22. Governing the Amazon Timber Industry

Nepstad, D.; Alencar, Ane; Barros, Ana Cristina; Lima, Eirivelthon; Mendoza, Elsa; Ramos, Carlos Augusto; Lefebvre, Paul

doi:10.7312/zari12906-024

Cited by 9 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Many small landowners routinely violate the legal reserve, and there is no financial incentive for small landowners to manage their forests. A recent pilot initiative shows some promise for neighboring landowners to jointly contract harvesting rights in an innovative arrangement with a small logging company that conforms to RIL practices (Lima et al 2006; Nepstad et al 2004 a, b ). Nonetheless, few small landowners concern themselves with sustainability of timber production in any guise and largely view the selective harvest as a one‐time extraction event (Menton et al, unpublished data).…”

Section: Constraints On Timber Management In Small Private Landholdingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Reaping the First Harvest: Management Objectives for Timber Production in the Brazilian Amazon

Zarin

Schulze

Vidal

et al. 2007

Conservation Biology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Millions of hectares of future timber concessions are slated to be implemented within large public forests under the forest law passed in 2006 by the Brazilian Congress. Additional millions of hectares of large, privately owned forests and smaller areas of community forests are certified as well managed by the Forest Stewardship Council, based on certification standards that will be reviewed in 2007. Forest size and ownership are two key factors that influence management objectives and the capacity of forest managers to achieve them. Current best ecological practices for timber production from Brazil's native Amazon forests are limited to reduced-impact logging (RIL) systems that minimize the environmental impacts of harvest operations and that obey legal restrictions regarding minimum diameters, rare species, retention of seed trees, maximum logging intensity, preservation of riparian buffers, fire protection, and wildlife conservation. Compared with conventional, predatory harvesting that constitutes >90% of the region's timber production, RIL dramatically reduces logging damage and helps maintain forest cover and the presence of rare tree species, but current RIL guidelines do not assure that the volume of timber removed can be sustained in future harvests. We believe it is counterproductive to expect smallholders to subscribe to additional harvest limitations beyond RIL, that larger private forested landholdings managed for timber production should be sustainable with respect to the total volume of timber harvested per unit area per cutting cycle, and that large public forests should sustain volume production of individual harvested species. These additional requirements would improve the ecological sustainability of forest management and help create a stable forest-based sector of the region's economy, but would involve costs associated with lengthened cutting cycles, reduced harvest intensities, and/or postharvest silviculture to promote adequate growth and regeneration.

show abstract

Section: Constraints On Timber Management In Small Private Landholdingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Reaping the First Harvest: Management Objectives for Timber Production in the Brazilian Amazon

Zarin

Schulze

Vidal

et al. 2007

Conservation Biology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The opening of new frontiers of development in the Brazilian Amazon region follows well known patterns of land use. Economic agents finance the clearing of the land in part by selling timber, then start farming or ranching activities (Schneider, 1995;Stone, 1998, Nepstad et al, 2003, 2004. This synergy between logging and other economic activities, therefore, plays an active role in the joint process of deforestation and land speculation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of Brazilian forest concessions

Azevedo-Ramos

Silva

Merry

2015

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In 2006 Brazil passed legislation allowing concessions for industrial timber harvest in public forests. This decision was part of a broader effort to control deforestation, which had spiked to its second highest level, of about 25,000 km 2 , in 2004. Specifically, concessions were implemented as a means to control a rampaging timber industry while providing a source of accessible timber for sustainable harvest. Timber concessions, however, are not without their critics worldwide. Here we review the process undertaken to address international concerns over concessions in the policy design, we discuss the process of implementation in Brazil from 2007 to 2014 and then attempt to provide insight into the challenges that lie ahead. Our findings suggest that even though Brazil's policy designers had the full knowledge of the difficulties with timber concessions, and attempted to design a concession framework to address those concerns, deeper structural problems within the industry and within government itself have prevented the successful scaling up of the concession model. Key hurdles include: government overlap and duplication causing unbearable transaction costs and risks to investors; an industry ill prepared and unwilling to adapt to the stringent requirements set in the policy; and little success in curtailing illegal logging beyond concession borders. While concessions remain a potentially important tool for the management of public forests, additional resources and time will need to be invested to overcome these barriers.

show abstract

“…Timber production in the Amazon basin has been estimated at 30 3 10 6 m 3 /yr, based on regional sawmill production, but estimates of the areal extent and intensity of the selective logging practices that supply that timber have been poorly constrained (Nepstad et al 1999, Lentini et al 2003, Cochrane et al 2004, Nepstad et al 2004a). Much of the selective logging in the region is clandestine, and in many cases, legally registered forest-management plans lack credibility.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recovery Of Forest Structure And Spectral Properties After Selective Logging In Lowland Bolivia

Broadbent

Zarin

Asner

et al. 2006

Ecological Applications

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Effective monitoring of selective logging from remotely sensed data requires an understanding of the spatial and temporal thresholds that constrain the utility of those data, as well as the structural and ecological characteristics of forest disturbances that are responsible for those constraints. Here we assess those thresholds and characteristics within the context of selective logging in the Bolivian Amazon. Our study combined field measurements of the spatial and temporal dynamics of felling gaps and skid trails ranging from <1 to 19 months following reduced-impact logging in a forest in lowland Bolivia with remote-sensing measurements from simultaneous monthly ASTER satellite overpasses. A probabilistic spectral mixture model (AutoMCU) was used to derive per-pixel fractional cover estimates of photosynthetic vegetation (PV), non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV), and soil. Results were compared with the normalized difference in vegetation index (NDVI). The forest studied had considerably lower basal area and harvest volumes than logged sites in the Brazilian Amazon where similar remote-sensing analyses have been performed. Nonetheless, individual felling-gap area was positively correlated with canopy openness, percentage liana coverage, rates of vegetation regrowth, and height of remnant NPV. Both liana growth and NPV occurred primarily in the crown zone of the felling gap, whereas exposed soil was limited to the trunk zone of the gap. In felling gaps >400 m2, NDVI, and the PV and NPV fractions, were distinguishable from unlogged forest values for up to six months after logging; felling gaps <400 m2 were distinguishable for up to three months after harvest, but we were entirely unable to distinguish skid trails from our analysis of the spectral data.

show abstract

22. Governing the Amazon Timber Industry

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Beyond Reaping the First Harvest: Management Objectives for Timber Production in the Brazilian Amazon

Beyond Reaping the First Harvest: Management Objectives for Timber Production in the Brazilian Amazon

The evolution of Brazilian forest concessions

Recovery Of Forest Structure And Spectral Properties After Selective Logging In Lowland Bolivia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About