Sustainable development policies and the spread of land-sharing practices – A statistical assessment in a frontier region of the Brazilian Amazon

Agrarian reform has become at highly topical issue in Brazil and is proceeding mainly along the Amazonian pioneer fronts, thus jeopardising the continuity of forest cover. Although it is sometimes accompanied by highly proactive policies for sustainable development, the results of these policies are...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of rural studies Vol. 48; pp. 65 - 76
Main Authors:	Arnauld de Sartre, Xavier, Oszwald, Johan, Veiga, Iran, Castro, Monica, de Assis, William Santos, Michelloti, Fernando, Rocha, Carla, Souza, Haroldo, Sebille, Pascal, Dolédec, Sylvain, Lavelle, Patrick
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Elmsford Elsevier Ltd 01-12-2016 Elsevier Science Ltd Elsevier
Subjects:	Agrarian reform Agricultural policy Amazonia Deforestation Development policy Development programs Development projects Discrepancies Environmental impact Environmental protection Environmental Sciences Family farming Forest management Geography Humanities and Social Sciences Inter-class analyses Land reform Land sharing/land sparing Local population Pioneer front Policies Populations Preservation Process engineering Quality of life Success Sustainability Sustainable development Brazil Brazil, Amazonia Family farming Land sharing/land sparing Amazonia Pioneer front Inter-class analyses Agrarian reform
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	Agrarian reform has become at highly topical issue in Brazil and is proceeding mainly along the Amazonian pioneer fronts, thus jeopardising the continuity of forest cover. Although it is sometimes accompanied by highly proactive policies for sustainable development, the results of these policies are extremely variable. In this article, we compare four sites where agrarian reforms have been applied; they are located along the boundary between eastern Amazonia (deforestation arc) and central Amazonia (along a pioneer front) and are variously covered by sustainable development policies. In each of these sites, we surveyed plant cover, existing production systems, the characteristics of the local populations and their quality of life in the sites themselves. We bring out discrepancies between sustainable development policies applied in the sites and their environmental preservation status. These discrepancies cannot be accounted for by the characteristics of the populations and do not bear any relation to people's quality of life in the different sites. While effects of context and of local levels of acceptance account for the success or failure of sustainable development projects, the agrarian reform policies we investigated are characterized by impacts that are negative for the environment but positive for the quality of life of local populations. By proposing a series of multivariate analyses and their combination through a scalar analysis, this article also puts forward an original methodology for studies of relationships between people and their environment. •In Brazilian Amazon, socio-environmental movement follow the land reform process.•This process leads to promote land sharing agriculture (LShA) for family farmers.•But LShA projects might have impacts opposed to the planed objectives.•And can lead to a land sparing organization of space.•Success of such LShA project is related to the context in which farmers are embedded.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23
ISSN:	0743-0167 1873-1392
DOI:	10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.09.009