GDAE explores deforestation in Amazon

A Tufts research institute earlier this month introduced a program to examine agricultural-induced deforestation in the Amazon Basin.

Tufts' Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE) will explore the consequences of the globalized soybean industry on the developing Amazon region in its new initiative: Trade, Agricultural Expansion and Climate Change in the Amazon Basin.

The soybean industry is now one of the main forces pushing back the frontiers of the Amazon. The GDAE project seeks to model and eventually predict where deforestation is likely to occur, on what scale and how the market will respond to the rising industry.

"The project puts its finger on the most difficult issue that all emerging and emerged large and small economies face, which is how you can grow, compete globally and preserve the natural resources the whole planet needs," said Julia Sweig, the Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow and director of Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, located in Washington, D.C.

Maria del Carmen Vera-Diaz, a senior research fellow for the GDAE, is heading the project. Vera-Diaz, who spent several years in Brazil, witnessed the transformation of wilderness to cultured fields through her experiences with local farmers.

"You get an idea of how the farmer thinks, works," she said. "Most of the people have very small incomes." Though they are surrounded by the rich resources of the Amazon, farmers increasingly find the profits from deforestation enticing, Vera-Diaz said.

"The tension between natural preservation and stewardship and global competition is what the project is looking at," Sweig said.

Vera-Diaz plans to explore the changing ecology of the region through analysis methods focusing on the effects of transnational companies, regional politics, international trade agreements, climate change and geological attributes.

"[This] research goes straight to the heart of the issues with very creative and sophisticated modeling and mapping techniques. [It is] very much on the cutting edge," Tim Wise, the director of the GDAE's Research and Policy Program, said.

Vera-Diaz noted that the research will be valuable to policymakers. "They can use this kind of analysis to avoid deforestation, war [and] evicting indigenous peoples," she said. "You can take this as a guide to future investments."

Vera-Diaz's prior research on the topic focuses on the consequences of trading rainforest land for farmland. She considers these tradeoffs to be shortsighted.

In her first GDAE paper, to be published in the coming weeks, she illustrates the blind spot in some plans to support the Amazon region's transformation.

She cited a project that the Brazilian government expects will net $180 million for soybean farmers over the next 20 years. In her eyes, this logic is inaccurate since it does not take into account the harmfulness of deforestation.

"By valuing the lost forest resources, her cost-benefit shows there's actually a net loss four times greater than the supposed economic benefit," Wise said.

The GDAE aims for an ongoing project, which will eventually expanding to include different aspects of Latin American development. Currently, the GDAE is looking for funding to ensure the complete development of the program.

The GDAE is administered by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Tufts' Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1993, it explores global ecological and economic issues through multi-disciplinary approaches to research.

http://www.tuftsdaily.com/1.1487828-1.1487828