Amazon Forestry Tranformed: Integrating Knowledge for Smallholder Timber Managemet in Eastern Brazil

A number of longitudinal case studies of Amazonian communities provide evidence not of boom-bust cycles, but instead of stable or continuing welfare improvements over time.

“a number of case studies (for example Sears et al. 2007, Piñedo-Vasquez et al. 2001, Guedes et al. 2012, Hall and Caviglia-Harris 2013, Mangabeira 2010) that have examined the dynamic trajectories of different Amazonian communities for between 7 to 22 years provide evidence not of boom-bust cycles, but instead either stable or continuing welfare improvements over time.”

Timber extraction and the conversion of forests into cropland and pasture generate a boom in incomes and jobs in the first years of land occupation, followed by a collapse as forest resources and soil fertility are depleted.

“That is, timber extraction and the conversion of forests into cropland and pasture generate a boom in incomes and jobs in the first years of land occupation, which is then followed by a collapse as forest resources and soil fertility are depleted (Sears et al., 2007).”