE LEGENDS
Figure 1 -- A.) Amazon River drainage basin, including
Tocantins/Araguaia and Amapa coastal rivers.
B.)
Amazonian forest vegetation (based on Harcourt et al., 1996 and Daily
and Prance, 1989).
C.)
Greater Amazon (based on TCA, nd [1992]) with addition of coastal region of
Guyana.
D.)
Brazil's Legal Amazon region with state boundaries.
Figure 2 -- Phosphate mines and deposits in Amazonian countries (based on
Beisiegel and de Souza, 1986, de Lima, 1976 and Fenster and León, 1979).
