Strategic Environmental Assessment for Sustainable Expansion of Palm Oil Biofuels in Brazilian North Region

Abstract

Biofuels development in Brazil is a key factor for the environment and sustainable development of the country. Brazil has great potential of available areas and has favourable climate and geography for biofuel production, such as palm oil, soy, sugar cane, etc. This research aims to evaluate palm oil production and expansion in Pará state, in the north of Brazil and also Amazonian territory. Degraded land will be evaluated through remote sensing, because palm oil crops should be placed in these lands, and secondly, expansion scenarios would be created. This research will be a decision support tool for public policies.

Breaking the Link between Environmental Degradation and Oil Palm Expansion: A Method for Enabling Sustainable Oil Palm Expansion

“…In the face of increasing global scarcity of arable land an often proposed solution to reduce forest conversion is to focus agricultural expansion and intensification on land that has already been degraded instead of opening up lands still covered in natural vegetation [8–10,16,17]. This strategy has been suggested in the context of agricultural expansion in general [8], as well as for specific commodities such as soy [9], rubber [18,19], palm oil [15,16], and bio-energy feedstock in particular [20–22]. Tropical forest areas are one of the last remaining biomes where large tracts of land suitable for agriculture are still available [23].…”

“…Tropical forest areas are one of the last remaining biomes where large tracts of land suitable for agriculture are still available [23]. The need for a robust methodology of spatially delinking increased production by diverting agricultural expansion towards degraded areas is in particular important in these biomes because of their high conservation values [9,16,24]. …”

“…Oil palm expansion into forested areas can therefore lead to high biodiversity loss, especially at the local scale [7,13,23]. The crop has expanded mostly in Asia, but is considered to become a major driver of deforestation in tropical Africa [27] and Latin America [10,16,28] as well. At broader geographic scales and considering the growing global demand for vegetable oil, it remains unclear to what extent the high productivity potential of oil palm reduces pressure on land that would otherwise have been targeted by other oil crops [23].…”

Strategic Environmental Assessment in Brazilian Academic Research

“…The other works focus on improving procedures for steps in the preparation of SEA: fuzzy logic, associated with hierarchical analysis and GIS, is recommended by Oliveira et al (2012) for the diagnosis step and by Secron et al (2017), to study alternatives and to Cavalcanti and La Rovere (2011) in the evaluation of strategic options. Carvalho (2011) discusses scenarios with geoprocessing tools and Ferreira et al (2019), SEA subsidies in territorial planning guided by the offer of ecosystem services.…”