From Cutting Trees to Slashing Emissions: Reducing Deforestation in Brazil

Much debate has recently arisen over China’s and India’s responsibilities as related to climate protection. These two countries have repeatedly pleaded that their emissions be judged on a per-capita basis, since their per-capita emissions pale in comparison to those of the global North, and they have thus argued that the rest of the world should not insist that they slash emissions. In contrast, Western powers have maintained that the Chinese and Indian governments must take action if a global climate-protection plan is to be scientifically, economically, and politically viable.

Where, however, does Brazil fit into this equation? Like China and India, Brazil is a prominent, populous developing country and a member of the Group of 8’s ‘Plus-5’ contingent, yet the dialogue on climate protection touches upon this South American state far less often.^[1] What can Brazil’s leaders contribute to the global anti-climate change fight, and what political and economic pressures encourage/discourage their action? Unlike China and India, Brazil produces roughly three-quarters of its emissions through deforestation (Blunt 2004); hence, though Brazil must continue to implement climate protection measures in its energy sector, decreased deforestation will be essential to the country’s emissions-curbing efforts. This paper will thus explore the potential for Brazil to reduce its deforestation, analyzing the political and economic concerns that its leaders must address if reduction initiatives are to succeed. Though multiple actors are at work within Brazil’s forests, the principle players appear to be medium- to large-scale cattle ranchers. Thus, though its deforestation efforts may attempt to dissuade every manner of deforester, Brazil must focus greatest attention on the ranching group. Key to this task is the expansion of the Brazilian police presence into the areas where ranchers work.

The analysis begins with an overview of the relationship between deforestation and climate change and of general proposals for forest preservation. Next, an examination of Brazil’s particular deforestation scenario introduces the key players perpetuating the Brazilian forest’s destruction, as well as the main political and economic pressures/incentives/concerns involved. Also noted are government anti-deforestation efforts to date. Given Brazil’s present situation and the political/economic forces at play, the discussion shifts to probe potential strategies for dealing with deforestation concerns.

Deforestation as a Driver of Climate Change

“There’s been a lot of fuss lately about burning the forest,” remarked one Brazilian rancher, “but everyone knows that it’s the First World, not us, that’s responsible for the greenhouse effect. It’s the carbon emissions from all their cars. The amount generated by burning the forest is miniscule by comparison” (quoted in Le Breton 1993:77). Recent scientific analyses, however, indicate that few things could be further from the truth. Yes, the burning of fossil fuels is the prime culprit in climate change, but the Union of Concerned Scientists labels deforestation, combined with “other land-use changes,” as yielding the second-most greenhouse gas emissions (2007). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has likewise identified fossil-fuel burning and deforestation as the top contributors to the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, with “most” emissions in recent years resulting from fossil fuels but a substantial 10 to 30 percent arising from land-use changes, deforestation foremost among them (2001). Per the 2001 IPCC report, other emission sources bear minimal impact in comparison.2 Moreover, Moutinho, Schwartzman, and Santilli place deforestation’s contribution at 20 to 25 percent of global emissions (2005:7). Unfortunately, the current state of research thus leaves ambiguous the exact proportion of climate change for which deforestation is responsible, yet these figures suggest that deforestation, aside from contributing the bulk of Brazil’s emissions, remains a key driver of climate change for the planet as a whole. The phenomenon is likely to loom large in the future as well: “If current trends continue, tropical deforestation will release about 50% as much carbon to the atmosphere as has been emitted from worldwide combustion of fossil fuels since the start of the industrial revolution” (Houghton 2005:20).3

The above statistics capture, albeit imperfectly, one side of the deforestation-climate change dynamic: deforestation releases emissions, for when chopped trees burn or otherwise decay over time, the carbon once contained within them flows into the atmosphere, primarily as carbon dioxide but also as methane and carbon monoxide (Houghton 2005:13).4 The other way that deforestation harms the climate is that it in some cases eliminates carbon sinks that could have captured future emissions from other sources. In other words, forests, by absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, “sink” greenhouse gases, and as deforesters chop down more trees, the world becomes less able to cope with its ever-growing emissions. The potency of various forests’ sink capacities varies, both over time (Forests and the European Union Resource Network n.d.) and space. To what extent Brazil’s forests, for example, serve as a carbon sink remains unknown, with researcher Antônio Manzi suggesting that though sequestration occurs in parts of Brazil, “each locale has its own specificities” (quoted in Rohter 2003:2). Thus, though the primary concern about deforestation is the amount of greenhouse gas the practice immediately emits into the atmosphere, its obliteration of a potential climate-change mitigation tool is likewise of concern.

Prospects for mitigating climate change through reduced deforestation are huge: per the most recent report from the IPCC’s Working Group III, approximately half of the world’s “mitigation potential” may lie in the possibility of curbing the phenomenon (2007:21). Unfortunately, the full Working Group III report, which details suggestions for incorporating forest management into climate change mitigation initiatives, is not yet available for citation or quotation. Until the report’s final release, analysts must rely on a summary thereof, which recommends several currently available general strategies for offsetting deforestation’s impact and/or curbing the phenomenon itself, among them afforestation, reforestation, and “reduced deforestation” (p. 14). Afforestation entails the replanting of forest on land cleared several (e.g., 20 to 50) years earlier and used for non-forest purposes in the interim (IPCC 2000:6). Reforestation, in contrast, involves replanting on land that has been cleared but not yet converted for alternative (e.g., agricultural) use; this takes place shortly after the deforestation originally occurs (IPCC 2000:6). Both activities, instead of halting deforestation emissions themselves, encourage the reestablishment of carbon sinks. The wisdom of such practices remains in question, however, for the Forests and the European Union Resource Network (FERN) notes that sunk carbon may burst back into the atmosphere following forest fire, insect infestation, decay, changes in land use, and other disturbances (n.d.). FERN thus contends that reliance on carbon sinks allows for increased anthropogenic emissions, which, though able to be sequestered today, may threaten the atmosphere in the future. Decreasing deforestation in the first place is thus preferable.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows entities from the industrialized world to earn credit for funding mitigative programs in developing countries, can offer credit for afforestation and reforestation of areas cleared prior to 1990 (Schlamadinger et al. 2005:26). It cannot, however, provide credit for prevention of deforestation (Fearnside 2005:686). Parties to Kyoto rejected inclusion of “deforestation avoidance” for a variety of reasons, including “non-permanence,” the concern that forests saved today might be destroyed anyway in the future; difficulties in determining exactly how much deforestation would have occurred under business-as-usual conditions; and the concern that industrialized countries might embrace the ease of paying to reduce deforestation abroad at the expense of making domestic cuts in emissions from fossil-fuel burning (Schlamadinger et al. 2005:30).5 Nevertheless, expansion of the CDM or the establishment of a similar compliance mechanism to include avoidance remains a possibility for the post-Kyoto (i.e., post-2012) period (Schlamadinger et al. 2005).

  

The Brazilian Context

Deforestation has wreaked havoc in both of Brazil’s largest biomes, the Amazon rainforest and the smaller Cerrado, a region of savannas, woodlands, grass, and forests (see Klink and Machado 2005:708 on the Cerrado). Brazil’s portion of the Amazon rainforest once stretched over a region roughly the size of Western Europe (Fearnside 2005:681). For centuries, those settling in Brazil have chopped away chunks of the forest in order to secure livelihoods, yet until recently, their efforts have been of relatively limited magnitude. “Almost five centuries of European presence before 1970 deforested an area [100 x 10³ km²] only slightly larger than Portugal,” writes Fearnside (2005:681), whereas in the mere 33 years thereafter, total deforested space (648.5 x 10³ km²) had grown larger than France (547.0 x 10³ km²). In 2002 alone, new clearings encompassed more land than the state of New Jersey (Rohter 2003:2). Similarly, Brazil’s Cerrado withstood centuries of minor settlement by Native peoples and “backwoodsmen” but has recently fallen prey to large-scale destruction: “All that has changed, however, and during the last twenty-five or so years the cerrados have been extensively developed … with the active encouragement of the Brazilian government” (Ratter, Ribeiro, and Bridgewater 2006:88-89). Klink and Machado estimate that since 1970 or so, settlers have destroyed over half of the Cerrado (2005:708); though not the entire region was originally forested, leaving the prevalence of Cerrado deforestation unclear, Klink and Machado’s figures indicate considerable human interference.

Fearnside identifies large-scale cattle ranchers as the primary perpetrators of deforestation in the Amazon (2005:682; 2006:159-160). As of 1993, for example, he claimed that that ranches of 100 or more hectares were responsible for approximately 70 percent of deforestation, with farms of under 100 hectares making up the remainder (2006:159). Only 21 percent of ‘new clearings’ in 1995, and 18 percent in 1996, encompassed under 15 hectares of land (2006:159, citing Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research), and since small-scale farmers typically manage to clear no more than three hectares per year (2006:159), these statistics suggest a sizeable presence among large-scale entities. Pacheco similarly calculates that 63.4 percent of plots were over 100 hectares in the 1997-1999 period, with 13.1 percent in the 50 to 100 hectare range, 14.0 percent between 15 and 50 hectares, and a mere 9.5 percent under 15 hectares (in Margulis 2004:13).6^,7 Margulis further echoes Fearnside’s concerns, placing the percentage of deforested Amazon land overrun by cattle ranches at “nearly 75 percent” (2004:xviii), then “virtually 80 percent” (p. 29).8 Ranching appears the predominant activity in the Cerrado as well, as indicated by Klink and Machado’s figures that 41.56 percent of the region as a whole, and the bulk of its destroyed area, now serves as “planted pastures” (2005:708, based on earlier research of Machado et al.).9

For these medium to large-scale ranchers, conquering the Amazon has grown easier in recent decades. Tens of thousands of kilometres of new roads have appeared since 1970, partly as a result of the government’s eagerness both to connect Brazilian producers to markets in neighbouring countries, as well as to the Pacific Ocean, and to tighten its control of the Amazon, preventing the region from becoming embroiled in the drug trade just beyond Brazil’s borders (Margulis 2004:17-19). Rather than chopping their own paths to the middle of dense forest growth, deforesters have taken advantage of this ease. According to Chomitz and Thomas, approximately 75 percent of forest clearings occur within 25 kilometres, and 85 percent within 50 kilometres, of the road network (in Margulis 2004:6), and Brazil’s National Space Research Institute has indicated that prospective deforesters are likely to pick forested plots adjacent to already-deforested land (in Margulis 2004:6). Moreover, transportation of goods to market requires further deforestation to accommodate the building of highways and other infrastructure, which by increasing the forests’ accessibility, in turn facilitates additional migration and forest destruction (Fearnside 2005:682; see also Klink and Machado 2005:711).

Nevertheless, ease alone would fail to compel ranchers to deforest; driving the cattle ranching industry is the profitability of its environmentally destructive trade (Margulis 2004).10 Margulis emphasizes that medium and large-scale cattle ranchers must glean significant economic return, for deforestation rates rose in the 1990s as government subsidies for deforestation-inducing trades declined (p. xi).11 Indeed, the average ‘net income per hectare of cattle’ reaches 138.91 reals/year12 in the Alta Floresta region of the Amazonian state of Mato Grosso, significantly higher than the 65.32 reals/year found in São Paulo’s non-Amazon Tupã region (p. 37).13 One reason for this profitability is that cattle ranchers may originally have obtained their land illegally, through ‘land-grabbing,’ for in the relatively un-policed, unregulated forest (discussed below), the party physically on a given swath of land, not the party entitled to it on paper, commandeers the rights to it (p. 23). Cattle ranchers may purchase land that others have ‘grabbed’ (p. 29), yet such land may still prove cheaper than land acquired legally. Even when inputs are costly, economic returns are “substantially higher” than they would be in São Paulo (p. 39, original emphasis). Deforested areas in which cattle ranching currently predominates receive about 1800 to 2200 millimetres of rainfall per year, the “optimal climatic conditions” for the trade (p. 29); this level of precipitation curtails cattle weight loss (a concern in other portions of Southeast Brazil) and thus makes cattle ranching in deforested regions extremely “productive” (p. 37). Moreover, Fearnside indicates that the opportunity for tax evasion lures some to the forests. Physicians and other professionals wishing to conceal their incomes refrain from investing in highly visible assets, such as stocks or urban real estate, but they find it easy to hide in the Amazon, where tax officials are less likely to investigate their economic activities (2005:685).