Abstract ID: 555

Secondary forest valuation on family farms with different technology access in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon: Can conservation incentives compete with opportunity costs in slash-and-burn agriculture?

Secondary forests have shown the potential to provide key environmental services, such as carbon sequestration and nutrient and water recycling, at equally high rates as primary forests. But, are opportunity costs of conserving such secondary forests competitive with those of conserving primary forests? In this paper we present a methodology to determine the private value of secondary forest fallows, which can be used to estimate the size of conservation incentives necessary to achieve a desired conservation target. Using primary and secondary data collected in 2002/3 from 270 farmers in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon we econometrically estimate the value of fallowing in annual slash-and-burn production and use the result to calibrate the yield-nutrient response functions of a bio-economic farm-household model. We then demonstrate how the valuation and use of secondary forests change in three scenarios of technology access that correspond to the gradient of rural infrastructure development observed in our study region in the Eastern Amazon. Finally, we show how conservation policies, such as payments for environmental services (PES), would affect our results in the alternative technology access scenarios. Apart from providing the first econometric estimate of the value of fallowing in tropical slash-and-burn agriculture, our results and methodology can help to improve the design of conservation incentives in secondary forest landscapes. In a final discussion we address the implications of our findings for existing and emerging policy initiatives in the Amazon region.

Session:  LCLUC and Human Dimensions - The role of secondary forests in the Amazon.

Presentation Type:  Oral