Selva Amazónica, More Valuable Standing Than Felled

An article published on Science this week analyzes the development of the region across the Amazon deforestation frontier. In three words: boom and bust. It means that comparing the Human Development Index of different classes of Brazilian municipalities, from prefrontier municipalities to heavily post frontier deforested municipalities, you can see how the HDI relatively grows in the first phase of the deforestation (on the frontier line) and relatively declines when deforestation is completed.  In other words,

when the median HDI of each class is plotted against deforestation extent, a boom-and-bust pattern becomes apparent, which suggests that relative development levels increase rapidly in the early stages of deforestation and then decline as the frontier advances. Hence, although municipalities with active deforestation had development levels that approached the overall Brazilian median, pre- and postfrontier HDI values were substantially lower and statistically indistinguishable from each other (P > 0.9). These results are robust to the particular thresholds used to define the frontier classes. A boom-and-bust pattern is also found for each of the HDI subindices: standard of living, literacy, and life expectancy.

This strongly suggests that the poor have no choice but to exploit every resource available. It is difficult to think that farmers or loggers do not see that they are compromising their very own future. They simply have no choice. The challenge is giving them a choice.