Spatial Patterns of Frontier Settlement: Balancing ...

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Journal of Latin American Geography, Volume 15, Number 1, March 2016, pp. 33-58 (Article) 3XEOLVKHGE\8QLYHUVLW\RI7H[DV3UHVV

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Spatial Patterns of Frontier Settlement: Balancing Conservation and Development Cynthia Simmons University of Florida

Robert Walker

University of Florida

Stephen Perz

University of Florida

Eugenio Arima University of Texas

Stephen Aldrich

Indiana State University

Marcellus Caldas

Kansas State University

Abstract

Amazonian deforestation has declined recently, but Brazil’s infrastructure plans continue to target the region. In the interest of sustainable development, this article engages the spatial discourses in conservation planning and landscape ecology. It does so by addressing fishbone fragmentation, commonly observed in development frontiers in Brazil. The article demonstrates the importance of road-building by private citizens as key to explaining this particular development geometry. It also suggests that fishbone fragmentation may promote human welfare, and at the same time provide a porous disturbance “filter” with vegetative corridors linking areas of low disturbance across areas of human occupation, thereby enhancing connectivity to support biodiversity conservation. Keywords: forest fragmentation; spatial planning; Amazon basin; road ecology; biodiversity conservation

Resumo

Apesar do recente decréscimo nas taxas de desmatamento na Amazônia brasileira, a região ainda é alvo de grandes investimento em infra-estrutura. Esse artigo aborda o Journal of Latin American Geography, 15 (1), 2016 © Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers

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tema do desenvolvimento sustentável combinando discursos sobre o espaço geográfico no planejamento da conservação e sobre ecologia da paisagem. O artigo aborda a fragmentação tipo “espinha-de-peixe”, os processos generativos de desenvolvimento que levam ao surgimento desse padrão na paisagem com ênfase na construção de estradas, e implicações para a conservação da biodiversidade. O artigo constata que a fragmentação espinha-de-peixe possui características desejáveis que podem promover o bem-estar humano e criar um “filtro” de distúrbio sem romper a conectividade entre ecossistemas localizados ao longo da calha principal do Rio Amazonas e aqueles localizados mais ao sul, cumprindo portanto com objetivos de conservação. Palavras-Chaves: fragmentação florestal, sistemas naturais-humanos acoplados, planejamento do espaço, bacia Amazônica, ecologia de estradas, conservação da biodiversidade

Introduction

Brazil has emerged as a global economic force owing, in part, to its long-term spatially explicit economic strategy of integrating Amazonia into its national life as a resource frontier (Kleinpenning 1977; Becker 1982). Mineral exploitation has produced wealth for Brazil and a myriad of national and international investors, as well as a modicum of development in areas proximate to mining activity (Palheta Da Silva 2007; Godfrey and Thypin-Bermeo 2012). The expansion of Amazonian agriculture, specifically soybean farming and cattle ranching, has also spurred rising incomes in parts of Mato Grosso and Pará states (Castro et al. 2001; Walker et al. 2009; Richards et al. 2012; VanWey et al. 2013; Weinhold 2013). Such economic gains have translated into a dramatic build-up in human population, at least in the Brazilian portion of the Amazon basin. In 1960, when the Belém-Brasilia highway was finished, the population in the Legal Brazilian Amazon1 was estimated at 4 million, but since that time it has grown nearly tenfold to more than 24 million by 2010 (IBGE 2010). Spatial considerations have never been far from Brazil’s development playbook for Amazonia, both at the national scale with the building of highways to connect the region to the industrial south, and at regional and local scales with the colonization programs of the 1970s meant to open a “land without people” to a “people without land” (Ianni 1979). Brazil’s planners studied their economic geography carefully, elaborating a blueprint of coordinated efforts that drew inspiration from central place and city systems theories to promote orderly frontier settlement superimposed on transportation corridors that ensured regional connectivity (Cardoso and Mueller 1977; Mahar 1979; Browder 1988). The spatial implications of Amazonian development have re-emerged, but this time in an environmental context that focuses on deforestation, and specifically the ways forest fragmentation carries ecological consequences. In accordance with landscape ecology, human occupation of natural areas such as old-growth tropical forests, fragments the landscape and alters its ecological integrity, potentially limiting connectivity necessary for the maintenance of biodiversity and ecological services. The implication is that some development geometries and resulting fragmentation patterns are more conducive to conservation efforts than others, depending in part on the degree to which they maintain connectivity. Although spatial design is key to regional development planning and biodiversity conservation (i.e., preservation areas, ecological zoning, and corridors),



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rarely are these two objectives integrated in a comprehensive plan that balances social and ecological considerations in accordance with sustainable development mandates (Campbell 1996; Bani et al. 2002; Wiens 2002; Groves 2003; Wheeler 2009; Sundseth and Sylwester 2009; Huber et al. 2010; 2012). The aim of the present research is to provide new insights of potential value to future planning efforts that align practice with sustainability rhetoric. This article does not address the issue of sustainable development writ large, but instead seeks a more limited objective, which is to reconsider the spatial dimensions of Amazonian development and conservation in a unified framework, following the process to pattern to process paradigm elaborated by Arima et al. (2013). The lynchpin term, pattern, refers explicitly to landscape ecology’s notion that a critical feature of an ecosystem is the spatial arrangement of its vegetated mosaics. It is precisely this landscape feature we have in mind for grounding the focus of our research. The work presented here address two fundamental issues. The first involves the process to pattern link, while the second considers pattern to process. Development planning, whether explicitly spatial or not, possesses spatial implications for ecosystems, and therefore biodiversity conservation. As noted for the Brazilian case, initial planning by design was explicitly spatial. Thus, the first issue addresses the link between this early planning phase, and the currently observed settlement landscapes revealing the pattern of fishbone fragmentation. Given the initial federal plan, one might conclude that it was the plan itself, and the projects that unfolded, which explain how the landscape took this specific form. However, this remains an empirical question, given that 40 years have transpired since the public works of the 1960s, after which Brazil underwent a number of political and economic transformations. As will become apparent later in the article, the road building actions of private citizens represent a key part of the spatial story. The second issue considered by the article is the optimality features of fishbone fragmentation, relative to biodiversity conservation. This presents a potential irony, in that initial desires to settle Amazonia proceeded in the absence of environmental concerns, assuming that deforestation was necessary for development. To tell the process to pattern to process story of Amazonian development, the article presents a case study taken from the frontier opened by the Transamazon Highway in central Pará state in the 1970s. In setting the analytical context, we first consider forest fragmentation from an ecological perspective, noting that specific patterns have been identified in the literature, and that the severity of environmental impact links to pattern type. On this basis, we identify fishbone fragmentation as the predominant pattern that results from colonization along the Transamazon Highway, then proceed to a surveybased account of how this human settlement manifested. This involves a discussion of road building by private citizens, and the presentation of data describing how the local transportation network emerged. Following this, we consider the emergence of spatial concerns in the conservation planning literature, and integrate planning and ecological spatial strategies (i.e., creation of conservation corridors) in raising the issue of optimal configurations of coupled natural-human systems. We conclude with several policy implications relating to development and biodiversity conservation.

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Modalities of Disturbance and Development

Human settlement of forest frontiers leads to patterns of deforestation referred to as forest fragmentation, a key concern within the field of landscape ecology, which argues that ecosystem processes are influenced by landscape pattern, in what is known as the pattern-to-process paradigm (O’Neill et al. 1988; Gustafson and Gardner 1996). More generally, island biogeography demonstrates a functional dependence between species richness and habitat size (Wearn, Reuman, and Ewers 2012), with larger areas of intact natural systems supporting more species. For the Amazonian case, research has documented the disturbances associated with forest fragmentation, including habitat alteration, the compromising of vegetative regeneration, and biomass collapse (e.g., Ferreira and Laurance 1997; Aldrich and Hamrick 1998; Benitez-Malvido 1998; Scariot 1999; Laurance et al. 2001; Nepstad et al. 2001). If the pattern is such that natural area fragments are too far from one another, then a breakdown in many ecological processes occurs given lack of landscape connectivity (Laurance et al. 2001; Nepstad et al. 2001). Concerns about Amazonian environmental change have inspired research that addresses links between fragmentation and landscape connectivity (Oliveira Filho and Metzger 2006). Researchers have also provided descriptions of fragmentation patterns, some applicable across the globe, and others specific to the Amazon Basin (i.e., Mertens and Lambin 1997; Laurance et al. 2001; Nepstad et al. 2001; Oliveira-Filho and Metzger 2006). Recently, Arima et al. (2013) have provided a typology of seven Amazonian fragmentation patterns broadly consistent with the global account of Mertens and Lambin (1995) (See also Oliveira-Filho and Metzger 2006). Both typologies include fishbone fragmentation, named after the organization of parallel spines located above and below a main trunk line. Fishbone fragmentation, which occurs in regions larger than ~105 Km2, is probably the dominant spatial signature of land occupation in Amazonia, especially in Rondônia and Pará. This article addresses human settlement landscapes in Pará that emerged in the wake of Brazil’s military government efforts to open the region for development in 1970 with the National Integration Plan (PIN), explicitly designed to integrate Amazonia with the national economy and provide land for the burgeoning landless peasantry in the northeastern and southern parts of the country. PIN efforts focused on the construction of federal highways and large-scale colonization projects (Projetos de Integração e Colonização), or PICs (Cardoso and Müller 1977; Kleinpenning 1977; Moran 1981; Smith 1982). We take as our case for detailed treatment PIC-Altamira, located along the Transamazon Highway in central Pará, and today characterized by extensive fishbone fragmentation. To enable the program here, the federal government appropriated a tract of land covering 64,000 km2, the so-called Altamira Polygon. The PIN program involved the construction of a federal highway network connecting the Amazon with the economic core of Brazil. A major component of the PIN was the East-West Transamazon Highway (BR-230) meant to provide the poor Northeast with access to the Tapajos Valley and points west, and to intersect and complement the Santarém-Cuiabá Highway’s (BR-163) north-south route with links to the industrial south (Cardoso and Müller 1977; Moran 1981; Sant’Anna 1998). PIN also began implementation



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of an elaborate three-tier system of central places, meant to promote rural urbanism. These included (1) agrovilas at 10 kilometer intervals consisting of 48 to 66 households; (2) agropoles of 600 households at 100 kilometer distances with banks, post offices, schools, and cooperatives to serve 8 to 22 agrovilas; and, (3) ruropoles at 140 kilometer intervals with populations of 20,000 and a full range of urban services (Browder 1988; Browder and Godfrey 1997). Finally, PIN sought to provide land for peasants displaced by agro-industries and land consolidation in the Northeast and South. In addition to increasing crop production for export and local consumption, this new population would provide seasonal labor for extractive activities and safeguard national sovereignty in the Amazonian frontier (Brasil 1970, 1974). Although unrealistic, politicians maintained that these projects were designed to provide land for 100,000 families with registered title from INCRA (Cardoso and Müller 1977). To actualize plans, the Fundo para Investimento Privado no Desenvolvimento (FIDAM) and the Amazon Development Bank (BASA) were created to finance and administer agricultural activities, and the National Institute for Agrarian Reform and Colonization (INCRA) was established to plan and manage overarching efforts. The entire endeavor hinged on the federal government’s expropriation of State land in accordance with legal decree 1164, including 100 kilometer strips of land along the Transamazon highway. In the Transamazon region, three PICs were planned with headquarters in Marabá, Altamira, and Itaituba, all cities in Pará. The PIN program did not last long, and after 1979 federal investment shifted to Polo Amazonia, another development plan that sought to stimulate key economic sectors such as ranching and mining (Cardoso and Müller 1977; Becker 1982). Informal colonization processes continued in the region with waves of migration and locally politicized actions to claim land, often with aid and inspiration drawn from social movement organizations (Simmons et al. 2010). More than two decades later the federal government under the F. H. Cardoso administration in the late 1990s implemented the Novo Mundo Rural (NMR), or New Rural World program, to assist the poor in their colonization efforts, both in Amazonia and other parts of Brazil, based on supporting smallholders in Projetos de Assentamentos (PAs), or settlement projects. The NMR emphasized action by civil society and grassroots movements, in advance of settlement formalization by the federal government, a lengthy process (Simmons et al. 2010). Under the NMR, which continues in force at the present time, land claimants first organize a settlement association and devise a Development Plan (PDA) that outlines social, economic, and environmental strategies to promote sustainable development. The expectation is that settlement success will be enhanced by participant engagement, unlike the massive PIC settlements where a wide gulf separated colonists from colonization planners (Reforma Agrária 1997). Once the PDA has been approved, the federal government provides resources for housing and infrastructure, and various forms of credit to support agricultural production.

The Spatial Expression of Human Settlement

Human populations have been attracted to Amazonia by colonization policies over the past four decades. These policies, in and of themselves, do not explain the fragmentation patterns that have emerged as a consequence, the task to which the article

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now turns. To this end, we present a case study of the Transamazon Highway (BR-230), in central Pará state, a major region of fishbone fragmentation (Figure 1). Our case study reveals the institutional mechanisms and underlying forces that have given rise to this particular pattern. We make two points at the outset. First, the social and economic processes generating fragmentation for the case in question occur over decadal time intervals that span the federal government’s policy regimes, and in particular the shift from centralized PIN planning to the decentralized civil actions of the NMR (Simmons et al. 2010). Second, patterns of forest fragmentation are determined by road network architectures composed of individual roads (Walker et al. 2013). Roads themselves are one-dimensional artifacts (measured in length) and do not manifest readily observable patterns at landscape-scale; this requires the spatial amplification of land use, in this case agriculture, which “thickens” the one-dimensional roads of a network until they become observable and comprise a specific form of fragmentation (Forman et al. 2002; Walker et al. 2013). Fishbone fragmentation represents an extreme case of the road-land use nexus, as each strip of deforested land organizes along a road, with fields and pastures opening to either side of the right-of-way.

Figure 1. Study Region



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The Transamazon Highway was foundational to government development efforts in the Amazonian region, accounting for an estimated lineal distance of 2,900 km, or a density of 0.004 km of road per square kilometer. Such densities are insufficient to impose an ecologically significant degree of fragmentation (Arima et al. 2005). Substantial fragmentation occurs with “unofficial roads” built by private citizens, which achieve a density of 0.062 km per square kilometer in the study area (Arima et al. 2005; Arima et al. 2008). Unofficial roads are built by local agents who pursue different objectives than state bureaucrats, which may affect the architecture of their road networks, thereby generating a more dissected fragmentation pattern than those built by the state (Perz et al. 2008; Arima et al. 2005; Walker et al. 2008). In the study area, the unofficial roads that underlie the generalized pattern of fishbone fragmentation show a pronounced degree of regularity. Fishbone fragmentation in the Amazon Basin is often associated with Brazil’s PIC program, and a facile conclusion would be that it results from the exogenous imposition of federal plans. Such a conclusion would be misleading, especially since the timespan of the fragmentation process examined (1970-2004) exceeds that of PIC (1970-1974), as has already been suggested. The early implementation of large-scale PIC projects established the geographic conditions upon which future development manifested. Along the east-west axis of the Transamazon Highway, the PIC demarcated 100 ha properties as 500m x 2000m rectangles, arranged vertically but sharing coterminous lateral boundaries. Other 100 ha properties, these ones 450m x 2500 m, were stacked horizontally, above and below the first tier lots directly on the highway (Figure 2). Sharing back boundaries, matched pairs of these off-road lots spread 5 km east and west, forming a regular spacing along the highway axis. Thus, the initial routes of the roads shooting off from the Transamazon Highway (BR-230) formed naturally every 5 km, as the front boundaries of opposing properties. Through the two-dimensional organization of cadastral space, these routes lie parallel to one another. Landholders in the study area often complain about the straightness of the roads, which do not always provide least cost pathways or resource access, particularly for water. The property holding that conditions road trajectories, namely the 100 ha lot, has long been referred to as the quadrado burro, or “stupid rectangle,” for its apparently self-evident imperfections as a property shape (Castro et al. 2004; Batistella et al. 2000). Such criticisms have stimulated interest in colonization geometries more sensitive to topographic constraints and resource availability (Batistella et al. 2000). Despite its perceived unsuitability, the quadrado burro has significant historical antecedent in the long-lot system, even in Brazil (Jordan 1974).

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Figure 2. Lot Dimensions and Travessões

The Case of Uruará

Our analysis addresses spatial development at county scale, focusing on a stretch of the Transamazon Highway (BR-230) passing through the county of Uruará, with an area of 10,791 Km2 (Figure 1). A second county, Medicilândia, also provides some of the sample data presented. Uruará owes its existence to INCRA, which implemented three PICs in central Pará superimposed on BR-230, including PIC-Marabá, PIC-Altamira, and PIC-Itaituba (Kleinpenning 1977; Moran 1981; Smith 1982). However, INCRA retreated from the full sweep of its plan to focus only on PIC-Altamira, with implementation extending 120 km west along the Transamazon Highway from the municipal seat. This left Uruará, 180 km west and a planned agrovila in PIC-Altamira, just beyond the development trajectory, mostly on their own to spontaneously develop with little government intervention aside from the construction of the federal road template (Hamelin 1991). By 1979, when the government shifted development strategy to Polo Amazonia, a school, pharmacy, and gas station had been built, forming the initial urban core of what was to become the town, also named Uruará, which has since evolved into the most important urban node on BR-230 between Altamira and Itaituba. The county grew from what was deemed an essentially empty land at its inception in 1970, to an estimated 51,167 by 2010 (IBGE 2010), with economic activities including timber extraction and agriculture.



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Roundwood processing by 25 sawmills yields products valued at 21.4 million US$ (Pereira et al. 2010), while agricultural activities focus on ranching. Cattle production engages small and large-holder alike, and beef from the region serves primarily domestic markets in Belém, Manaus, and other Amazonian cities (Poccard-Chapuis et al. 2001; Aldrich et al. 2006). The agricultural lands, mostly pasture, organize in linear strips north and south of the BR-230. These are what create the “fishbones” observable on satellite imagery. The case study focuses on how this pattern came into existence by addressing the process by which the roads that created it were built. The data to be presented were collected in two, month-long field campaigns along the Transamazon Highway (BR-230), during the summers of 2004 and 2005. The interview subjects were antigos moradores, individuals who have long resided along the roads, or travessões, that structure the fishbone pattern. The research protocol involved the systematic sampling of residents roughly every 10 km along a settlement road, until reaching the end or unable to go further given road conditions. In the process, virtually every road in the municipality was covered, allowing the documentation of road conditions and collection of GPS points. The respondents were queried about the history of road construction, a decades-long process, consisting of a series of “road extension events.” Such events function as the unit of observation for the analysis. Antigos moradores living on the same road were queried for their historical recollections about individual events, sometimes ranging back thirty years. Given that interviewees often provided information for the same event, data (e.g., length, year of project) are tallied as averages. Altogether, 23 travessões were visited during the field campaigns; 113 individuals were solicited for information on 101 road extension events that together added 1,743 km to the regional transportation system.2 The road naming convention relies on locations west of Altamira, and north-south orientation. For example, 170N refers to the travessão heading north off BR-230 at kilometer 170 (Figure 2). Like the Transamazon Highway in the vicinity, travessões are unpaved, but they receive little to no maintenance and they are not always passable even in the dry season. Findings: Emergent Fragmentation in Time and Space Road-building agents. As shall become apparent for the case in question, the region’s travessões, are not built quickly over a year or two, as with a federal highway like BR230. Instead, they accrete via extension events occurring, in this case, between 1972 and 2004. Table 1 contains data on such events, tallied by agent or combinations of agents responsible for road building, comprising both government (federal and local, or municipal) and private individuals (loggers, colonists, ranchers). At the outset of PIN efforts, federal government played an important role through INCRA, accounting for 22 road construction events that added 290 km to the sampled road system (mean extension length = 13 km). Local government also participated, with the two counties in the study area (Uruará and Medicilândia) adding 328 km in 20 events. As for private individuals, loggers were responsible for 436 km in 12 events on 10 roads. Colonists built 33 km with 4 segments on 3 roads, and ranchers, 40 km, with 4 segments on 4 roads. Colonists and ranchers opened three travessões, while loggers opened two. Combinations of two or more agents account for 519 of the 1,743

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km of recorded openings, or 36 percent (Table 1). Loggers and colonists are notable in collaborating with INCRA, county governments, and each other. County government has often combined resources with others, especially colonists and loggers; such projects account for 12 extensions, seven with colonists. Projects involving three or more agents account for 190 km of the total extension magnitude (in 10 events).

Temporal and spatial dynamics of road-building Figures 3a and 3b present the number of extension events (Figure 3a) and the kilometers built (Figure 3b). The two graphs reveal similar form, so discussion addresses extension events given their discrete nature. The sequencing of road building varies from year to year, with a minimum of 0 events in 1999 and 2002, and a peak of 12 in 1988. Activity organizes around the 1988 high point, coincident with the creation of the two counties. Before 1988, extensions are frequent, reaching 6 events in both 1975 and 1982. Construction activity remained high for a few years after 1988, with 8 events in 1994, after which there was a sharp drop-off. The survey data indicate that INCRA conducted most



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of its road-building during the military regime (1964 – 1985), with 19 of 22 extensions taking place prior to 1985. For the county governments, extension projects fell to 1 in 1990 and 1991, bumping back to 4 in 1992 and 5 in 1994. Efforts then tapered, with slight pulses in 1997, 2000, 2001, and 2004.

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Extension activities occur under a variety of economic circumstances, and show little relation to Brazil’s macro-economic conditions. Road building was fairly regular during the military regime, even in the difficult recessionary period just prior to redemocratization. The construction peak in 1988 occurred in the midst of a sluggish, inflationary economy. The counties remained very engaged in road building up until 1994, after which event occurrence declined just as the monetary reforms of the Plano Real begin controlling inflation. Nor did road-extension surge with devaluation of the Real in the late 1990s and the subsequent increased demand for Brazilian agricultural commodities (Walker et al. 2009). Our findings reveal that road-extension agency corresponds to spatial characteristics of roads as well as temporal sequencing. As was to be expected by INCRA’s role in the original PICs, the Brazilian federal government opened most of the travessões, 18 of the 23 in our sample (see Figure 4). Municipal governments typically pick up where INCRA left off at 10-12 km, along the broad front of the emergent fishbone structure, to the north and south of the highway. The municipal government of Uruará also worked on 4 travessões neglected by INCRA, all relatively far from the center of town. Loggers contributed significantly to the overall extent of the local network. Notable extensions include those undertaken by the logging firms Bannach, Marajoara, and Vargas & Vargas, which added 80 km to 185S, 70 km to 205N, and 65 Km to 165N, respectively. An unknown logging group added 100 km to 140N on the municipal frontier between Uruará and Medicilândia.

Figure 4

Travessão Opening by Agent



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Bannach’s road building efforts linked BR-230 to the Iriri River. Built in two stages (1980 and 1985), this road gave access to mahogany stands in a region referred to as Terra do Meio and enabled export during the December – June rainy season when BR-230 is effectively impassable. The three other significant logging extensions, all undertaken in the 1990s, lie north of BR-230. Travessão 205N (Marajoara) and 165N (Vargas & Vargas) provide alternative routes to Santarém. The Vargas & Vargas extension, now a component of the State road system (PA-370), passes a small port on the Curuá River, convenient for loggers desirous of anonymous export. The 100 km extension on 140N provides access to Gleba Macapuxi, an area of contemporary competition for hardwoods, mostly Ipé. The roads extended significantly by loggers remain faithful to the fishbone pattern, so long as agricultural colonization accompanies their routes. Beyond this, they show less regularity.

Fishbone Fragmentation as a Development Process

The data indicate that landscape structure along the Transamazon Highway emerges independently of macro-economic conditions, as private interests and local governments take over from the federal government in extending “unofficial” roads to develop the local economy. The capital and financial resources necessary to sustain this process are presumably captured from location rents and profit windfalls created by newly implemented infrastructure; these function as trigger and long-run drivers of the region’s spatial evolution (von Thünen 1966). Location rents materialized quickly with BR-230’s arrival. These rents incentivized road building over several decades, particularly once federal resources were no longer available and the burden of continued infrastructure investment shifted to local agents. The construction slow-down at the turn of the millennium, in the face of booming Brazilian agriculture sector, is consistent with rent dissipation at the frontier of the network corridor, reaching ~40 km to the north and south, considerably beyond the 13 kms built per travessão by INCRA in the early years. Thus, the emergent pattern of fishbone fragmentation is largely the creation of local agents, institutions, and actors, and cannot be attributed in its entirety to federal government and the PIC program. A question arises in this regard, namely why did extensions continue in parallel, reproducing the spatial signature of the original plan, after INCRA effectively withdrew from the region in the 1980s? Answering this question requires several subsidiary considerations involving the behavior of loggers, the quadrado burro of the cadastral geometry, and government institutions regarding land title acquisition. Logger Involvement. Loggers have been engaged in the spatial enterprise from the start, extending the travessões parallel to INCRA constructed roads, often in cooperation with other agents. This may come as a surprise, given their propensity to construct different network architectures when acting on their own accord (Arima et al. 2005). In unoccupied public lands, so-called Terras Devolutas, loggers build networks showing little geometric order, which produce landscape outcomes far different from fishbone fragmentation (Arima et al. 2005; Arima et al. 2008). The emergent pattern along BR-230 is evidently attributable to the influence of colonists in their quest for land. The gain to loggers comes through spatial collusion with colonists, in which the loggers extend roads to make land accessible for colonists and, in exchange, obtain access to hardwoods

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at discounted prices from legal deforestation occurring on small-holdings (Arima et al. 2005; Amacher et al. 2009). This collaboration frees the loggers from otherwise having to develop forest management plans, which are both expensive and time-consuming. The Quadrado Burro. That colonists have reproduced the quadrado burro would appear to contradict the sentiments of critics who have long maintained that such property morphology was imposed by INCRA planners with little forethought to physical geography, resource constraints, and cultural preferences (Batistella et al. 2000; Castro et al. 2004). In fact, a number of efficiencies can be posited at both micro-and macroscale. For individual properties, four straight boundaries with orthogonal intersections lower demarcation and farm operation costs, thereby facilitating the emergence of land markets and attracting capital. This translates into improved economic function for the human component of the coupled natural-human system in place. Rectangular regularity also enables a collectively exhaustive, mutually exclusive partitioning of the landscape into identical holdings that aggregate consistently with a national transportation system organized on an orthogonal grid. This enables a region-scale allocation of land that possesses inter-regional connectivity at relatively low cost. Constitutional Land Law. Colonists have been helped in their spontaneous reproduction of the original cadastral pattern by the Constitution of 1988, which facilitates making land claims by physical occupation (Simmons et al. 2010). Those arriving after the PIC program have used this to their advantage, undertaking land occupations by the following scheme that continues to the present day. First, having assembled at the end of a travessão, colonists bushwhack a picada, a straight-line trail, to gain access to land where they can stake a claim. Since the land is federal (terras da união), they act with confidence about receiving title, so long as they keep their properties to 100 ha, the “respectable limit” (limite de respeito) as promulgated by INCRA (Arima et al. 2014). Once enough colonists cut a picada, they act collectively to entice loggers or municipal governments to improve the picada and turn it into a road capable of vehicular traffic (Arima et al. 2014) An emergent network pattern beyond the original PIC corridor is evident in Figure 5, which shows an updated INCRA cadastral as of 1991, with boundaries in purple. In cases where the PIC cadastral stops short, colonists continued occupying land, which dovetailed with INCRA’s second engagement with the region in the 1990s. This engagement, significantly scaled-back from the 1970s, substituted Projetos de Assentamento, PAs or settlement projects, for the gigantic PICs of the military government, and provided a limited portfolio of resources for project participants as spelled out by the NMR. The willingness of INCRA to recognize colonist land claims has impacted BR-230, and many other parts of Amazonia, with the widespread creation of PAs (Simmons et al. 2010). As can be seen in Figure 5, several PA settlements in the study area are smaller than the original PIC, and locate beyond its boundaries. Every one of them came into being by the process as described; with formal government recognition delayed about ten years after spontaneous occupation.



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Figure 5. The Original PIC plan and Spontaneous Settlements

Discussion

Fishbone fragmentation in the lower Amazon basin reflects institutional incentives arising from constitutional land law, as well as cost savings associated with property demarcation, with farm production occurring at lot-level, and with regional development tie-ins to the architecture of the federal highway system. Such efficiencies have presumably led to more human welfare than might otherwise be expected. In fact, modest wealth gains have been observed among colonists in the region, which now boasts towns possessing urban amenities and services (Walker et al. 2011). But a question remains about the environmental implications of this development geometry. Conservation planners recognize the importance of spatial design with its concept of the corridor, a natural area of sufficient size and extent to allow for species mobility and the provision of ecosystem services (Bani et al. 2002; Hoctor et al. 2000; Shilling and Girvetz, 2007; Thorne et al. 2006). As it turns out, the development geometry initiated by PIN concentrates land clearing along the colonization roads set an equidistance apart, leaving observable forest pathways between the “spines” of the fishbone (Figure 5). Research has documented that landscapes with fishbone fragmentation, and the forest corridors they sustain, possess high degrees of connectivity, conducive to biodiversity conservation in Amazonia (Oliveira Filho and Metzger 2006; Metzger 2006; Arima et al. 2013).

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Nevertheless, the establishment of conservation corridors in frontier areas undergoing active occupation presents complications to policy makers interested in sustainability. The process of designing corridors capable of achieving desired biodiversity outcomes requires input from conservation biologists and affiliate researchers. Furthermore, a regional perspective is necessary given the variable range requirements of key species, including myriad primates (i.e., Guiana Spider and Red-faced Black Spider Monkey) and the Black panther, Oncilla and Jaguar, all on the IUCN Red List for Threated Species. This means that corridors will exceed the domains of individual land managers, whose decisions are local in nature, and will likely cross municipal and state boundaries. Finally, institutional confusions are endemic in the Brazilian Amazon, where much of the land remains under federal jurisdiction, and development planning authority is distributed across ministries that historically have rarely interacted (i.e. Superintendent of Amazonian Development - SUDAM; Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform INCRA; Ministries of Planning, Budget and Management MPOG, Environment MMA, Energy MME, Transport DNER). This is not to mention the many planning and development responsibilities that have been decentralized to individual states (e.g., ITERPA, IDESP, SEPLAN in Pará State) and municipal bureaucracies in response to Brazil’s Agenda 21 plan, established in the wake of the UN Earth Summit in 1992.3 The Sustainable Amazon Plan established in 2008 holds promise as a more effective model for development and environment planning since it is a mechanism to unite relevant federal ministries with state and local authorities, as well as stakeholders in the planning process (Nepstad et al. 2009). Despite its potential, its influence so far has been limited to a small number of projects (i.e., BR-163 road project). For reasons such as these, it is perhaps fortuitous that fishbone fragmentation, the subject of our case study and a very common disturbance pattern in the basin, possesses corridors as a serendipitous element of the spatial signature of land occupation. If colonization roads are sufficiently spaced and oriented so that resulting forest corridors align along topographic and climatological gradients (Laurance and Laurance 1999; Lima and Gascon 1999; Rouget 2005), then fishbone fragmentation can meet a variety of species’ habitat, dispersal, and migration needs. Until ten years ago, the 50 percent forest reserve law guaranteed a 2.5 km forest band between pairs of travessões in PIC-Altamira, assuming lot clearance from front to back (Dale et al. 1994). A corridor of this magnitude would provide the requisite spatial resources for biodiversity conservation, even with edge effects, and the current 80 percent requirement, if enforced, would only help (Laurance and Laurance 1999; Aldrich 2009). Although not all landholders have abided by the forest reserve law, satellite imagery shows that substantially sized corridors do exist along the Transamazon Highway as recently as 2008. Excepting BR-230 itself and the properties along its right-of-way, these corridors have the potential of creating a porous filter, with strong connectivity between ecosystems associated with the Amazon stream course to the north, and the savannah woodlands of Mato Grosso to the south. The original plan for colonization missed an opportunity by not setting aside opposing lots along BR-230, between pairs of travessões. This would have completely opened the barrier created by the roadside pastures that are evident today, and created continuous forest corridors for the entire lower basin, except for the actual right-of-



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way of the road itself. Property values have not likely reached the point that they would completely prohibit corrective purchases capable of restoring the conservation potential of the colonization pattern in place (Merry et al. 2008; Sills and Caviglia-Harris 2009).

Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

Amazonian development and human welfare gains have come at a high cost. Waves of state-sponsored migration have transformed a sparsely populated region of forest and savanna into an urbanizing frontier, with many of the same problems found in large cities of the Global South, including squatter settlements, inadequate sanitation, and unemployment, not to mention the devastation of Amerindian cultures (Becker 1982; Browder and Godfrey 1997; Perz 2000). However, such impacts are often overshadowed by the region’s dramatic environmental change. Since the Brazilian Space Agency began keeping records in 1975, about 700,000 km2 of Brazil’s portion of the Amazonian forest has disappeared; this translates into a 17 percent loss, which includes neither selective harvesting by loggers nor insidious “edge” effects (Laurance 1998; Skole and Tucker 1993). Massive loss of the resident biome has done inestimable harm to habitats and biodiversity (Walker et al. 2007; Santos 1980). Amazonian deforestation rates have declined in recent years, possibly due to environmental law enforcement (Nepstad et al. 2009; Walker 2011). Brazil, in particular, has pursued an aggressive policy portfolio with a protected areas program (Rylands and Brandon 2005), the 2008 Plano Amazônia Sustentável (PAS), and commitments to scale back greenhouse gas emissions under the auspices of the UN’s programme to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD (National Policy on Climate Change 2010). Despite such positive efforts, multi-national plans threaten to undermine conservation gains with the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America, or IIRSA (Reid and Sousa 2005). The Brazilian government has exacerbated the tensions between economic development and conservation with its PAC programs (Growth Acceleration Program – see http://www.pac.gov.br/sobre-o-pac), and with the sanctioning of many informal land claims (Brito and Barreto 2009). Thus, maintaining Amazonia’s bio-diverse forests will require careful planning and political fortitude, particularly if global demand for Brazilian agricultural commodities continues to grow over the next decade. According to current demand trajectories, as much as 100,000 km2 of new soybean production alone will be required, putting pressure on the forest both directly and otherwise, via indirect land use change (Richards et al. 2013). Although conservation is a laudable goal, the reality is that some degree of forest penetration for the purposes of settlement is likely to occur, pursuant to the development processes that will continue to affect the Amazon region given the massive infrastructure buildups pursued by both Brazil and the other Amazonia nations. The ultimate environmental impact of such settlement remains unknown, although it might be greater than anticipated given a recent series of protected area reductions in Brazil, which invite speculation about the government’s commitment to a green agenda (Araújo and Barreto 2010; Novaes and França 2012; Scarano et al. 2012). It is within this context that we wish to point out that rent-seeking forest occupations occur as a semi-autonomous process, and do not provide federal or state

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governments the option of simply turning off a switch to stop them once they start. As the case study indicates, although PIN initiated the template for colonization, private citizens continued their penetration long after the federal government left the region, albeit with tacit support from Brazil’s Constitution and the NRW program that justified their direct action. Consequently, the emergent landscape pattern along BR-230 must be viewed as the expression of highly decentralized decisions and not as an exogenous blueprint imposed from above. From a biodiversity perspective, it would have been best to have left the Amazon Basin untouched by modernist development schemes. But a million people now live along the Transamazon Highway, a number that is likely to grow with the new wave of infrastructure projects, the momentum of PA formation, and with Brazil’s New Rural World program. High transportation costs did not inhibit the emergence of an agricultural economy, and the thousand-head herd of cattle grazing the outskirts of Altamira in 1973 has grown to over four million (Walker et al. 2011). Sustainable development initiatives in central Pará state, and throughout the Amazon basin more generally, face many challenges. For the colonization frontier of the study area, north-south connectivity could be enhanced to support conservation corridors by enforcing existing forest reserve laws, possibly in combination with strategic land purchases to create conservation easements along the roadway. Potential policy solutions involve the designation and enforcement of growth boundaries that limit settlement beyond a specified spatial extent, in addition to greater government oversight of the PA settlement formation process, as opposed to the laissez-faire approach of de facto INCRA policy. For other regions in the Amazon basin, occupation should be conditioned so as to promote a development geometry that will encourage conservation corridors while maximizing the potential for new settlers to advance their welfare. In so doing, public policy should remain attentive to the fact that the ecological impacts of settlement are related to the spatial patterns of land clearing for human use. We have argued that fishbone fragmentation provides an optimal configuration along several dimensions of ecological concern, in particular in its consistency with the maintenance of biodiversity corridors. Thus, if new occupations are deemed necessary, or prove to be difficult to control, it is incumbent on government agencies and institutions to attempt spatial interventions that guide more sustainable occupations of the landscape than might otherwise occur.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation, Geography and Spatial Sciences, including: Collaborative Research: Socio-Spatial Processes of Road Extension and Forest Fragmentation in the Amazon [award number 0243102]; Collaborative Research: Brazil’s Direct Action Land Reform Movement, Environmental Impacts and Socio-Spatial Dynamics [award number 0522062]; Collaborative Research: Contentious Land Change in the Eastern Amazon [award number 1541489]; The conclusions drawn and the opinions expressed are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation. The authors would like to acknowledge the helpful suggestions of the reviewers and editor, and thank them for their assistance.



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Notes

The Legal Brazilian Amazon is a region defined for purposes of planning and public policy administration; it includes the states of Acré, Amapá, Amazonas, Pará, Rondõnia, Roraima, Tocantins, and portions of the states of Maranhão and Goiás.

1

A research design aimed at such information imposes sample size limitations on individual events, since knowledgeable individuals are difficult to find under such circumstances and penetration of individual travessões for interview purposes is time-consuming.

2

Agenda 21 in an action plan action plan deried from the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to guide sustainable development in the 21st century for the UN and signatory countries.

3

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