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Protecting the Amazon: A Tough Trade-off with Employment?

Amazonian deforestation is a major regional and global disaster, rapidly diminishing natural capital, contribution to mass extinction, and to climate change via land-use emissions. Evidently, the drivers of deforestation need to be closely scrutinized. Imori et al. (2011) contribute to this debate and perform an input-output analysis on Amazon deforestation in 2005. They find that cattle, soybean and to lesser degree sugar cane are main culprits of deforestation. The study does not investigate market-mediated effects. For example, the possibility that sugarcane production around Sao Paolo substitutes for cattle, which, in turn, is pushed into the Amazon region is not analyzed (Lapola et al., 2011). The authors point out that cattle and soybean provide employment in a region that otherwise offers few opportunities. Employment and economic growth targets are thus in direct conflict with forest protection. Soybean is mostly exported (e.g. for feeding industrially produced chicken in Germany). From a consumption-based perspective, importing countries of soybean are also responsible for Brazilian deforestation. A relevant CO2 tax on consumption of soybean (and cattle) in OECD countries or on production in Brazil could reduce the pressure on continued deforestation. Global efforts of forest protection are probably well advised to advance approaches that provide high employment and give ownership of forest protection to local communities.

Posted by Felix Creutzig on November 15, 2011 3:28 AM | Permalink