Smallholder Livelihoods and Land Use in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon: Lessons for REDD+

from Proambiente

Marina Cromberg (UDESC), Amy E. Duchelle (CIFOR)

THINKING beyond the canopy

Proambiente in the Transamazon • Proambiente:

- Articulation of small farmers and civil society to conciliate

smallholder production + environmental conservation

- Became a federal pilot program in 2004

- 11 pilot sites in the Amazon Basin

- Transamazon site: 15 community groups; 350 families

- Interventions in the Transamazon: Land use planning,

community agreements, technical assistance and PES

- Ended prematurely in 2006 due lack of a national framework

for PES, limited funding and implementation capacity…

- To provide continuity to this initiative IPAM has proposed a

REDD+ pilot project with the same families

THINKING beyond the canopy

Sustainable Settlements in the Amazon

• Proponent: Amazon Institute of Environmental Research

(IPAM)

• Scale: 350 families of Proambiente (318 km²) ; 3

reference settlements (2,288 km²);

• Target actors: Colonist settlers

• Drivers of D&D: cattle ranching, swidden agriculture,

Illegal logging

• REDD+ intervention mechanisms:

- Land tenure regularization;

- Assure environmental compliance;

- Incentive based mechanism: PES and sustainable land

use alternatives.

THINKING beyond the canopy

Research objective

• Analyze the possible outcomes of Proambiente

related to conservation and livelihood

improvement:

- land use

- agropastoral management

- capitalization level and means of obtaining

income

• Identify implications for the REDD+ project

interventions.

CIFOR’s GCS-REDD Component 2 in Brazil

Map: CIFOR GCS-REDD

Transamazon site

IPAM & FVPP, 2009

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Data collection methods

• Timing of fieldwork: July and August 2010

• 10 enumerators

• 4 village meetings

• 137 interviews in 4 villages

67 participants of Proambiente

70 non participants of Proambiente

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4

4

12

12

28

41

2

8

11

17

35

28

0 10 20 30 40 50

Business

Forest

Wage

Govt.support

Agriculture

Livestock

% household income (cash + subsistence)

Income Share

Non Proambiente

Proambiente

Results: Income

Anual per capita income (2009 -2010) Pro: USD 3,310

NPro: USD 2,084

=

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2

7

5

13

24

53

2

6

8

12

32

46

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Agroforestry

Crops

Initial Secondary Forest

Mature Secondary Forest

Pasture

Primary Forest

%

Non Proambiente

Proambiente

Results: Land Use

Recent deforestation 2008-2010 (Pro: 3.4; Npro: 3.7 ha)

% land cover (2010)

- Forest cover (Pro: 66% e Npro: 58 %) - No differences related to the mean % land area allocated for each use between the groups

15

64

21

30

51

19

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

PrimaryForest

SecondaryForest

Did not clear

%

Proambiente

Non Proambiente

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Results: Agropastoral management

• More cultivated species diversity (Pro:12; NPro:

9.5) p=0.025

• Pro households obtained higher mean

agricultural income per hectare (2009-2010)

(Pro:USD 632; Npro: USD 445) p=0.057

• Reduced fire use in the last two years

• No differences related to the % of households

that use pesticides

• No differences between livestock income/ha and

number of cattle heads/ha (0.6 animals/ha)

THINKING beyond the canopy

Take-home messages

• Lessons learned from Proambiente

• Although there were no differences related to income,

Proambiente participants engaged in some practices that

reflected the program’s values:

- used agricultural land more efficiently

- preferred to clear secondary forest

- reduced fire use

• However, we can not affirm that these differences were

determined by the program, since we do not have

baseline data for the period before the start of the

program.

THINKING beyond the canopy

Take-home messages

• Implications for proposed REDD+ Interventions

• The Importance of income from livestock and agriculture

show the need for more intensive and diversified

production techniques, as already anticipated by the

project proponent.

• Given the fact that the families are not compliant with the

current forest code reforestation on degraded lands are

important to promote environmental compliance