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This working paper uses remote sensing data and methods to characterize land cover change in four sites in the lowland Peruvian Amazon over a period of three decades (1987-2017). Multi-village landscapes were purposefully selected to include road accessible sites and others only accessible by river. Landscape analysis focused on buffers around the selected villages used to approximate the areas of influence of farmers in these communities. Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon has been commonly attributed to agriculture expansion by smallholders. This belief falls short in acknowledging that the contribution of smallholder deforestation is mediated by others decisions around infrastructure development. In this analysis, road connected landscapes experienced greater loss of closed-canopy forest while closed canopy forest remained mostly stable in the river sites over the thirty year study period. Results indicated that closed canopy forest loss occurred in parallel with agricultural expansion at the road sites. The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of local land use dynamics and the role of regional infrastructure development as a driver of forest loss.
This working paper uses remote sensing data and methods to characterize land cover change in four sites in the lowland Peruvian Amazon over a period of three decades (1987-2017). Multi-village landscapes were purposefully selected to include road accessible sites and others only accessible by river. Landscape analysis focused on buffers around the selected villages used to approximate the areas of influence of farmers in these communities. Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon has been commonly attributed to agriculture expansion by smallholders. This belief falls short in acknowledging that the contribution of smallholder deforestation is mediated by others decisions around infrastructure development. In this analysis, road connected landscapes experienced greater loss of closed-canopy forest while closed canopy forest remained mostly stable in the river sites over the thirty year study period. Results indicated that closed canopy forest loss occurred in parallel with agricultural expansion at the road sites. The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of local land use dynamics and the role of regional infrastructure development as a driver of forest loss.
Targeted household surveys provided an analysis of how these occurrences influenced their livelihood decision-making processes. The evaluation of the changing driving forces focused on how policies influenced the outcome of economic processes. The results show that distinct policies are associated with different patterns of land-use/landcover change. For example, policies that favored cattle expansion influenced an increase in pasture areas. Policies associated with credit availability facilitated the expansion of agriculture areas, increasing deforestation. The results of the dissertation have implications not only for understanding tropical deforestation and land-use/land-cover change, but also for policymaking in Peru and other countries that share the Amazon and other tropical rainforests.
This paper reviews the literature on the links between migration and forests in the Peruvian Amazon. It highlights not only the complexity of the migrant–forest interface in Peru but also the relative lack of research on these dynamics. Historically, offi
This review summarizes the published literature, as well as any available information provided by NGOs or project proponents, on the practice of community forest management (CFM) in the Peruvian Amazon. It provides an overview of literature related to land-use and forest management by rural populations in the Peruvian Amazon, placing this information in the broader context of the forestry sector in Peru. The review describes the different manifestations of CFM in Peru and the most widely studied cases of CFM projects. The document also examines some emerging initiatives, summarizes the main challenges for CFM and highlights important areas for future research. One key finding of this review is that there is a general lack of scientific analyses of CFM in Peru: most information is available only via project reports prepared by project proponents and/or donors. The review stresses that community forest management takes many forms. People throughout the Amazon have long relied on forest resources for their shifting cultivation systems, and timber and NTFPs are central to the livelihoods of many. Typically, forest use has occurred informally with little oversight or control by the state. Beginning in the 1980s, environmental NGOs have introduced CFM initiatives in Peru. To date, most CFM projects focus only on indigenous communities to support timber management; by contrast, scientific studies have focused on forest use within subsistence livelihood systems. Given that there are approximately 2 million non-indigenous rural Amazonians in Peru, the forest footprint and market impacts of non-indigenous smallholder forest management are likely to be much greater than recognized. However, very little is known about these endogenous smallholder-led systems. More research is needed to increase our understanding of the heterogeneity of these systems and the opportunities and challenges that they represent.
Land cover change is a major challenge for forest conservation in Amazonia. Forest cover loss and anticipated changes in climate are expected to increase fire incidence in Amazonia with detrimental consequences to human health, climate, and natural ecosystems. In this dissertation I developed remote sensing methods to map and quantify land cover changes attributed to oil palm expansion in the Peruvian Amazon between 2001 and 2010. Then I used these results to assess the role of oil palm expansion on achieving dual goals of agricultural production and forest conservation. Finally I developed maps of burned areas and combined them with the land cover data to model the contribution of land cover changes and variations in drought severity to fire occurrence and spread. I found that high yield oil palm expansion can be effective to reduce the use of land for achieving agricultural production but that incentives for expanding plantations outside forests are essential to guarantee forest conservation.
The author presents an anthropological analysis of the regulatory technologies that characterize contemporary resource frontiers. He offers an ethnographic portrayal of indigenous rights, resource extraction and environmental politics in the Peruvian Amazon.
"Shifting cultivation is a dominant but controversial land use in tropical forest regions. Although it forms the economic backbone for millions of remote forest-dwelling farmers, shifting cultivation has also been blamed as a leading driver of deforestation and degradation. With the expansion of more intensive land-use practices in tropical regions, however, shifting cultivation is being re-examined as a potential win-win solution to the dual challenges of conservation and rural livelihoods. Preservation of forest cover through fallows helps to maintain soil fertility and biodiversity needed for these systems to remain productive and to support ecosystem services over decades or centuries of repeated cultivation. To date, few studies have examined the capacity of forest fallows to maintain these ecological functions as the length and intensity of land management increases. Fewer still have examined how the socio-economic status of farmers may influence these patterns. In this dissertation, I examined the cumulative ecological impacts of repeated shifting cultivation on a suite of ecosystem services provided by forest fallows after 50+ years of land management in a small farming community in the Peruvian Amazon. I also explored the links between economic inequality (as measured by total landholdings) and ecosystem service provision through wealth-mediated land management practices. Using a combination of household interviews, geo-spatial mapping of fields and ecological sampling, I found that fallow soil fertility declined with number of past cultivation cycles and with rising land-use intensity but retained sufficient levels of soil organic matter to support continued crop production. Fallow tree biodiversity declined continuously with time since clearing and was not influenced by past land management practices. These ecological outcomes were in part moderated by the size of farmers' landholdings. Soils of larger landholders had higher soil fertility than those of smaller landholders as a result of less intensive land use practiced by these farmers, while fallows of larger landholders also harbored more and different late successional and climax species than fallows of smaller landholders. In a comparison of trade-offs among ecosystem services provided by commercially-oriented orchards (more often planted by large landholders) and fallows (more typical of smaller landholders), I found that orchards provided moderate economic benefits over fallows with few lasting negative effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services when planted at small scales. My results suggest that shifting cultivation may provide a reasonable win-win solution for conservation and livelihoods goals. If managed well, these lands can maintain soil fertility, but will gradually lose tree biodiversity through time. Contrary to popular thought, inequality in landholdings may actually help to retain a larger species pool across the landscape by preserving distinct sets of species under different management regimes. Although characterized by mostly fast growing and reproducing pioneer species, these forest fallows appear to maintain many of the basic forest ecological functions needed to support continued shifting cultivation. " --
"The Region of San Martin, Peru, has a rate of deforestation that is among the highest in the Amazon basin. The forest being lost in that area, on the eastern slope of the Andes mountain range, is rich in biodiversity, making this area of particular concern for forest conservation. As with frontier areas generally, the dynamics of change in San Martin-demographic, economic, and land cover-are complex and fast moving. In this dissertation, I draw on information from 194 interviews with smallholder farmers in three districts of San Martin in order to illustrate and analyze how these frontier areas have changed through time and what those changes mean for smallholder livelihoods and for the potential effectiveness of forest conservation activities. I find patterns of change in all three frontier districts that are generally consistent with each other, despite the fact that the districts themselves were settled decades apart (initial settlement times mid-1970s, mid-1990s, late-1990s/early-2000s, respectively). In all cases, the great majority of household heads in these communities are migrants from the Peruvian sierra or else are the children of migrants. For migrants arriving to these areas, there is a strong first-mover advantage; although arriving early to the frontier entails hardships in terms of the absence of services and difficult travel, those individuals who arrived earliest acquired the largest land parcels and were best positioned to take advantage of land price increases as the frontier developed. An analysis of land markets in these districts demonstrated several consistent patterns: the land parcels being sold over time tended to become smaller, less forested, and more expensive per hectare. The overall result of these changes was that the opportunity cost to landholders of sparing any remaining forest increased rapidly through time as households paid higher prices for increasingly small parcels. Average parcel sizes declined through time in all three districts, suggesting that a process of land consolidation-as observed in the hollow frontier pattern-is not happening in these coffee-producing landscapes. The lack of land consolidation by larger landowners in these landscapes may be a result of the nature of coffee itself as a crop: it is generally labour-intensive and may have more limited returns to scale than activities such as cattle-grazing and soy cultivation. In the last results chapter of this dissertation, I document the impact of a coffee rust outbreak that took place between seasons of fieldwork. The response to the outbreak illustrates the importance of legacies of variety choice. Additionally, by creating a severe drop in the diversity of coffee varieties being planted, it demonstrates a potential risk to the ability of the local agricultural system to adapt to future changes. I conclude the dissertation with suggestions for how these results may be useful to forest conservation policy. I highlight the degree to which patterns of land cover change on frontier areas are in fact structured by processes far away in migrant areas of origin; informational campaigns may be useful in reducing the most problematic forms of land speculation. I also raise questions about the effectiveness of payments-based forest conservation programs in frontier areas where payment levels are unlikely to be able to keep up with rapidly increasing land prices. Appealing to community institutions and social pressure may in fact prove more effective than payments-based structures in this context. Lastly, given the rapid nature of change in these frontier areas-as in many others-I emphasize the importance in forest conservation planning of making as much effort as possible to anticipate patterns of future change and to plan for them in the design of any policy or program. " --