Environment and Economics: Importance Deforestation in the Amazon Basin

The Intersection Between Environment and Economics: Importance Deforestation in the Amazon Basin

Introduction

            The intersecting relationship between environmental protection and economic activities is among the key global issues in the modern world. On the one hand, economic development relies on resources within the environment like energy and raw material. The depletion of non-renewable resources is a threat to global economic progress. Further, an increase in economic activities results in waste material stored within the environment because the earth is a closed ecosystem (Halati & He, 2018). Some of the wastes cause serious public health risks and degradation of the environment.

On the other hand, the protection of the environment appears to be a threat to economic progress because it limits energy consumption and emissions. Given the rising global population, there is an increasing need for extensive economic activities and settlement spaces to accommodate people. In the Amazon basin, extensive deforestation enabled industrial agriculture to be a source of income and food for local and global communities. On the other hand, these activities are perceived as a threat to the forest and the environment. The current paper postulates that the potential long-term impact of deforestation outweighs the short-term goals of employment opportunities, perceived food security, and settlement spaces. Therefore, public discourse on the forest should focus on protection rather than a balance between conservation and economic activities.

Background Information

            According to the World Wildlife Federation (WWF), the Amazon forest is a vital ecological services provider for local communities and the world. In terms of size and diversity, the forest represents 60% of the global tropical forest cover (WWF, 2020). The forest is vital in filtering and reducing global carbon emissions because of the extensive tree cover. Reducing the forest cover reduces the earth's natural ability to process and filtering carbon dioxide while producing oxygen (Baker & Spracklen, 2019). The forest also controls local and global weather and climate. While the forest creates up to 75% of its precipitation, the impact goes beyond the forest to places as far as Central America and the Western United States. With over 390 billion trees, the forest locks up vast amounts of carbon and therefore, helping in the reduction of global warming. Studies suggest that about 30% of global species are found in the Amazon and are among the most important terrestrial ecosystem in the world (da Cruz, Benayas, Ferreira, Santos, & Schwartz, 2020). The species within the forest provide human beings with food, medicine, and other products that supplement livelihood. Further, within the basin, tens of millions of people depend on the resources within the forest like rivers.

            Despite the importance of the forest, deforestation activities have increased in the basin in the past two decades. Da Cruz et al. (2020) found that between 1975 and 2018, the Brazilian Amazon lost 20% of its cover, translating to 788,353km² at a rate of 27,033 km² annually. According to findings by the WWF, agricultural activities are the main causes of deforestation in the region. Other reasons for deforestation include wood extraction, charcoal burning, infrastructure expansion, and urbanization. These reasons have immediate social and economic value to the locals of the basin. On the other hand, however, the activities are a serious threat to the fight against climate change and global warming.

Literature Review

            According to Neudert, Ganzhorn, and Watzold (2016), deforestation is among the most important conservation problems despite the consistent cost-benefit analysis outcomes that show that conservation is economically beneficial. As suggested earlier, conservation benefits outweigh the costs because of the value people place on ecosystem and diversity services. However, the benefits of conservation are not often enjoyed by local communities. Instead, local communities must deal with opportunity costs involving conservation. Successful conservation programs should provide incentives for local communities that rely on the forest for resources. The perceptions and attitudes of local communities should therefore be considered when conservation programs are formulated. Unlike conservation, deforestation promises employment opportunities for local communities providing incentives that would otherwise be absent if a community chose to conserve (Mullan, Sills, Pattanayak, & Caviglia-Harris, 2017). These opportunities include employment, a potential rise in living standards, and food security, especially from agricultural activities.

            In the Brazilian Amazon, the national agrarian reform program settled farming-dependent families in the Amazon Basin since the 1970s. The families were expected to clear forests and create spaces for farming. The expansion of agricultural activities into the forest promises benefits and overlooks the environmental costs (Mullan, Sills, Pattanayak, & Caviglia-Harris, 2017). A section of the population perceives the development as of vital to the region's livelihood and economic growth and its people. On the other hand, environmentalists predict that the agricultural expansion will have repercussions, including the health hazards caused by climate change and global warming. In this aspect, the need to balance conservation and economic activities is clear, but deforestation is ongoing at the mentioned rate means environmentalists are losing the fight.

            The complex nature of the interaction between the environment and economic progress makes it difficult to determine whether local populations welcome the changes brought through deforestation. The effective use of land relies on the interaction between economic drivers, quality of governance, public opinion, and policies. Loss of forest cover can be devastating to the 1.2 billion poor individuals who rely on the forest ecosystem for livelihood (Meijaard et al., 2013). On the other hand, effective deforestation can help provide these communities with alternative sources of livelihood, including jobs that can help elevate living standards. In such a situation, conservation programs can deny people the economic development desired because they tend to limit the activities that promote livelihood in the basin.

            According to Meijaard et al. (2013), the debate between national government, local governments, and corporates and indigenous forest-based communities embodies the ...