Land use sustainability on the South-Eastern Amazon agricultural frontier: Recent progress and the challenges ahead

Arvor Damien, Tritsch Isabelle, Barcellos Christovam, Jégou Nicolas, Dubreuil Vincent. 2017. Land use sustainability on the South-Eastern Amazon agricultural frontier: Recent progress and the challenges ahead. Applied Geography, 80 : 86-97.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2017.02.003

Article de revue ; Article de recherche ; Article de revue à facteur d'impact

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Quartile : Q1, Sujet : GEOGRAPHY

Liste HCERES des revues (en SHS) : oui

Thème(s) HCERES des revues (en SHS) : Géographie-Aménagement-Urbanisme-Architecture

Résumé : The recent decoupling of deforestation and soybean production has raised optimistic expectations towards enhanced land use sustainability in the South-Eastern Amazon agricultural frontier. Nonetheless, assessing land use sustainability implies not only the consideration of how agricultural activities affect natural ecosystems but also how they impact on society and how society can cope with them. We review some of the forthcoming challenges that the agricultural sector should address to confirm its significant progress towards land use sustainability. Firstly, we assess the recent efforts to adopt environmentally friendly practices with regard to the ongoing intensification process mainly based on double cropping systems. Secondly, while rapid agricultural development has brought major social advances, we evidence a recent trend towards a decoupling of soy production and the Human Development Index at municipality level. We then put this result into perspective considering that the trend towards agricultural intensification based on the use of large amounts of agrochemicals could lead to major health concerns which are still too rarely considered. Finally, we discuss how the recent efficient policies to contain deforestation in the Amazon can cause indirect land use changes in the Brazilian Cerrados and in African Savannas, thus potentially leading to an “illusion of preservation” at global scale. We conclude that new indicators involving social sciences are necessary to better address the complexity of land use sustainability on the still very dynamic agricultural frontier in the South-Eastern Amazon.

Mots-clés Agrovoc : durabilité, utilisation des terres, déboisement, utilisation durable des terres, changement dans l'usage des terres, conservation de la nature, protection de l'environnement, santé publique, impact sur l'environnement

Mots-clés géographiques Agrovoc : Brésil, Amazonie

Mots-clés libres : Amazon agricultural frontier, Agricultural intensification, Land use sustainability, Human health, Global change, Indirect land use change

Classification Agris : E11 - Économie et politique foncières
A01 - Agriculture - Considérations générales
K70 - Dégâts causés aux forêts et leur protection
P01 - Conservation de la nature et ressources foncières
S50 - Santé humaine

Champ stratégique Cirad : Axe 1 (2014-2018) - Agriculture écologiquement intensive

Agences de financement européennes : European Commission

Programme de financement européen : H2020

Projets sur financement : (EU) Observatory of the Dynamics of Interactions between Societies and Environment in the Amazon

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