The Expansion of the Economic Frontier and the Diffusion of Violence in the Amazon

Abstract

Over the last few decades, the occupation of the Amazon and the expansion of large-scale economic activities have exerted a significant negative impact on the Amazonian environment and on the health of the Amazon’s inhabitants. These processes have altered the context of the manifestation of health problems in time and space and changed the characteristics of the spatial diffusion of health problems in the region. This study analyzed the relationships between the various economic processes of territorial occupation in the Amazon and the spatial diffusion of homicidal violence through the configuration of networks of production, as well as the movements of population and merchandise. Statistical data on violence, deforestation, the production of agricultural items, and socio-economic variables, georeferenced and available for the 771 municipalities of the Legal Amazon were used in this study. The results suggest that the diffusion of violence closely follows the economic expansion front, which is related to deforestation and livestock production but has little relation to grain production, demonstrating steps and typologies of recent occupation in the Amazon that promote violence. These spatial patterns reveal environmental and socio-economic macro-determinants that materialize in geographic space through the construction of highways and the formation of city networks.

The Spill Over of Crime from Urban Centers: An Account of the Changing Spatial Distribution of Violent Crime in Guyana

“…Undoubtedly though, the results of our analysis set up the conditions for understanding how crime is perceived within indigenous villages and whether there were observations of increased crimes within their villages that have not been reported in the newspaper we examined. As efforts are ongoing to map crime [24], from environmental [22] to homicides [23] across Amazonia, our future work will continue this movement to understand how crime impacts indigenous peoples influenced landscapes.…”

“…In the final analysis, our work shows that guns and crime patterns have shifted towards indigenous peoples' influenced landscapes. The porous nature of Guyana's borders makes knowing the direction from which guns are arriving into the country a difficult task, but what is certain is that the center of gravity of such crime is changing, bringing violence closer to indigenous villages and, as Souza et al [23] observed, following the deforestation frontier. Furthermore, recent studies in North America [47] have shown that gun policy in the United States impacted the movement of guns to, and subsequently the levels of crime in, Mexico.…”

“…Spiegel et al [24] observed that there is a pressing need for scholars to focus on crimes against the environment or green criminology [28,29] and that there is a role for GIS tools in mapping locations of interest. Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, from the perspective of this paper, Souza et al [23] studied the relationships between the various economic processes of territorial occupation in the Amazon and how they influence the spatial diffusion of homicidal violence, the movements of people and merchandise. Grain production as a driver of territorial occupation did not influence the diffusion of homicidal violence, but Souza et al [23] reported that the expansion of deforestation and livestock rearing influenced where such violence occurred.…”

“…Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, from the perspective of this paper, Souza et al [23] studied the relationships between the various economic processes of territorial occupation in the Amazon and how they influence the spatial diffusion of homicidal violence, the movements of people and merchandise. Grain production as a driver of territorial occupation did not influence the diffusion of homicidal violence, but Souza et al [23] reported that the expansion of deforestation and livestock rearing influenced where such violence occurred. These observations appear to go against Weisburd's [30] laws of crime concentration, which suggest that crime stays within a narrow bandwidth across time, despite strong volatility in crime incidents.…”

Production and international trade: challenges for achieving targets 6 and 11 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation in Brazil

“…Second, the expansion of these sectors often followed the traditional frontier mindset, in which natural ecosystems are replaced by other types of land use suited to quick economic gains with little concern for the local populations' traditions and culture (Becker 2001;. Third, there is evidence that the expansion of these sectors in the new Brazilian frontiers exacerbated social conflicts (Prates & Bacha 2011;Souza et al 2015) and did not always significantly contribute to the improvement of local human development .…”