The cities that are champions in deforestation in the Amazon are the least developed in the region, revealed the third edition of the Social Progress Index, IPS Amazon 2021, by Imazon (Amazon Institute of Man and Environment), published this Monday (6).
According to the Amazon 2021 IPS, of the 772 Amazon municipalities, the twenty that have most deforested the forest since 2018 are the most violent, suffer most from lack of basic sanitation and have the worst health, education, access to information and gender equity rates. .
“In general, we have seen that where there is a lot of deforestation in the Amazon, there is a lot of poverty and low social progress”, explains the main author of IPS 2021, Adalberto Veríssimo, a researcher at Imazon.
The IPS is an index created in 2013 by academics from major research centers around the world to analyze the social and environmental conditions of countries, states and municipalities.
Unlike the HDI (Human Development Index), the IPS considers that development measures based only on economic indicators are insufficient to attest to the progress of a region.
“Economic growth without social progress results in environmental degradation, increase in inequality, exclusion and social conflicts”, explains an excerpt from the publication.
See below the ten municipalities with the greatest deforestation in the Amazon since 2018 and which had the worst scores on the IPS (from zero to 100 points, where zero indicates the worst index of social progress):
1. Pacajá (PA) – 44.34 points
2. Portel (PA) – 46.25 points
3. Apuí (AM) – 47.49 points
4. Senator José Porfírio (PA) – 49.26 points
5. New Division (PA) – 49.71 points
6. Uruará (PA) – 49.84 points
7. Anapu (PA) – 49.95 points
8. New Progress (PA) – 51.60 points
9. Cujubim (RO) – 52.11 points
10. São Félix do Xingu (PA) – 52.94 points
In 11th place appears Altamira (PA), with 52.95 points. The municipality has been a leader in deforestation in Brazil since 2009.
In addition to deforestation, the document highlights that these places are also strongly associated with social conflicts in the countryside and illegal mining.
“The data show that deforestation in the Amazon does not pay even for the economy, as it scares away investors, does not promote social inclusion and depletes the population’s natural resources, causing more poverty,” says Veríssimo.
The example of Pará
Half of the twenty cities with the worst social development indices are in Pará, a state historically leader in deforestation.
According to INPE (National Institute for Space Research), from January 1, 2018 to October 20, 2021 (period considered in the IPS), Pará deforested around 16,714 km², an area larger than 2,340 soccer fields.
In addition, even with two months to go to close 2021 (data were updated until October 21st), deforestation in Pará this year (5,023 km2) is already the highest since 2009 (5,367 km2).
Among the nine Amazon states, Pará obtained the second worst score in the IPS Amazônia: on a scale from zero to one hundred, the state of Pará scored only 52.94 points.
Roraima is the state with the lowest social development index, with 52.37 points.
If, on the one hand, deforestation has advanced in these areas in recent years, there has been no improvement in the social progress index in these areas since the last IPS, published in 2018.
“Areas of intense deforestation have had a stagnation in their social progress since 2018. In some municipalities, the index even got worse. And in all of them, the worst indicators were security and basic sanitation”, explains Veríssimo.
The Amazon 2021 IPS message is contrary to the speech of the Environment Minister, Joaquim Leite, during the United Nations Climate Conference, COP26, when he stated in the speech of leaders: “where there is a lot of forest, there is also a lot of poverty”.
“The IPS attests that this development model based on deforestation and predatory use of natural resources (illegal logging, gold mining) results in low social progress”, counters Veríssimo.
The first edition of the IPS, from 2003, had already shown that heavily deforested regions had an initial increase in the HDI. However, as natural resources were being depleted, these indicators began to drop substantially.
There is wealth where there is forest
A study published in April by New York University associate professor Salo Coslovsky, a researcher on the 2030 Amazon project, showed that exploiting forest products that do not involve deforestation is an internationally profitable trade.
“In this study, I examined the entire foreign trade of products from the Amazon and identified that there are around 60 products compatible with the forest”, points out Coslovsky.
The professor explains that “compatible with the forest” are products taken directly from the forest and its rivers, that is, natural resources that fit into three categories: fishing and psyculture; non-timber forest extraction (the collection of nuts and açaí, for example); agroforestry foods (agricultural model where food production preserves the forest, benefiting both systems).
“We identified that these 60 products bring US$ 300 million (R$ 1.7 billion) in annual revenue to the Amazon. In other words, the Amazon already produces products compatible with the forest of excellent quality and with competitive prices in the global market”, says Coslovsky.
The study also identified that, despite being home to 30% of the planet’s tropical forests, the Brazilian Amazon is responsible for only 0.17% of a market worth US$ 176.6 billion (R$ 1 trillion) annually.
“If it’s not Brazil, who dominates the global market for products originating from tropical forests? It turns out that they are poorer countries than ours and with little infrastructure, like Bolivia, Ecuador, Tanzania and Vietnam. Some of them don’t even have it exit to the sea”, says the professor.
“The social and economic development of the Amazon does not depend on more asphalt or the construction of more roads in the middle of the forest; more ports in the region or any other large undertaking. Countries with much less infrastructure and smaller patches of rainforest are dominating a market in which Brazil could be a leader”, states Coslovsky.
Keeping the forest standing is also essential for the rest of Brazil, as the Amazon regulates the climate and rainfall throughout the country.
“All of Brazil needs the Amazon to bring rain to the South, Southeast and Center-West, essential moisture for plantations in these regions”, describes the UNY professor.
Deforested areas are not productive
Data from Inpe show that the Amazon has already lost about 20% of its original forests, contrary to what President Jair Bolsonaro said in November, when he told investors in Dubai that “the attacks that Brazil suffers when it comes to the Amazon are not There, more than 90% of that area is preserved.”
In addition to the fact that the president mentioned is not correct, only 10% of the area that has already been deforested in the Amazon is being used in a really productive way.
“The deforested areas have very low production. Many of them were even abandoned after deforestation”, explains Coslovsky.
In addition to helping to end illegal deforestation, encouraging a sustainable economy in the region can restore already degraded areas.
“The Amazon is very large and each area requires a solution The problem is not simple to solve”, he ponders. “But many of these deforested and abandoned areas can become, for example, agroforestry.”
The professor gives as an example the current cocoa production in the Amazon region.
“Cacao is growing in the Amazon. The product is typical of the tropical region, so it can be planted in consortium with other typical foods, such as bananas, forming an agroforest there,” says Coslovsky.
Similar development to Cambodia
On a scale from zero to one hundred, the Amazon 2021 IPS was 54.59 points, a slight reduction compared to the 2018 index (54.64 points), the previous edition of the document.
In relation to the global average, the Imazon document compares that, if the Amazon region were a country, the Amazon would be in a similar position to Cambodia, the 40th worst country in the global ranking of the IPS.
In relation to the national average, the social progress index in the Amazon is also lower than the index in Brazil, which was 63.29 points.
Mato Grosso (57.94), Rondônia (57.20) and Amapá (54.96) are the states with indices above the Amazon 2021 IPS (54.49), while the other states have indices below the average. None of the nine states in the region, however, surpassed the national average.
“The IPS 2021 shows that social development in the Amazon is inferior to that of Brazil itself, which is also low”, warns Veríssimo.
For the researcher, the picture of the Amazon today is “of a perfect storm of environmental destruction, economic underdevelopment and the worst social indicators in Brazil”.
The researchers emphasize that the IPS Amazônia does not reflect the specific social and cultural conditions of the indigenous peoples that inhabit the Indigenous Lands and the quilombola populations that occupy Quilombola Territories. For that, according to Imazon, a specific IPS for these territories would be necessary.
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