Achieving zero deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: What is missing?

Abstract

Abstract Amazon deforestation causes severe climatic and ecological disruptions, with negative consequences for the livelihood of forest-dependent peoples. To avoid further disruptions, Brazil will need to take bold steps to eliminate both illegal and legal Amazon deforestation over the short term. Amazon deforestation declined by 70% between 2005 and 2014 due to drops in commodity prices and interventions by federal and state governments, such as law enforcement campaigns and credit restrictions for landowners who deforest illegally. Despite these impressive achievements, Brazil still deforests 5,000 km2 of Amazonian forests each year. How then will Brazil eliminate Amazon deforestation altogether if the country is only committed to cut illegal deforestation by 2030—as stated in its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (iNDC) to the 2015 climate change treaty meeting in Paris? Here we provide an analysis of the major socio-economic-political threats that could constrain Brazil from achieving its current goals. We then propose six fundamental strategies to help Brazil achieve a more ambitious goal to eliminate all major legal and illegal Amazon deforestation. These strategies involve bringing social and environmental safeguards to the infrastructure plans in the region, consolidating and expanding positive incentives for the production of sustainable commodities, establishing a new policy to guarantee the social and environmental sustainability of rural settlements, fully implementing the national legislation protecting forests (the Forest Code), protecting the land rights of indigenous people and traditional communities, and expanding the existing network of protected areas, allocating the 80 million hectares of not designated public forests as protected areas or areas for sustainable use of timber and non-timber forest products. The implementation of these strategies however depends on the formulation of a new development paradigm that promotes economic growth, social justice and productive agriculture, while protecting the fundamentally important ecological services of tropical forests.