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How Much Forest is There?
Changes in Forest Cover
Brazil has one of the most advanced satellite monitoring systems in
the developing world, and the aggregate data published by the National
Institute of Space Research (INPE, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas
Espaciais) on forest cover changes are widely accepted. This is a major
improvement over the situation in the 1980s and needs to be built upon.
However, information on the sources and causes of those changes is
much less clear and hampers policy formulation (box 2.1).
Box 2.1. Availability and Quality of Data on Changes in Brazilian Forests
Information concerning the causes of changes in natural forest cover is limited in Brazil.
While various studies, including many referred to in this paper, discuss factors
influencing deforestation, it remains difficult to draw more than a few concrete
conclusions. For example, it is still not known with certainty whether land conversion is
being undertaken largely by small- or large-scale agriculturists. The answer would
clearly have strategic implications.
Much of the data on causes of deforestation is out of date or inconsistent, making
analysis of the current situation difficult. Brazil conducts excellent agricultural and
demographic censuses, however, and two data sets are now available from the mid-
1980s and the mid-1990s. Analysis of these sets would provide insights that could
inform the debate in the parliament and the country on the extent to which continued
deforestation is a result of agricultural frontier settlement, the role of large and small
farmers in that process, and the extent to which policy factors (such as easy availability
of credit for agriculture, land settlement policies, and investment in infrastructure) are
causing deforestation. Had these issues been at the center of a government policy for the
Amazon region, such analysis would already have been conducted. Although Brazil has
the human capital and financial resources to conduct such analysis, there apparently has
been no demand for it from the government; therefore, none has been conducted. 1
1. OED commissioned such an analysis of the data, which was to be funded by EMBRAPA (Empresa Brasileira
de Pesquisa Agropecuaria), but the analysis could not be completed in time for this study.
Amazon Forests
Deforestation was proceeding rapidly in the Amazon in 1978 (Annex
A, table A.1). The loss of 20,000 km 2 /year coincided with ambitious
government-sponsored regional development programs for the
Amazon region and wide availability of credit and other financial incentives.
After a substantial decline over the period 1989–1991, deforestation
appears to have shown a sharp upward trend, with a “spike”
in 1995. There is some debate, however, about whether deforestation
rates did indeed “spike” in 1995. Economists argue that forest losses
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