Emerging smallholder forest management contracts in the Brazilian Amazon: impacts on welfare and labor supplies.
Gregory
Amacher, Virginia Tech, gamacher@vt.edu
(Presenting)
Frank
Merry, Woods Hole Research Center, fmerry@whrc.org
Eirivelthon
Lima, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia, elima@ipam.org.br
Maria
Rosenildes Guimarães dos
Santos, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia, rosenildes@ipam.org.br
Daniel
Curtis
Nepstad, Woods Hole Research Center, dnepstad@whrc.org
A formal harvest contract has been developed by a logging company and successfully implemented in two communities in the INCRA settlements Moju I and Moju II near the town of Santarém, in the State of Pará. The settlements contain approximately 1,600 families. The logging company that developed this tool has harvested annual volumes from 2001 to 2003 of 25,000, 35,000 and 43,000 cubic meters, respectively. Of which, approximately 60 percent comes directly from the community lots; approximately 60 families have received either RIL harvest or deforestation income. The success of this program has generated spontaneous interest from approximately 700 families who are in various stages of contract negotiation. This project has recently been identified as a promising alternative in forest management and in this research we formally test whether this contract affects the welfare, labor supplies, and land use decisions of smallholders. We use utility theory to develop a formal economic model of smallholder behaviour and the results of a survey of 360 families to provide to data for empirical estimation of welfare and labor allocation.