Impact of forest concessions on local jobs in central amazon

Abstract

In the humid tropics, forest concessions have become the main mechanism of access to public forest resources. In Brazil, forest concessions began in 2006 with the creation of local jobs as one of its assumptions. The impact of the forest policy on employment was evaluated in the first forest concessions in the Brazilian Amazon. We used Synthetic Control method to evaluate the impact of the intervention (forest concession in 2010) for the period 2002–2015. The results revealed a positive effect on local forest jobs after a four-year time lapse from the beginning of forest operations. The municipality with the first Brazilian concessions benefited from an increase in forest jobs by concentrating the timber processing from local and neighboring forest concessions. According to our analyses, a 10% increase in municipal agricultural GDP results in a 3.53% increase in forest jobs; an increase of 10 employees in the previous year generates 6 more employees in the forestry sector in the following year; however, a 10% increase in sector's wages leads to a drop of 6.45 jobs in the forest sector. We concluded that for a forest-based economy to contribute to local development in Amazon municipalities, forest concessions need to combine jobs in the forest and industry. This would require broader and more integrated national and state development policies than those under the responsibilities of the environmental agencies that today manage the concessions.