HOUSEHOLD LIFE CYCLE, PROPERTY LIFE CYCLE AND DEFORESTATION IN - PDF document

HOUSEHOLD LIFE CYCLE, PROPERTY LIFE CYCLE AND DEFORESTATION IN BRAZILIAN AMAZON: THE REGION OF MACHADINHO D’OESTE Vanessa Cardoso Ferreira - Department of Demography – CEDEPLAR/UFMG Gilvan Guedes - Department of Demography – CEDEPLAR/UFMG Alisson Barbieri - Department of Demography – CEDEPLAR/UFMG This work was developed with the support of CNPq and CEDEPLAR/UFMG. XXVIII IUSSP International Population Conference in Session “ Population and vulnerability to environmental change” - Friday, 3 rd November 2017 Abstract: It is crucial to study the causes and consequences of deforestation on the global climate balance given the potential impact it can have. The Brazilian Amazon suffered a great increase on its deforestation rates, part of which is result of human occupation (fields and pasture). The purpose of this paper is to understand how socio-demographic characteristics of smallholders are related to deforestation of Machadinho D'Oeste, Rondônia, Brazilian Amazon. Theoretical frameworks of the border stages, household life cycle, and the property life cycle were used as a backdrop for understanding the context of deforestation in this region, as consequence of the actions of established family farms in the region in two different stages of the frontier. The proposed model has the dependent variable expressed as a proportion of total lot area. Following Beta regressions were used: Generalized model, correction per fraction, and regressions Beta Zero inflated. Also, the proportion multivariate regression was used for combined beta-logistic distributions. Results indicate that the household life cycle and property life cycle markers are good candidates to explain deforestation in this region. It is one of the first times that an Amazon region was studied under the perspective of the beginning of the colonization project. Keywords: Brazilian Amazon, Deforestation, Household Life Cycle, Property Life Cycle. 1

INTRODUCTION The theoretical field of demography and environment has grown in recent years, mainly due to the increase of problems related to the global environment. Human action is increasingly seen as responsible for generating various types of environmental degradation such as desertification, drought, deforestation soil pollution, water pollution, and atmospheric pollution. The Amazon has been a recurrent focus of this debate, since this biome has increasingly been threatened by human activities. The Amazon forest is responsible for planetary balance. Changing this balance can lead to a number of environmental consequences on a global scale. Deforestation is a major problem associated with Amazonian environmental issues and has often been addressed on a macro scale (Perz et al. 2005; Barbieri 2007). However, in recent years within the field of demography, there was a very influential tendency to explain the context of Amazonian frontier under a micro perspective, i.e. at the household level. Under this interpretation, deforestation may be strongly related to the agro-pastoral practices adopted by settlers (families) (Walker et al . 2002; Guedes 2010; Schmink and Wood 2012; McCracken et al . 1999). Similar to other recent studies, (Vanwey 2007; Guedes 2010) this analysis utilizes a micro perspective of the household life cycle to interpret domestic demographic effects on land use and land cover. According to this approach, small farmers adjust their survival strategies according to their consumption needs and their ability to work as they age. The property life cycle approach shows that the time of residence in the field influences the behavior of the settlers regarding land use. Using the Settlement Project Machadinho D'Oeste, located in the Brazilian Amazon, as a case study, this paper analyzes how the change in household life cycle and property life cycle influence the dynamics of land cover in the agricultural frontiers of the Amazon. The studies already done in this research area used the effects of variables (such as residence time on the property, age of household head, number of adults and children in the lot) on land cover (Walker et al. 2002; Guedes 2010; Vanwey 2007). These variables 2

were considered in this study, and additional relevant variables were incorporated to improve model performance. Unlike many studies that have made this type of analysis on already established frontiers, this paper tests these relations since the beginning of the settlement project – as well as Guedes et al. (2017b). It uses data on the settlers and the socioeconomic, demographic, and land cover of lots from their time of arrival at the frontier. This is one of the firsts studies in The Amazon that considers this complete time span on its data analysis. RELATION OF DEFORESTATION WITH THE HOUSEHOLD LIFE CYCLE, PROPERTY LIFE CYCLE AND BORDER STAGES IN MACHADINHO D’OESTE As demonstrated in previous studies (McCracken et al . 1999; Vanway et al. 2007; Guedes et al. 2011, Guedes et al. 2017b), this paper uses the Household Life Cycle (HLC), Property Life Cycle (PLC), and evolutions of frontiers to explain the change in soil cover in two different stages of the agricultural frontier in Machadinho D'Oeste. HLC is assumed as the role of family composition (number of inhabitants, age and sex of a household unit) in decision making and definition of survival and (re) production strategies as families age. The family composition is essential, since it determines the consumption needs, the amount of labor available, the accumulation of capital, and the generation of surplus families over time (McCracken et al. 1999; Walker et al. 2002; Brondízio et al. 2002; Walker 2003; Caldas et al. 2003; Vanwey et al. 2007; Barbieri et. al. 2005; Guedes et al. 2011). When considering the property/batch component in the analysis, some authors (Barbieri et al . 2005; Guedes et al. 2011; Guedes et al. 2017a) showed there are two elements that should be observed. One element is regarding to the time of existence of the lot (i.e. how old is the lot) and the second one is related to the residence time of the head of the household in the lot (i.e. how long does the household head leave in the lot). The present analysis considered the concept of Life Cycle in the Property, i.e., the one that concern how long the head of the domicile resides in the lot. 3

PLC was also important in the present study because, according to Barbieri et al. (2005) and Vanwey et al. (2007), the time a family lives in a property determines the level of knowledge about the biophysical characteristics of their property. Thus, it is expected that in the beginning of the occupation process in a region, newly arrived settlers, having little knowledge about the soil of their property, need to perform experiments to verify which crops best fit that soil. The opposite is expected from older residents or inhabitants from older lots, since knowledge allows them to specialize in crops appropriate to the type of soil in their property (Barbieri et al. 2005; Vanwey et al. 2007) The following is presented here as the two approaches to communicate with the stages of the agricultural frontier in relation to the soil cover. Studies show that deforestation is more sensitive to the effects of HLC at the beginning of the border, with HLC more influential than PLC at that time. This is justified by the fact that in moments of initial occupation of a region, the inexistence, or minimal existence of interactions with markets, causes production (and, consequently, land use and cover) to be closely associated with the structure domicile, depending heavily on the families' ability to provide labor. The survival of the families will be associated with everything they can produce on the lot, which generates the need to deforest a larger proportion of land. However, when the frontier evolves, this relationship is inversed. The evolution of borders is associated with the increase of market relations and market exchanges with urban centers. As the boundaries evolve, the PLC becomes more influential, especially as a result of the relationship with the market, which will determine the production demands based on commercialization. It is also worth noting that as time passes, a natural deterioration (wear) of the soils is verified. This is another factor that incorporates importance to the PLC in more advanced stages of the border, since the knowledge of the most appropriate crops for the soil of the region becomes essential in the face of the reduction of fertility of the soils. Recent results for the micro relationship between demographic dynamics and deforestation at Amazonian agricultural frontiers have shown that the home life cycle approach has received little empirical support since these effects have been complex and inconsistent (Vanway et al. 2007; Barbieri 2007; Guedes et al. 2011; Côrtes and D'Antona 2014). However, the above results referred to analyses for periods in which the frontier was 4