HUMAN PRESSURE ON THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON FORESTS PAULO BARRETO CARLOS SOUZA JR. RUTH NOGUERÓN ANTHONY ANDERSON RODNEY SALOMÃO In collaboration with: JANICE WILES GREG MOCK Editor HYACINTH BILLINGS Publications Director MAGGIE POWELL Cover Design RL|2 COMUNICAÇÃO E DESIGN Layout Each World Resources Institute report represents a timely, and responds to the guidance of advisory panels and expert scholarly treatment of a subject of public concern. WRI takes reviewers. Unless otherwise stated, however, all the responsibility for choosing the study topic and guaranteeing interpretation and findings set forth in WRI publications are its authors and researchers freedom of inquiry. It also solicits those of the authors. Copyright © 2006 World Resources Institute. All rights reserved. ISBN: 1-56973-605-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2006923217 Printed in Belém, Pará, Brazil by Gráfica & Editora Alves on recycled paper (Reciclato) Cover Photographs: Cattle (Ritaumaria Pereira); Burning rainforests (Digital Vision); others (Paulo Barreto) Background satellite picture: US Geological Survey. Landsat 7 ETM + Satellite Sensor. 1999 A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S The World Resources Institute and Imazon Alvarado, Washington State University; Tom would like to acknowledge financial support from Lovejoy, the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, the Government of the Federal Republic of Economics and The Environment; and Andrew Germany through the Ministry of Economic Murchie and Paulo Adario from Greenpeace Cooperation, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Brazil. Affairs, ABN-AMRO Bank, the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Many colleagues within WRI and Imazon helped the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. us with this study. Within WRI, Dirk Bryant, Marta Miranda, Janice Wiles and Ralph Ridder were We thank Paulo Adário and Andrew Murchie of involved in early stages of the project. Susan Greenpeace Brazil for their initial involvement in Minnemeyer, Pierre Methot, Janet Ranganathan, the project and their key role in setting it up. David Jhirad, Lars Laestadius, Ralph Ridder and Christoph Thies, from Greenpeace International, Lindsey Fransen provided valuable comments and also played an important role catalyzing and reviews. Special thanks are due to Isabel Munilla implementing the project. The Brazil Ministry of and Jonathan Lash for their support, guidance, Agrarian Development (Ministério do and assistance throughout various stages of the Desenvolvimento Agrário) kindly provided data on project. Hyacinth Billings and Maggie Powell land reform projects, while Andrew Murchie helped getting this report into print; we thank Paul furnished the map of the location of forest Mackie, Phil Angell, and Nate Kommers for their operations used in the analysis. assistance with outreach, and Stephen Adam, Gayle Coolidge and Josh Neckes for their help in the The authors also wish to thank those review and production processes. Within Imazon, colleagues who provided valuable review Adalberto Verissimo provided invaluable comments comments: Mark Cochrane, South Dakota State and Márcio Sales assisted with the analysis of the University; José Maria Cardoso da Silva, correlation between roads and human pressure in Conservation International-Brazil; Ernesto protected areas. C O N T E N T S FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 09 Areas under Pressure from EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Human Settlement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Areas under Incipient Human Pressure . . 49 1. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 5. HUMAN PRESSURE AND 2. PROTECTED AREAS: RESULTS BACKGROUND AND TRENDS IN AND DISCUSSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 HUMAN OCCUPATION IN THE Human Pressure in Existing BRAZILIAN AMAZON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Protected Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Deforestation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Human Pressure in Priority Areas for Urban Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Conservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Agrarian Reform Settlements . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Risks and Opportunities for the Creation Forest Fires (Fire Zones) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 of Conservation Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Logging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 6. Roads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 3. MAPPING HUMAN PRESSURE IN THE NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 BRAZILIAN AMAZON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 How Human Pressure was Mapped . . . . . . 41 APPENDIX 1: PROTECTED Human Pressure in Protected Areas . . . . . . 43 AREAS IN BRAZIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 How the Relationship between Roads and Human Pressure was Analyzed . . . . . . 43 APPENDIX 2: ECONOMIC ACCESSIBILITY OF LOGGING . . . . . . . . . 73 4. HUMAN PRESSURE IN THE BRAZILIAN REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 AMAZON: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION . 45 HUMAN PRESSURE ON THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON FORESTS v Figure 1. Vegetation and Deforestation in Figure 13. Cumulative Area (Percent) of the Brazilian Amazon as of 2001 . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Human Pressure in Relation to Distance Figure 2. Distribution of Transportation from Official Roads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Network, Timber Processing Capacity, Figure 14. Types of Access to Fire Zones and Cattle Processing Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 in South-Central Pará and Northern Figure 3. Population in the Legal Amazon Mato Grosso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Between 1950 and 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Figure 15. Unofficial Roads, Human Figure 4. Municipal Seats and Pressure, and Indigenous Lands . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Urban Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Figure 16. Distribution of Human Pressure Figure 5. Area of Agrarian Reform in Existing Protected Areas and in Settlements and Number of Projects in the Un-Protected Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Legal Amazon Between 1995 and 2002 . . . . . . 31 Figure 17. Human Pressure in Figure 6. Agrarian Reform Settlements Protected Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Established as of 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Figure 18. Distribution of Land Cover and Figure 7. Fire Zones, 1996-2002 . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Human Pressure in Un-protected Areas Figure 8. Area Allocated for Mining or and by Categories of Protected Areas . . . . . . . 58 Mining Exploration as of 1998 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Figure 19. Distribution of Land Cover and Figure 9. Location of logging Disaggregated Human Pressure in permits in 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Un-protected Areas and by Categories of Figure 10. Land Cover Classification Protected Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 in Eastern Amazonia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Figure 20. Human Pressure in Priority Figure 11. Human Pressure in the Areas for Conservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Brazilian Amazon - All Indicators . . . . . . . . . . 46 Figure 21. Human Pressure in Areas Figure 12. Two Types of Human Pressure . . . 47 Suitable for Public Production Forests . . . . . . 63 Table 1. Human Pressure in the Table 2. Overlap Between Location of Brazilian Amazon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Logging Operations and Other Indicators of Human Pressure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Box 1. Deforestation and Box 3.The Brazilian Amazon, the Biodiversity Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Amazon Basin, and the Legal Amazon . . . . . . 23 Box 2. Protected Areas Box 4. Mapping Unofficial Roads in in Brazil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 the Midlands of Pará . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 HUMAN PRESSURE ON THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON FORESTS vi L I S T O F A C R O N Y M S ARPA Protected Areas in the Amazon Program DNPM National Department for Mineral Production EMBRAPA/CPATU Brazilian Agricultural Research Institute/Center for Agricultural Research in the Humid Tropics FAO Food and Agriculture Organization GFW Global Forest Watch IBAMA Brazilian Institute for Environment and Renewable Natural Resources IBGE Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics IMAZON Amazon Institute of People and the Environment INCRA Brazilian Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform INESC Institute for Socio-Economic Studies INPE Brazilian Institute for Space Research ISA Socio-Environmental Institute MDA Brazilian Agrarian Development Ministry MMA Brazilian Ministry of Environment NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration WRI World Resources Institute WWF World Wildlife Fund HUMAN PRESSURE ON THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON FORESTS vii F O R E W O R D Brazil has the largest expanse of tropical This report provides us with an extraordinary rainforest in the world, comprising some 40 set of tools to use in that effort. The scope and percent of the world’s remaining tropical forest detail of these maps are vital if we are to make the cover. As such, it represents both an extraordinary necessary and unavoidable choices in the future to resource for the people of Brazil, and also an balance the needs of our people in Brazil with the invaluable asset for the people of the world. legitimate needs of the world’s people increasingly impacted by global environmental change. Millions of my people depend, directly or indirectly, on the Amazon for their livelihood: We know that the Amazon is subject to farmers sell crops at home and into the world significant human pressure, and we can see markets; the forest sector accounts for almost 8 where it is, its nature, and its impact. What we percent of our country’s annual wealth. And the can also see, however, is that human great Amazon basin sustains millions of settlement—human incursions into the Amazon indigenous people who depend on the richness of tend to take on a life of their own. Approved and this place to provide for their every need. defined development becomes the trigger for what this report terms “incipient” development, That the Southern hemisphere experienced its that is, emerging pressure on the Amazon that is first hurricane in recorded history last year makes not planned. The maps here are unequivocal it even more critical that we recognize the value of about that. such ecosystems as the Amazon Basin and the critical service they provide to the global One of the actions of which I am most proud as community. They also serve as regulators of President of Brazil was the establishment of the climate, vaults of biodiversity, and great natural Amazon Region Protected Areas. With our cleansing engines. partners, this program recognizes the international environmental reach of the Amazon As we become increasingly aware of the and it also accommodates the legitimate important role that large ecosystems play in our aspirations of Brazil’s most impoverished. current and future lives, we begin to understand just how important it is that we mange them What these incomparable set of maps, and the wisely and with a very long-term perspective. accompanying report show, however, is that while HUMAN PRESSURE ON THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON FORESTS 9