The conversion of tropical rainforests for crop and livestock production contributes a considerable share to global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC 2007). Over the last decades, the Brazilian Amazon has area-wise been the largest hotspot for global forest loss (Hansen et al. 2010). Since 2004, however, forest conversion rates have steadily fallen in the Brazilian Amazon, which is increasingly being attributed to proactive government policies, such as the expansion of the protected area network and a more rigid enforcement of existing conservation laws (Soares-Filho et al. 2010, Maia et al. 2011, Assunção et al. 2012, Malingreau et al. 2012).

Despite...

The BFP aims to improve the quality of life of traditional forest-dwelling people, while conserving the environmental services provided by the forests they live in. It consists of an integrated set of interventions designed to reward forest stewards who commit to zero net deforestation, the adoption of sustainable land-use practices in state-owned forest reserves of the Brazilian federal state of Amazonas, among other rules. The programme’s target areas are state-owned forest reserves that allow multiple sustainable land and forest use activities. Various types of multiple use reserves exist in Brazil and our two study areas belong to the Sustainable Development...

We selected two out of the 15 reserves enrolled in the BFP as cases for our study. Our criteria were: a) programme running already for some time so as to gauge some first impacts (early start-up date), and b) significant past pressure on forests inside and/ or outside the SDR provides a real conservation challenge (high past forest-loss rate). Table 2 depicts accumulated deforestation in and around all reserves, showing that the selected cases (Juma and Uatumã) stand out either in terms of high internal or external historical forest loss, and early BFP start-up year.

The SDR Juma is located...

Land users in the Brazilian Amazon develop variable livelihood strategies, customized to their socio-cultural background, access to natural resource assets, as well as the economic, institutional and policy contexts. At the local scale, however, specialized livelihood strategies sometimes emerge around particularly valuable natural resources, such as fishermen (ribeirinhos) or rubber tappers (seringueiros). Most traditional population groups, however, also practice itinerant agriculture for subsistence, and sometimes also commercial purposes.

This section aims at characterizing the basic livelihood strategies adopted by people living in and around our two study areas, based on data collected in household interviews. We will seek to understand...

This section describes land-cover and land-cover change for our case study areas, the SDRs Juma and Uatumã, compared to the rest of Amazonas State.

Deforestation has been historically low inside and in the surroundings of the SDR Juma, according to the official Brazilian deforestation monitoring system PRODES, published by the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE) (Figure 7). However, future forest loss is predicted to affect as much as 62% of the reserves forest area until 2050, according to the Juma REDD project’s reference scenario (see discussion below). In the underlying spatial simulation model, forest conversion would be driven by...

The BFP intervention strategy aims at a combination of conservation and development objectives. Figure 13 schematically represents the pathways through which we believe the four components of the programme (Family, Income, Social, and Association), combined with investments in monitoring and enforcement (M&E) of reserve and BFP rules, could be expected to affect conservation and development outcomes.

Three major potential impact pathways (as marked in the Figure 13) emerge:

I. Improved living conditions of residents: BFP incentives are expected to directly and indirectly raise local welfare vis-à-vis a scenario without BFP. The BFP Family component provides immediate cash benefits to households;...

We selected as case study areas two Sustainable Development Reserves (SDR), Uatumã and Juma, where the Bolsa Floresta Programme (BFP) has longest been active, and where previous deforestation pressures were among the relatively highest. The latter of these (Juma) has also been the first certified REDD project in Brazil. While constituting only a quite preliminary assessment of incipient trends, rather than a proper impact evaluation study, our choice of sample criteria should at least allow us to see the programme put to some test with respect to progress towards its stated conservation and development goals.

The low population density and...