Browsing by Author "Witcover, Julie"

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  • Agricultural intensification by smallholders in the Western Brazilian Amazon: From deforestation to sustainable land use
    Vosti, S. A.; Witcover, Julie; Carpentier, C. L. (Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 2002)
    This report presents trade-offs among a "critical triangle" of development objectives- environmental sustainability, economic growth, and poverty alleviation- associated with different uses of the forest in two settlement projects in the western Brazilian Amazon. It finds that settlers continue to deforest, primarily for pasture, despite strengthening legal prohibitions, improved market links to the broader economy, and rising regional incomes and welfare. A supplement to approaches that look at deforestation from a macroeconomic viewpoint, this report focuses on smallholders decision making - important because Brazilian migration policies designed to alleviate poverty have made this group a pivotal force in both deforestation and economic growth in the Amazon.
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    Alternatives to slash-and-burn in Brazil: Summary report and synthesis of phase II
    Lewis, Jessa; Witcover, Julie; Ericksen, Polly J.; Guevara, Roger; Tomich, Thomas P. (Nairobi, Kenya: Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn, 2002)
    The conversion of primary forest to other land uses in the Amazon threatens biodiversity and releases carbon into the atmosphere, but makes economic development and poverty reduction possible. Small-scale farmers practising slash-and-burn cultivation account for a significant proportion of tropical deforestation. However, the conditions necessary for increased productivity of alternative land use systems (LUS) to improve farmer welfare and simultaneously reduce deforestation are not well understood. The research presented in this report attempts to determine the environmental consequences of different LUS in the western Brazilian Amazon, whether these consequences can be mitigated with appropriate technological, policy and institutional changes and what sorts of tradeoffs exist among the different social objectives facing policy makers. The research programme implemented during Phase II of ASB s project in Brazil was designed to better understand how the Government of Brazil, national and international research organizations and donor agencies can balance global environmental objectives with economic development and poverty reduction. The key question can be summarized as: can intensifying land use within forest and on cleared land simultaneously reduce deforestation and reduce poverty?
  • Intensified production systems on western Brazilian Amazon settlement farms: Could they save the forest?
    Carpentier, C. L.; Vosti, S. A.; Witcover, Julie (Elsevier Science B.V., 2000)
    Annual land-use decisions of settlement farmers, estimated to approach half a million in the Amazon, can have significant impacts on forest conversion of the largest tropical moist forests. Given the biodiversity and climate change consequences of the disappearance of this forest, it is pivotal to understand these farmers reactions to combinations of technologies, policies, and institutional arrangements to predict their deforestation implications. This study aims to find whether settlement farmers in the western Brazilian Amazon will adopt more intensive production systems, and if they do, what the impact of this adoption would be on deforestation and farm incomes. Adoption of four types of intensification and their economic and environmental impacts were predicted using a farm level bioeconomic linear programming model. The four intensification types were: no intensification, intensification of non-livestock activities on cleared land, intensification on all cleared land, and intensification on both cleared and forested land. Intensified land uses on either the cleared or forested lands generate higher returns to labor and land, and thus will likely be adopted by settlement farmers. Also, intensification of non-livestock activities on cleared land resulted in the largest deforestation rates. Despite its lower deforestation rate, intensification on all cleared land (including pasture) resulted in the least amount of preserved forest after 25 years. More precisely it decimated the forest. Intensification on forested land low-impact forest management slowed the deforestation rate, but did not stop it unless timber prices were increased to R$550m-3 (a R$435 increase over 1994 prices). Even with intensified activities on forested land, pasture still dominated the landscape. In the long run, there is a trade-off between farm income and forest preserved, which results from intensification of land uses on the cleared land. Under the current socioeconomic and political setting existing intensification systems on the cleared land will not save the forest. Intensification systems on forested lands provide better hope because they increase the value of the standing forest, thus counteracting the pressure to deforest.