Harnessing Biogeochemistry and Traditional Knowledge For Regenerating Deforested and Degraded Lands in the Amazon
Erick
C. M.
Fernandes, The World Bank, efernandes@worldbank.org
(Presenting)
Over 4,000 years ago, native Amazonians developed cropping systems based on native species to meet their food, wood, health, and cultural needs. The management of these systems required knowledge of the spatial and temporal (seasonal and annual) variability of the resource base. Long-lived perennial components and intra- and inter-system diversity across space and time were key to surviving environmental and other shocks. Colonization of the Amazon 400 years ago led to the progressive introductions of monoculture cropping of introduced annuals, pasture grasses, and tree crops with a heavy reliance on the unsustainable mining of the nutrient base in the soils and forest vegetation. Over the last 40 years, there has been a significant increase in settlements, unsustainable logging, and poorly managed pastures with a concomitant increase in land degradation. Advances in biogeochemical knowledge and modern plant breeding have resulted in increasingly intensive, high input monocropping systems (rice, corn, soybean, Brachiaria pasture, cotton, oil palm) to supply local and international markets. Some researchers and farmers have also attempted to use these systems to rehabilitate degraded lands. The large-scale, land cover and land use changes are now impacting local and regional biogeochemical cycles, agroecosystem productivity, native biodiversity, and the livelihood of local populations.
This paper will draw upon LBA and other regional datasets on carbon, nutrient, and water dynamics to demonstrate how deforested and degraded lands in the Amazon can be regenerated with science-based agroforestry analogs of the ancient Amazonian polycultures for food, fibers, and ecosystem services. In the last 4 years and despite the Kyoto protocol, the increasing private trade of carbon and biodiversity commodities make these systems suitable not only for stabilizing forest frontiers far removed from markets, but also for rehabilitating the riparian zones and degraded forest reserves of large farms and cattle ranches.