Abstract
Abstract. The Amazon basin is the world's largest rainforest and the most biologically diverse place on Earth. Despite the critical importance of this region, Amazon forests continue inexorably to be degraded and deforested for various reasons, mainly a consequence of agricultural expansion. The development of novel policy strategies that provide balanced solutions, associating economic growth with environmental protection, is still challenging, largely because the perspective of those most affected – local stakeholders – is often ignored. Participatory fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) was implemented to examine stakeholder perceptions towards the sustainable development of two agricultural-forest frontier areas in the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon. A series of development scenarios were explored and applied to stakeholder-derived FCM, with climate change also analysed. Stakeholders in both regions perceived landscapes of socio-economic impoverishment and environmental degradation driven by governmental and institutional deficiencies. Under such abject conditions, governance and well-integrated social and technological strategies offered socio-economic development, environmental conservation, and resilience to climatic changes. The results suggest there are benefits of a new type of thinking for development strategies in the Amazon basin and that continued application of traditional development policies reduces the resilience of the Amazon to climate change, whilst limiting socio-economic development and environmental conservation.
Highlights
The Amazon basin is the world’s richest biological reservoir and a globally significant carbon sink (Foley et al, 2007; Guimberteau et al, 2017)
The results suggest there are benefits of a new type of thinking for development strategies in the Amazon basin and that continued application of traditional development policies reduces the resilience of the Amazon to climate change, whilst limiting socio-economic development and environmental conservation
Using stakeholder-derived information collected from workshops performed in forest frontier communities of the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon, this paper aims to identify how such communities perceive the state of their region using fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM)
Summary
The Amazon basin is the world’s richest biological reservoir and a globally significant carbon sink (Foley et al, 2007; Guimberteau et al, 2017). Since the 1960s, deforestation and forest degradation have weakened the basin’s natural function, causing a substantial loss of biodiversity, provision of ecosystem services, and changes in local and global weather patterns (Harris et al, 2012; Haddad et al, 2015; Zemp et al, 2017). I. Blanco-Gutiérrez et al.: Examining the sustainability challenge in the Amazon Basin forestation and megafire clearances reinforce the continued threatened state of the basin (Global Forest Watch, 2019). Future scenarios depict a reduction in tree coverage and increased drought in Amazonia Future scenarios depict a reduction in tree coverage and increased drought in Amazonia (e.g. Malhi et al, 2008; Tejada et al, 2016; Guimberteau et al, 2017), with Lenton (2011) proposing that ecological tipping points could be reached
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