Road building, land use and climate change: prospects for environmental governance in the Amazon.
Some coupled land-climate models predict a dieback of Amazon forest during the twenty-first century due to climate change, but human land use in the region has already reduced the forest cover. The causation behind land use is complex, and includes economic, institutional, political and demographic factors. Pre-eminent among these factors is road building, which facilitates human access to natural resources that beget forest fragmentation. While official government road projects have received considerable attention, unofficial road building by interest groups is expanding more rapidly, especially where official roads are being paved, yielding highly fragmented forest mosaics. Effective governance of natural resources in the Amazon requires a combination of state oversight and community participation in a 'hybrid' model of governance. The MAP Initiative in the southwestern Amazon provides an example of an innovative hybrid approach to environmental governance. It embodies a polycentric structure that includes government agencies, NGOs, universities and communities in a planning process that links scientific data to public deliberations in order to mitigate the effects of new infrastructure and climate change.
Perz
Stephen
S
Department of Sociology, University of Florida, PO Box 117330, Gainesville, FL 32611-7330, USA. sperz@ufl.edu
Brilhante
Silvia
S
Brown
Foster
F
Caldas
Marcellus
M
Ikeda
Santos
S
Mendoza
Elsa
E
Overdevest
Christine
C
Reis
Vera
V
Reyes
Juan Fernando
JF
Rojas
Daniel
D
Schmink
Marianne
M
Souza
Carlos
C
Walker
Robert
R
D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D004777:Environment; D006076:Government; D017752:Greenhouse Effect; D014186:Transportation