Amazonia

One might assert that there is nothing unprecedented about the current fashioning of the Amazon. Since the colonial period, Amazonian populations have been producers and consumers of global commodities, targets of interventionist and assimilationist policies, and objects of inter-imperial rivalries. Export of primary products continues to mark the region’s fitful integration into the world economy. Moreover, as a morality tale pitting nature against culture and laden with heavy racial overtones, the Amazon has long accommodated outsiders’ presentiments of apocalypse or salvation. The Amazon’s nationalistic significance for Brazilians also runs deep, even if its articulation heretofore lacked the jingoistic pithiness of the more contemporary slogan, “The Amazon is ours.”Yet the scale of things is now quite distinct. While the jungle has always made for a sensational tale and sale, the commodification of the Amazon in the food, vitamin, entertainment, and tourist industries reached new dimensions in mass-consumer societies of the late twentieth century. While foreign consumers may have coveted Amazonian rubber, and foresters and scientists scrutinized its flora and fauna, this is a far cry from the mass panic regarding tropical deforestation. And if conflicts over resources, representation, and power are no novelty in Amazonian history, the “greening” of its social movements, reworking local vocabularies of class struggle as well as mythical or spiritual perceptions of nature into new political identities, is.

In this epilogue I examine how the Brazilian Amazon came to be reframed in (inter)national affairs and the popular imaginary in the latter part of the twentieth century, taking as my endpoint the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. I explore how transformations in the Amazon during Brazilian military rule (1964-85) and its aftermath collided with the popularization of the environmental movement in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, relegating public policies and local conflicts in the region to new (as well as well-trodden) transnational fields. Although these tensions in many ways embody the so-called north-south divide in environmental politics between conservationism and national development, a strict dichotomy is belied by the World Bank’s financing of government projects that have accelerated tropical deforestation, and by the advocacy of Brazilian NGOs and grassroots movements for environmental conservation. Nor does this putative Green Curtain tell us much about the historical processes and contexts that engendered such geopolitical positions.

I examine, therefore, the novel scientific disciplines, technologies, and cultural vocabularies that served to remake the Amazon in the popular and political imaginary in the North Atlantic and in Brazil. I argue that the contemporary fracas bespeaks as well the region’s ongoing entanglement in civilizing processes and modernist angst, as well as in longstanding local struggles for power.

The Brazilian military’s policies in the Amazon have been extensively explored. The state invested billions of dollars in transportation infrastructure, telecommunications, and public utilities, and lured private capital through tax shelters and exemptions and liberal credit policies. Between 1971 and 1987, for example, cattle ranches, owned principally by Brazilian investors and multinational corporations, received an estimated $5 billion in subsidies. The Amazon’s population also grew by almost ten million between 1960 and 1980, with migrants from southern and northeastern Brazil acquiring thousands of plots through government-sponsored and private colonization projects. With real estate values soaring and land titling marked by carelessness and corruption, the rural poor suffered fraud, violence, and eviction. By 1986, 64 percent of all land conflicts in Brazil occurred in the Amazon region.What most aroused international attention to the Brazilian Amazon during military rule and its aftermath, however, was deforestation. The causes of deforestation include highway construction (85 percent of all deforestation occurs within thirty miles of a road); land use for pasture (as of 1989, livestock occupied more than 85 percent of the area cleared); hydroelectric projects and construction of dams; colonization, mining, and logging; and, more recently, soybean production. Whereas in 1975 less than seven million acres of land in the Brazilian Amazon had been altered from its original forest cover, by 1988 an estimated forty million acres of forest had been destroyed. Using Landsat data and satellite information from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, research scientist Philip Fearnside of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia estimated total deforestation through 1988 at 8 percent; a World Bank-commissioned study arrived at a higher figure of 12 percent.

Foreign concern with tropical forest depletion, of course, has a long history. In the seventeenth century, for example, the Portuguese Crown protected from felling various Brazilian timbers deemed critical for shipbuilding. Eighteenth-century British officials, alarmed by the perceived climatological consequences of forest depletion in their tropical island colonies, reserved tracts of forest land. Yet as political scientists Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink point out, the term “tropical deforestation” gained widespread use among environmentalists only in the early 1970s; before that, concern with tropical forest loss fell under the rubric of habitat protection. The Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources first took up the issue of tropical deforestation in 1972 in response to the Brazilian military’s colonization projects in the Amazon. More broadly, we might argue, the proliferation of a global mass environmental movement reframed struggles over power and resources in the Brazilian Amazon in new transnational terms.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the origins of a popular “age of ecology” have been traced to the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), which detailed the toxic effects of pesticides on the environment and the fundamental interdependence of humans with other biological species; to the 1960s “flower power’s” repudiation of consumerism and militarization; and to the horror of Hiroshima. But the decade of the 1970s, the backdrop for the Brazilian military government’s foray into the Amazon, represented a watershed in the popularization and global diffusion of environmentalism. Inaugurated with the launching of Earth Day, the 1970s saw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (1970) and subsequent passage of key environmental legislation in the United States; the establishment of UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme (1971), the UN Environment Programme (1972), and the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (1972); and the founding of the Green Party in Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland (1972), in Great Britain (1973), and, most importantly, in West Germany (1979).

The decade also was marked by the publication of influential books focused on problems of species depletion, catastrophic climate change, and human depredation of the environment, including the neo-Malthusian The Limits to Growth (1972), commissioned by the Club of Rome. Environmental history emerged as a subdiscipline in the 1970s in North American universities, while the term “environment,” with its social scientific connotation, came to replace the more romantic-sounding “nature,” and eco- attached as a prefix signaled this new-found consciousness.

The allure of nature stretched far back in Western thought: deep-rooted religious, philosophical, and artistic traditions have viewed “wilderness” as a fount of divine revelation, a shelter from political tyranny, a refuge from industrial consumerism, a consolation for mortality. But the embrace of environmentalism by vast sectors of the middle class since the 1970s was novel, reflecting, in part, socioeconomic changes in advanced industrial nations. In the United States, as the number of educated people expanded in the postwar economy and filled the public sector, the arts, and the service industries, a larger proportion of the population of working age became disengaged from processes of industrial production. Moreover, the boom in most economies of the North Atlantic in the 1980s meant that fewer objected to environmental protection based on financial concerns.

For the American Left, disillusioned by Vietnam and Watergate and demoralized by the Soviet model of socialism, ecological movements sustained the subversive ethic of Marxism in their cross-cultural, transnational critique of bourgeois materialism and individualism. And the increase in automobile ownership, while worsening pollution, also broadened urbanites’ access to wilderness areas. Others point out that environmental degradation, which had long victimized poor people and people of color, only became a white, middle-class political concern in the 1970s when the growth of private transport purportedly democratized issues such as pollution. Over the course of the 1980s, environmental organizations in the United States mushroomed with the development of computerized databases allowing for direct mail techniques and management of membership lists. Between 1985 and 1990, membership in the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace, and the Nature Conservancy doubled, while World Wildlife Fund-U.S. quintupled. Transnational environmental networks increased from two groups in 1953 to ninety in 1993, or from 1.8 percent of total international NGOs to 14.3 percent.

In Brazil, the confluence of various factors led to the growth of environmental politics in the 1980s: the rapid increase in urban pollution and environmental degradation that sensitized sectors of the middle class; the political reintegration of the Left following defeat of the guerrilla movements and the democratic opening by the military in the early 1980s; the emergence of new social movements and public debate; and Brazil’s role as a developing nation with strong ties to the international market and media amidst the worldwide proliferation of the ecological movement.

The 1980s also witnessed the spread of environmental NGOs in Brazil, many of which received funding from North American and European embassies and philanthropic organizations, and served as critical links in gathering and disseminating information and developing a network of individuals and organizations concerned with Amazonia. In the Amazon, a significant conservation unit system already existed by the mid-1980s, largely due to the dogged lobbying efforts of a small group of Brazilian scientists and conservationists who had convinced the generals of the potential importance of the region’s resources for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries as well as national patrimony.

Moreover, Brazil’s political elite, facing massive foreign debt, hyperinflation, and neoliberal restructuring following the return to democracy, became increasingly sensitive to foreign censure and incentives toward environmental policymaking in the Amazon. At the G7 Summit in Houston in 1990, for example, the Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rainforest was launched largely at the initiative of the German government. The program consisted of a $300-million aid package administered through the World Bank (as trustee) and the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment, designed to support conservation and sustainable development in the Amazon and the Atlantic rainforest, while strengthening institutional capacity and environmental policy making in Brazil. In hosting the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (Earth Summit) in 1992, President Fernando Collor aimed to showcase Brazil’s commitment to environmental protection.

If environmentalism had reconceptualized the Earth as a set of interlaced ecosystems, we might still speculate how saving the Amazon rainforest came to be one of its dearest shibboleths, a cause célèbre of over 200 NGOs worldwide. As the Environmental Defense Fund affirmed in 1989:

Deforestation of the Amazon is one of the major environmental crises in the world today. The Brazilian Amazon contains about a third of the Earth’s remaining tropical forest and a very high portion of its biological diversity. One hectare (2.47 acres) of Amazonian moist forest contains more plant species than all of Europe. Two thousand Amazon fish species have been identified — ten times more than in Europe — and there may be another thousand species still to be discovered. . . . Cutting and burning, the usual way of clearing forest, disrupts not only the local climate; it also affects the global climate by emitting “greenhouse gases” that trap heat in the atmosphere. Recent satellite evidence shows that an area nearly the size of Kansas was burned in 1987 alone.

Grounding scientific claims in quantitative data, environmentalists have championed the protection of the Amazon, the world’s largest remaining tropical forest, as a bulwark against species depletion and global warming. But does concern with the Amazon in the Northern Hemisphere not also build upon an old tendency of its residents to view tropical landscapes as wilder, purer, and demographically emptier than their temperate counterparts? Is the very denomination of “deforestation” as shorthand for the multifaceted socio-environmental changes in the Amazon that have been prompted by massive land enclosures revealing of Western hallowing of trees — whose size, “prehistoric” origins, and self-regenerating energy embody the dignity and transcendence that the romantic tradition cherishes in nature? Or the affirmation of life in death-denying, industrial cultures? Is it, as Bruno Latour argues, that political ecology claims to speak on behalf of “the Whole” but can succeed in shaping public opinion and altering power relations only by “focusing on places, biotypes, situations, or particular events”? Does Americans’ overriding focus on tropical deforestation in the Amazon, rather than corresponding processes in Sumatra, Borneo, Congo, and West Africa, reflect a penchant for policing the nation’s “backyard” in Latin America? Or perhaps in media-driven, information-saturated societies, the burning of the rainforest has made for a riveting news report — such as the five-part documentary series on Amazon deforestation, “The Decade of Destruction,” aired on Public Broadcasting System’s Frontline in 1990.

Fire, with its infernal associations, notes Brazilian environmental scientist Alberto Setzer, “has a strange effect on people’s minds. It attracts their attention.” Not to mention that affixing a Save the Rain Forest sticker to a car bumper as a badge of ecological consciousness represents far less an inconvenience than opting for public transportation. Environmentalists, policymakers, the media, and consumers had not invented deforestation, but their representations of the forest forged new meanings and political battlegrounds for the Amazon.

More broadly, we might argue, science has redefined the nature of the Amazon through new kinds of knowledge claims. Notably, systems ecologist Howard Odum obtained significant understanding of the structures and functions of tropical forests in the 1960s by conducting radiation tests on Puerto Rican forests as part of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s investigations into the effects of a potential nuclear war or accident on forests. Odum’s coedited volume, A Tropical Rain Forest (1970), offered the first comprehensive analysis of tropical forest ecosystems — underscoring the ways in which nutrients are derived and exchanged from the forest and its litter, and held in the tissues of living organisms rather than in its shoddy soils — and heralded the emergence of a new professional cadre of tropical ecologists and ecological engineers.Conservation biology further served to reframe (and rename) the significance of land use change in the Amazon. Conservation biologists, whose scientific discipline was formalized in the 1980s to preserve ecosystems and habitats rather than mere species, coined the term biodiversity. As David Takacs notes, the defense of biodiversity was less tainted with class or geopolitical privilege than “wilderness protection,” dissociated from the negative connotations of “nature,” uncompromised by the triage of the older endangered species approach, and conceptually linked to multiculturalism (another term popularized in the 1980s). It retained scientists’ goals of preserving intact ecosystems and biotic processes, while allowing the public to maintain emotional ties to evocative icons. Biodiversity did not appear as a keyword in Biological Abstracts in 1988, but was listed seventy-two times in 1993. In 1992, the Convention on Biological Diversity was signed by 150 government leaders at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Climate science likewise came to reframe the Amazon in the transnational arena by implicating deforestation in the process of global warming. The discovery of the greenhouse effect was the product of a circuitous scientific and political journey. During the Cold War, the U.S. government increased research funding for physical geoscience and meteorology in the interest of national defense, the potential waging of climatological warfare, and global rivalry with the Soviet Union for scientific preeminence. In the 1960s, the U.S. Department of Defense began to use satellites to monitor global weather; radiocarbon, which came under intense study in the U.S. amidst wartime efforts to build nuclear weapons and in postwar detection of radioactive fallout from Soviet nuclear tests, could be used to track the movement of carbon in the atmosphere.

Collaborative international scientific research was also upheld by U.S. policymakers as intrinsic to free trade and global stability. The U.N. World Meteorological Organization, created in 1951, promoted international cooperation in meteorological observations and related services, while the International Geophysical Year (1957-58) drew together scientists from numerous nations and disciplines to collect global geophysical data with possible military and civilian applications. In 1958, scientist Charles David Keeling was the first to measure carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Although funded research on the effects of long-term climate change remained sparse well into the 1970s, a number of scientists began to warn that the heating of the atmosphere caused by the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases might precipitate melting of polar ice, rise in water levels and inundation of productive lands, changes in the ozone layer, and increases in ultraviolet light radiation.

With the 1980s marked by the six hottest years then on record, talk of global warming migrated from arcane scientific journals to political forums, media reports, and everyday conversation. Anti-corporate groups latched on to the cause as a bane of government deregulation. The environmental movement took up global warming as a key plank, as groups that had other objectives — such as preserving tropical forest, reducing air pollution, removing fossil fuel subsidies and promoting renewable energy sources, or slowing population growth — could now find common cause. Most notably perhaps, as climates came to be reconceived in terms of planetary systems rather than regional weather patterns, people and politicians became informed about the problem of global warming — even if many remained perplexed by its ramifications and unmoved by calls for lifestyle overhauls.

Land use change in the Amazon has been implicated in the greenhouse effect through burning and decomposition of biomass, the repeated burning of pasture and secondary forest, as well as through logging, cattle, and hydroelectric dams. In 1991, the World Bank estimated that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon accounted for 4 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions, while the contribution of deforestation worldwide to global warming (primarily from the release of carbon) was estimated at 14 percent in 1990. As a percentage of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burnings, deforestation worldwide accounted for 27 percent in 1989-90, while the Brazilian Amazon, according to the Brazilian government, represented between 4.4 and 7.6 percent. (During the 1980s, advanced industrialized countries — with 26 percent of the world’s population — accounted for 81 percent of energy consumption, while the United States ranked as the world’s single largest emitter of greenhouse gases in 1990.)

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, politicians and citizens in the Northern Hemisphere increasingly linked tropical deforestation to the problem of global warming. In 1989, for example, the German parliament held hearings on tropical deforestation and climate change, while reports published by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth-UK over the next two years affirmed that one of the most cost-effective mechanisms to counter the greenhouse effect was through slowing deforestation and encouraging tropical reforestation….

Deforestation, the region’s most visible facet of change is the point around which public debate has been concentrated. It is worth asking at the outset why there is so much international and national concern with deforestation. Destruction of forests is not unknown in the history of other countries, nor is it in Brazil. Throughout the world, forests have been destroyed since the Neolithic Age to give way to pasturage and other agricultural lands as populations have increased. In Brazil, deforestation was always considered a viable model of development, since immense reserves of virgin lands could always be counted upon to be available for occupation. Some of these lands sustained continuous economic occupation, while others deteriorated and were abandoned without provoking any internal or external commotion.

Current national and international concern arises basically from a new interest in environmental problems and the preservation of nature. In this context, the Amazon is particularly significant because it is so large, because its forests are being destroyed so fast, because massive environmental degradation accompanies this destruction, and because it is one of the planet’s last remaining large areas of original forest. But pressure from international public opinion increased largely because of overlapping events in 1988.

In the first place, the global mass media disclosure of images of burnings, which assumed alarming proportions, dramatized the destruction of nature. This was followed by an international commotion in the wake of the murder of rubber-tapper (seringueiro) Chico Mendes. Mendes had defended an alternative model for the forest’s self-sustained exploitation and represented popular resistance to predatory models of occupation encouraged by the government. This popular leader’s murder brought to light the violence reigning throughout the region and the social problems created by the existing form of territorial occupation. These facts added to long-standing denunciations about the tragic situation of Indian populations, intensifying the plea for preservation of what had appeared to have once been an untouched tropical paradise.

Revelation of events in Amazônia coincided with the particularly intense summer of 1988 in temperate countries, especially the United States, which gave new credibility to scientists’ concern about global warming and the greenhouse effect. The two problems were seen as overlapping. And so the destruction of the Amazonian forest came to be considered among public opinion in temperate countries the fundamental cause of climatic changes.

Concern about the Amazon was generalized and it heightened criticism from the widest range of groups: anthropologists, environmental defense organizations, and university groups; religious institutions, political parties, and even entertainers such as the English singer Sting.

The problem with all of this is not that these critiques are unfounded, nor that the problems they indicate are not real. Rather, by simplifying the questions, equally simplified solutions emerged. Even though this is not the position of scientists, the predominant proposal in popular thinking incorporated the term “preservation” to mean maintaining the Amazon in its entirety as an immense untouchable reserve, protected from any form of human occupation other than that of Indian populations.

The pressure of public opinion provoked a defensive attitude by the Brazilian government. But the specter of international intervention gained credibility when developed countries’ governmental authorities started making environmental declarations such as those of American senators who visited the Amazon or of President George Bush when he recommended that Japan be cautious about making loans for the completion of Highway BR 364, which is causing a tremendous amount of deforestation. The most serious pressure came from French President François Mitterand, who advocated the renunciation of sovereignty on issues such as these which involve the whole world and used the example of the integration of the European countries.

As was to be expected, accusations and insinuations of international retaliation provoked public protests by the Brazilian authorities, who appear to have reacted even more violently when the criticisms were well founded and directly affected the interests they represented.

Thus, Flaviano Melo, governor of the state of Acre, who has direct interest in the completion of Highway BR 364, published a manifesto to the nation in early March 1988 repudiating undue meddling which “represented an unacceptable aggression upon the principle of self-determination and sovereignty of nations.”

On the other hand, President José Sarney’s reaction, supported by the minister of the army, General Leonidas Pires Goncalves, was one of exacerbated nationalism. He asserted that internationalization of the Amazon was totally out of the question. According to the president, “There is not enough money in the world to buy even a square meter of the Amazon.”

Viewed in these terms, the discussion hides some of the problem’s important dimensions. It is not only the abstract term “national sovereignty” which should be considered, nor an equally abstract “humanity as a whole.” Instead the very real and concrete interests of the nations involved need to be considered, as well as the power relations permeating international relations which decisively influence the manner in which national sovereignty is attacked or defended, depending upon whether we are dealing with strong or weak, rich or poor countries. Thus, a dimension of the problem which cannot be ignored was that internationalization of the Amazonian question was not raised by the tropical countries because they confront grave economic and social problems. International pressure arose from public opinion in developed countries which accused tropical countries of irrationally destroying nature.Those accusations provoke diverse reactions in underdeveloped countries. In part, they are internally supported by groups opposing their respective governments, which use them to promote internal political change; but they also provoke generalized resentment, as Third World countries feel they are being transformed into scapegoats in a problem for which developed countries are equally, if not more, responsible. Since Third World countries are highly dependent on the great powers’ economic and political decisions, international pressure generalizes their fear of interventions which would negatively affect their economies and aggravate other problems.

It is now necessary to rise above emotionalism, xenophobia, and partisanship. We need to study the facts in the most objective manner possible and to diagnose the problems clearly. Thus some preliminary questions must be clarified: What is the real extent of ongoing deforestation? What is the magnitude of its effects? What are the causes which further it? How can it be contained?

In Brazil, the forest is located in an administrative area known as the Legal Amazônia which covers 5 million square kilometers. That is, it covers nearly 60 percent of the country’s area, and contains, to a lesser extent, other types of tropical vegetation.Data regarding the extent of deforestation in this immense territory are very contradictory. A reasonable estimate would be that in 15 years nearly 250,000 square kilometers were deforested. This area of 25 million hectares, corresponding to nearly 7 percent of the Brazilian Amazon’s firm land forests, implies an annual deforestation rate of approximately 20,000 square kilometers. The negative effects of such destruction are seen very differently, depending on whether an international or a national perspective is taken.

The first is its effect on the climate. Devastation of the Amazonian forest is an important source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into the atmosphere. Accumulation of that gas — accentuated since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution — is one of the principal causes of the greenhouse effect which furthers warming of the earth’s surface. This threatens a climatic change of large proportions and of great repercussion for the planet’s productive system.But if this is the central problem, it cannot be adequately resolved without placing deforestation in the context of other sources of CO2 emission. That is, avoiding accumulation of that gas must include measures which consider all causes contributing to that effect.

Taking the estimates of the forest’s destruction as a basis, deforestation of the Amazon contributes nearly 4.5 percent of the total emission of CO2. The principal contributors to those emissions are the United States (17 percent), the Soviet Union (14 percent), China (6.5 percent) and Brazil (5.5 percent). The difference between Brazil and other countries is that Brazil’s emissions are principally due to burning of the forests; only 1 percent of the Brazilian total comes from burning oil, coal, and gas.

Thus the problem of climatic change does not involve the question of Brazilian sovereignty alone, but that of all countries pronouncedly contributing to the increase not only of CO, but also of other gases related to the greenhouse effect.

Accusations and international pressure aimed at Brazil are, therefore, partisan. Deforestation needs to be addressed in the broader context of the multiple causes of climatic change. And if concern about the environment is really concern about the common good, it must be recognized that accumulation of CO2 is, in its majority, provoked by the burning of fossil fuels in industrialized countries.

The second international concern is the rapid extinction of animal and plant species attributable to deforestation. Even though there are no precise data, consensus exists that tropical forests shelter a much greater number of species than other ecosystems. Some authors go so far as to estimate that nearly one-third of the earth’s existing species are found in tropical forests, even though the majority of these are as yet unknown. It is also estimated that they are becoming extinct at a rate of one species a day. Violent destruction of genetic wealth — which certainly would be of immense potential for future development of new resources and new ways of exploiting the environment — is thus taking place. In this case, preservation of that wealth depends on action by Brazilians. Thus Brazil’s national sovereignty, with regard to occupying and using its territory, can be considered as negatively affecting future human development. But it must be also recognized that benefits to the country are too indirect to determine, and thus are difficult to be taken into consideration by a population confronting extremely serious and immediate problems.

Thus forest preservation needs to be analyzed in the context of all alternative uses presented for this territory. It seems clear that deforestation and the negative effects it produces at a global level cannot be addressed unless the country’s internal problems are solved and national interest is taken into consideration. Actually the need to view the problem in these terms was clearly presented by UNESCO, UNEP and FAO in their 1978 report on tropical forests and has been emphasized in all subsequent documents.

The conjunction of international and national interests is necessary and now possible. Brazil is aware that the region’s current economic model of occupation which brought about not only deforestation but also social injustice, neither serves the interests of self-sustained development of the Amazon, nor strengthens Brazil’s economy. This is especially evident in analyses of the use of land for agriculture and cattle ranching enterprises. Occupation of the Amazon through deforestation was based on the supposition that the forest’s exuberance indicated the presence of extremely fertile soils. What became evident through the failure of the aforementioned enterprises, as well as through surveys, is that its soils are generally poor, with only a few areas of high fertility. We can no longer, as we did in the past, run the risk of irreversible degradation of the environment. In the first place, there will be no more virgin land whose natural fertility compensates for the destruction of what was already exploited. And second, today we are conscious of the fragility of the humid tropical forest’s ecosystem, of its importance for climatic equilibrium in other regions of the country, and of the harmful effects its degradation has on the planet.

It is therefore necessary to analyze the development model that furthered that form of occupation in the Amazon, and its negative consequences. We can then propose adequate measures both at national and international levels to confront the problem and adequately situate the question of sovereignty.

This policy was entirely conceived of and implemented without considering the characteristics and fragility of the Amazonian ecosystem. It created enormous social and environmental problems, producing effects contrary to its objectives. Large agricultural and cattle breeding projects, as well as the establishment of settlers, furthered environmental degradation instead of developing self-sustained agricultural production. Many such projects were abandoned. The loss of soil fertility in deforested areas encouraged new deforestation and intensified the forest’s destruction.The authorization of prospecting activities (garimpos) brought about intense pollution of rivers and destruction of aquatic fauna. The opening of highways and settling of populations along the Bolivian, Colombian, Peruvian, and Venezuelan borders favored the smuggling of minerals and forest resources. This crime takes place through these neighboring countries and now creates the very real threat of transforming the Amazon into a route for drug traffic.

Fiscal incentives, state investments, external loans, and foreign capital channeled into the region increased land values. This in turn furthered intense real estate speculation, land conflicts, disorderly occupation of the territory, the threat to traditional and non-predatory use of the forest by the local population, destruction of flora and fauna, and threats to the survival of native populations.

We must consider, however, that failure of an agricultural undertaking or environmental destruction provoked by a project does not necessarily mean financial failure. Soil fertility or self-sustained production are least important in agricultural projects, due to the policy of subsidies. The very valorization of land is in itself a highly profitable business, especially when large-scale properties are involved.

On the other hand, profits from mining activities and gold prospecting are highly remunerative, especially for the middle men. Such profits are not directly linked to any concern whatsoever with the environmental destruction they create. As for the hydroelectric plants, not only do they satisfy energy demands from other parts of the country, but they also serve the interests both of processing companies and of contractors responsible for their construction. The contractors particularly have obtained extremely high profits from this type of undertaking.

This policy was harmful to local populations and neither resolved the problems of landless workers nor contributed to raising the living standard of the poorest segment of the nation’s population. Instead it furthered the formation of vast fortunes, favored the creation of large scale properties (latifúndios), and aggravated social inequality. In that process easy profits were possible and frequently favored powerful groups which today are struggling for their privileges. Thus the situation will not be easily reversed….

Understanding of tropical deforestation, an important aspect of global change, is inadequate for two reasons: a lack of accurate measurements of its rate, geographic extent, and spatial pattern and a lack of insight into its causes (Skole in press). It seems obvious that tropical deforestation is the consequence of a variety of interrelated social, economic, and environmental fac-tors. Yet, interpretations of how these factors interact to stimulate deforestation vary widely. Some interpretations focus chiefly on population growth, whereas others regard institutions as the main determinant (Allen and Barnes 1985, Browder 1988, Bunker 1984b, Meyer and Turner 1992, Moran et al. this issue, Rudel 1989, Sanderson in press).In this article, we propose an interdisciplinary approach for analyzing tropical deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. We review both the physical and human dimensions of Amazonian deforestation and discuss some issues of measurement and analysis facing both physical and social sciences. We emphasize the need to analyze this problem across different scales of space and time, including local dynamics at the level of individual farms, regional patterns, and international conditions that influence Amazonian deforestation.

In the first part of this article, we take an empirical view, showing how deforestation can be measured and how satellite remote sensing can play an important role. Socio-demographic and economic data from standard census sources can supplement remote-sensing data to provide additional information. From this data-intensive set of observations and measurements, we propose an explanatory model in the second part. Here, we consider the relationship among deforestation and large-scale social, economic, and institutional factors. This discussion, leading from measurements to analysis, forms the basis for a research design presented in the last section. We center our discussion on the period from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, a period of most rapid change.

This analysis provides rates of deforestation lower than previously estimated. By comparison to 1978 (Tardin et al. 1980), we estimate the rate of deforestation to be 15 x 10′ to 20 x 10′ km/yr, which is considerably lower than estimates made without remote sensing data (Myers 1991) or from trend extrapolations (Fearnside 1982). Our estimates are in close agreement with those reported by the Brazilian Instituto de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE 1992).

A digital map… was derived from satellite data of the average annual rate of deforestation in the Legal Amazon between 1978 and 1988. For simplicity of display at a small map scale, the data have been aggregated into 16 x 16 – kilometer grid cells. Spatially explicit maps such as these can provide insights into large-scale geographic patterns and trends in deforestation in the Amazon basin of Brazil on decadal time scales.

Most deforested land is concentrated in a crescent along the southern and eastern fringe of the Amazon. We estimate the total area deforested in 1988 to be 230,324 km. This estimate suggests that 6% of the closed forests have been cleared to date over the entire Legal Amazon. This fraction is somewhat higher in certain states. In Maranhao, for instance, as much as 27% of the forest cover has been converted. Forest clearing in this part of eastern Amazonia has been occurring since the earliest settlements in the last century. However, 11.5% of the forests of Rondonia have been cleared, where there was little deforestation before the mid-1970s.

Before 1970, most of the conversion had occurred in southern Brazil and along its coast. Different areas experienced conversion after 1970. By comparing maps, one can see that most of the changes in land cover between 1970 and 1980 occurred along two major fronts. One is a north-south corridor along the Belem-to-Brasilia Highway. The other area extends west from the state of Mato Grosso into the colonization areas in the state of Rondonia.

Inspection of the GIS-based dataset indicates that significant movement of deforestation into the Legal Amazon began between 1975 and 1980. In 1970, only 14.6% of all agricultural land in Brazil (including pasture) was in the Legal Amazon. By 1980, this fraction increased to 22.3%. Between 1970 and 1975, 45% of the new conversions occurred in the Legal Amazon. Between 1975 and 1980, 56% of the new conversion occurred within the Legal Amazon, reflecting the beginnings of the trend toward expansion of agriculture and economic development in the region. A comparison of census-derived and satellite-derived estimates of the total area deforested is shown in Figure 2 [deleted]. The estimates are comparable, and they suggest an important role for census data to extend the historical record to periods before remote-sensing data were available.

We classified the data into three land-cover classes: intact forest, active agriculture from new deforestation, and second-growth vegetation following abandonment; these three classes of land cover are distinguished by the relative reflectance in the near-infrared and visible bands (Figure 3) [deleted]. Moran et al. (page 329 this issue) describe a similar pattern of spectral discrimination. Extensive field verification of the classification took place in 1988, 1989, 1991, and 1993. This analysis thus provides a measure of the separate transitions between land-cover classes. Most analyses reported to date consider only forest and deforested areas, with the deforested area as the combined area of active agriculture and secondary growth. In addition, because the satellite data can be spatially registered, we have tabulated transition sequences for each 400-square-meter parcel of land or individual field.

Figure 4 [deleted] shows land-cover transitions that occurred in the study area between 1986 and 1988 and between 1988 and 1989. The values are annual transition rates for each period. Between 1986 and 1988, new agricultural land came from clearing 4.12 x 10′ ha/yr of primary forest and 1.97 x 10′ ha/yr of secondary vegetation. Between 1988 and 1989, 8.63 x 10′ ha/yr of primary forest and 6.21 x 10¹ ha/yr of secondary vegetation were cleared for agriculture. Clearing of secondary vegetation is an important source of new agricultural land; between 1988 and 1989, 42% of the new agricultural land was created from clearing of secondary growth. The amount of agricultural land that remained as active agriculture from one year to the next was 10.06 x 10′ ha/yr between 1986 and 1988 and 25.04 x 10′ ha/yr between 1988 and 1989.

The area in secondary succession is significant. Of the total land deforested (active agriculture plus secondary growth), approximately 33% was secondary vegetation in 1989, an increase over the 25% increasing proportion was also measured in 1986. The large and increasing proportion was also shown in sites in the eastern Amazon by Moran et al. (page 329 this issue). These satellite observations agree with long-standing field observations, but heretofore there have been no quantitative measurements. Our ongoing analysis of the entire Legal Amazon using satellite data suggests that secondary vegetation is widespread throughout the region. The implications for carbon storage are important, because regrowing vegetation accumulates carbon previously lost to the atmosphere from clearing.

The turnover of secondary vegetation (i.e., abandonment and re-clearing) is an important process. In this study area, the area abandoned each year was 70% of the primary forest area cleared between 1986 and 1988, and 83% of that cleared between 1988 and 1989. Approximately 11% of the active agricultural area was abandoned each year between 1986 and 1988. However, between 1988 and 1989, when there was more than a twofold increase in forest clearing, 22% of the agricultural land was abandoned annually.

If one-fifth of the agricultural land is abandoned each year, we estimate an average steady-state turnover time of approximately five years. This figure is generally consistent with what other observers have reported (Buschhacher 1986, Buschbacher et al. 1988. Uhl et al. 1988); land fertility and productivity decline to the point that the farmer abandons the land after approximately five years. Because satellite observations make it possible to separately track each 400-square- meter piece of land, it is possible to determine that out of the 5.804 x 10′ ha that were abandoned to secondary growth between 1986 and 1988, 45% was re-cleared during the next year.

This analysis suggests the important and apparently inseparable coupling between land in active agriculture and secondary growth. The mode of production in this area is predicated upon maintaining both classes of land use. Moreover, abandonment rates tend to increase when increases in primary forest clearing produce net increases in secondary-succession area. Thus, local ecological conditions, methods of agroeco- system resource management, and local decision making are as much a driving factor in deforestation as are demographic factors.