Transition in environmental governance in the Brazilian Amazon: emergence of a new pattern of socio-economic development and deforestation

Isabelle Tritsch (1) , Damien Arvor (2)

1 CREDA - CREDA - Centre de Recherche Et de Documentation sur les Amériques - UMR 7227
2 LETG - Rennes - Littoral, Environnement, Télédétection, Géomatique

Highlights • We emphasize the end of the boom-and-bust development pattern in the Brazilian Amazon. • Deforestation and socioeconomic development follow an inverted U-shape relationship. • Household incomes are greater in stabilized areas than in areas undergoing deforestation. • Environmental governance efforts fostered the emergence of EKC. Abstract Socioeconomic development in the Brazilian Amazon is currently reaching national averages although deforestation activity has been declining for a decade. As a consequence, recent studies rejected the widely agreed boom-and-bust development hypothesis that deforestation first generates an economic boom, which is then followed by a collapse as forest resources are depleted. Here, we confirm these studies that there is no boom-bust cycle and suggest that a new pattern of relationship between deforestation and socioeconomic development has emerged following an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). In this scenario, environmental degradation increases in the early stages of economic development and decreases in later stages as the economy develops and wellbeing increases. To validate this assumption, we conducted the first sub-municipal analysis of socioeconomic development and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon for the 2000–2010 period. Our results confirm the emergence of an EKC relationship with a turning point beyond which socioeconomic growth does not appear anymore to be a driver of deforestation. We also emphasize that areas subjected to active deforestation in 2010 present lower socio-Author manuscript version economic indicators than stabilized areas, pointing to the precarious socioeconomic situation of areas still undergoing active deforestation. We put these results in perspective by considering Brazilian efforts to ensure a transition in environmental governance with the objective of promoting land use sustainability through control of deforestation at the same time as supporting socioeconomic development.

Mots clés: Brazilian Amazon; Deforestation; Socio-economic development; Environmental Kuznets curve; Boom–bust cycles; Environmental governance

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Isabelle Tritsch, Damien Arvor. Transition in environmental governance in the Brazilian Amazon: emergence of a new pattern of socio-economic development and deforestation. Land Use Policy, 2016, 59, pp.446 - 455. ⟨10.1016/j.landusepol.2016.09.018⟩. ⟨hal-01425694⟩