Showing papers by "Eduardo S. Brondizio published in 2008"

Insight, part of a Special Feature on The influence of human demography and agriculture on natural systems in the Neotropics Urban Forest and Rural Cities: Multi-sited Households, Consumption Patterns, and Forest Resources in Amazonia

Abstract: In much of the Amazon Basin, approximately 70% of the population lives in urban areas and urbanward migration continues. Based on data collected over more than a decade in two long-settled regions of Amazonia, we find that rural-urban migration in the region is an extended and complex process. Like recent rural-urban migrants worldwide, Amazonian migrants, although they may be counted as urban residents, are often not absent from rural areas but remain members of multi-sited households and continue to participate in rural-urban networks and in rural land-use decisions. Our research indicates that, despite their general poverty, these migrants have affected urban markets for both food and construction materials. We present two cases: that of acai palm fruit in the estuary of the Amazon and of cheap construction timbers in the Peruvian Amazon. We find that many new Amazonian rural-urban migrants have maintained some important rural patterns of both consumption and knowledge. Through their consumer behavior, they are affecting the areal extent of forests; in the two floodplain regions discussed, tree cover is increasing. We also find changes in forest composition, reflecting the persistence of rural consumption patterns in cities resulting in increased demand for and production of acai and cheap timber species.

Urban Forest and Rural Cities: Multi-sited Households, Consumption Patterns, and Forest Resources in Amazonia

Abstract: In much of the Amazon Basin, approximately 70% of the population lives in urban areas and urbanward migration continues. Based on data collected over more than a decade in two long-settled regions of Amazonia, we find that rural–urban migration in the region is an extended and complex process. Like recent rural–urban migrants worldwide, Amazonian migrants, although they may be counted as urban residents, are often not absent from rural areas but remain members of multi-sited households and continue to participate in rural–urban networks and in rural land-use decisions. Our research indicates that, despite their general poverty, these migrants have affected urban markets for both food and construction materials. We present two cases: that of acai palm fruit in the estuary of the Amazon and of cheap construction timbers in the Peruvian Amazon. We find that many new Amazonian rural–urban migrants have maintained some important rural patterns of both consumption and knowledge. Through their consumer behavior, they are affecting the areal extent of forests; in the two floodplain regions discussed, tree cover is increasing. We also find changes in forest composition, reflecting the persistence of rural consumption patterns in cities resulting in increased demand for and production of acai and cheap timber species.

Human dimensions of climate change: the vulnerability of small farmers in the Amazon

Abstract: This paper argues for a twofold perspective on human adaptation to climate change in the Amazon. First, we need to understand the processes that mediate perceptions of environmental change and the behavioural responses at the levels of the individual and the local population. Second, we should take into account the process of production and dissemination of global and national climate information and models to regional and local populations, especially small farmers. We discuss the sociocultural and environmental diversity of small farmers in the Amazon and their susceptibility to climate change associated with drought, flooding and accidental fire. Using survey, ethnographic and archival data from study areas in the state of Para, we discuss farmers' sources of knowledge and long-term memory of climatic events, drought and accidental fire; their sources of climate information; their responses to drought and fire events and the impact of changing rainfall patterns on land use. We highlight the challenges of adaptation to climate change created by the influence of migration and family turnover on collective action and memory, the mismatch of scales used to monitor and disseminate climate data and the lack of extension services to translate large-scale forecasts to local needs. We found that for most farmers, memories of extended drought tend to decrease significantly after 3 years. Over 50% of the farmers interviewed in 2002 did not remember as significant the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) drought of 1997/1998. This helps explain why approximately 40% of the farmers have not changed their land-use behaviours in the face of the strongest ENSO event of the twentieth century.