Monitoring Needs to Transform Amazonian Forest Maintenance Into a Global Warming-Mitigation Option

Two approaches are frequently mentioned in proposals to use tropical forest maintenance as a carbon offset. One is to set up, specific reserves, funding the establishment, demarcation, and guarding of these units. Monitoring, in this case, consists of the relatively straightforward process of confirming that the forest stands in question continue to exist. In Amazonia, where large expanses of tropical forest still exist, the reserve approach has the logical weakness of being completely open to “leakage”: with the implantation of any given reserve, the people who would have been deforesting in the reserve area will probably continue to clear the same amount of forest somewhere else in the region. The second approach is through policy changes aimed at reducing the rate of clearing, but not limited to specific reserves or areas of forest. This second approach addresses more fundamental aspects of the tropical deforestation problem, but has the disadvantages of not assuring the permance of forest and of not resulting in a visible product that can be convincingly credited, to the existence of the project. In order for credit to be assigned to policy change projects, functioning models of the deforestation process must be developed that are capable of producing seenarios with and without different policy changes. This requires understanding the process of deforestation, which depends on monitoring in order to have information as a time series. Information is needed both from satellite imagery and from on-the-ground observations on who occupies the land and why the observed changes occur. Monitoring must be done by individual property if causal factors are to be identified reliably; this is best achieved using a database in a Geographical, Information System (GIS) that includes property boundaries. Once policy changes are made in practice, not only deforestation but also the policies themselves must be monitored. Deerees and laws are not the same as changes in practice; the initiation and continued application of changes must therefore be confirmed regularly. The value of carbon benefits from Amazonia depends directly on the credibility and transparency of monitoring. The great potential value of carbon maintenance in Amazonia should provide ample reason for Amazonian countries to strengthen and increase the transparency of their monitoring efforts.     

An ecological analysis of predominant land uses in the Brazilian Amazon

Summary The land uses that now predominate in Brazil's Amazon Region are unlikely to produce sustainable yields. They also tend to close off potentially sustainable alternative uses. Cattle pasture — either productive or abandoned — now occupies most deforested land. Small farmers plant pasture after using the land for a year or two under annual crops, while large cattle ranches plant pasture directly after clearing. The principal motive for planting pasture is often its low cost and high effectiveness as a means of securing speculative land claims — not beef production.Pasture and cattle yields are low and, after use for about a decade, the planted grasses are out-competed by secondary forest species or inedible grasses. Depletion of available phosphorus in the soil is a major cause of yield decline; Brazil's relatively modest phosphorus deposits, virtually all of which are outside of Amazonia, make fertiliser use not feasible for the vast areas now rapidly being converted to pasture. Converting a substantial portion of Amazonia to pasture would have potential climatic effects. Areas that can be planted in annual and perennial crops are restrained by world markets, as well as by soil quality and Brazil's limited stocks of the inputs needed for intensive agriculture.Recent initiatives for agricultural-ecological in Brazil's Amaoznian states could be a first step toward more rational land use. Immediate measures are needed to slow deforestation, to discourage unsustainable uses and to make sustainable alternatives profitable.Professor Philip Fearnside is currently Research Professor in the Department of Ecology at the National Institute for Research in the Amazon. The paper has been modified from an earlier version presented at the International Symposium on Alternatives to Deforestation held in Belém, Pará, Brazil in January 1988.