Amazon Exodus
What does depopulation mean for Brazil’s remote forests?
Things are changing along the Ituxi River, a waterway that leads deep into one of the remotest parts of Brazil’s Amazon forest. Not long ago, the river was “highly populated,” a villager told researchers. But “today it has ten times fewer people than before.”
It was a story the researchers heard often in 2007, as they visited more than 180 villages – some just a house or two – in a vast roadless swath of Brazil’s Amazonas state. “Interviewees reported that depopulation… had been severe,” they report in the journal Population and Environment. The study is one of the first to document the little-studied trend, and explore what it might mean for the forest’s future.
Amazonas still has 1.3 million square kilometers of intact forest, report Luke Parry, Brett Day and Carlos Peres of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingom, and Silvana Amaral of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais in Brazil. And, increasingly, its 3.2 million people live in urban centers – with nearly half in the city of Manaus alone. Rural areas, meanwhile, have been emptying out.
To understand why, the researchers randomly selected 8 roadless river valleys, and then set out to interview remaining residents. First, they travelled upriver “as far as the last household,” which in some cases was nearly 750 kilometers from the closest city. Then, they worked their way back, conducting surveys along the way in settlements that ranged from just one to 281 households (the average was just two households). They discovered that while many settlers valued having easy access to land, timber and hunting grounds, remote areas “have been largely abandoned due to severe lack of public services and the economic costs inherent in living far from urban centers.” Schools, hospitals and electricity are rare more than 200 kilometers from cities, they note, and it can be difficult for residents to tap government welfare programs that provide many poor families with income. As a result, many families are moving to the city.
It’s not yet clear what the trend means for efforts to protect the Amazon. On one hand, the depopulation could take pressure off wildlife and other natural resources. But the lack of people could also have “net conservation costs” if it undermines efforts to promote sustainable use and protection by forest residents, and opens the door to exploitation by outsiders with little stake in the ecosystem’s future. The key point, the authors say, is that although “rural population dynamics in the forested tropics have important consequences for conservation,” they have received relatively little attention from academics or policy makers. What’s needed, they conclude, are more studies that seek “not only an understanding of land management, but also the reasons for people to be there in the first place.” – David Malakoff | January 5, 2011
Source: Parry, L., Day, B., Amaral, S., & Peres, C. (2010). Drivers of rural exodus from Amazonian headwaters. Population and Environment, 32 (2-3), 137-176 DOI: 10.1007/s11111-010-0127-8
Image © Mariusz Jurgielewicz
