Abstract
State-led agrarian reform (SLAR) settlements established in the Amazon in the 1970s led to environmental degradation and mixed socioeconomic outcomes. More recently, direct-action land reform (DALR) settlements have proliferated, which are leading to new forest clearing in the name of agrarian reform. The emergence of DALR begs questions about social and environmental outcomes in recent Amazon settlements. This paper compares DALR settlements in two different regions of the eastern Amazon: the South of Pará and the Transamazon. Analysis of household survey data shows that DALR settlements in the two study areas differ substantially in terms of their histories of formation and regional contexts. However, social and environmental outcomes do not always differ among the two study areas, which in turn resemble older SLAR settlements.
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Notes
The overall sample includes 399 households, with 182 from the Transamazon and 217 from the South of Pará. Comparisons of our sample sizes to the INCRA estimates of populations in the settlements revealed differences in the ratio of sample sizes to populations. To ensure that our analysis reflects the size distribution of populations among the settlements sampled, we weighted the sampled cases by settlement. After weighting, we arrived at 234 households along the Transamazon and 162 in southern Pará.
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Leite, F.L., Caldas, M.M., Simmons, C. et al. The social viability and environmental sustainability of direct action land reform settlements in the Amazon. Environ Dev Sustain 13, 773–788 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-011-9289-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-011-9289-5