Deforestation and human development in the Brazilian tropical dry forest

Lucas Alencar, Luke Parry and Felipe Melo

Forest Policy and Economics, 2025, vol. 178, issue C

Abstract: The relationship between tropical deforestation and human development is unclear and contested. We evaluated the boom-bust hypothesis across agricultural frontiers in the Brazilian Caatinga dry forest, one of the largest dry forests in the world and home to 28 million people. We used panel data (1991, 2000 and 2010), and cross-sectional data (2010) from 1207 municipalities to assess how development indicators are linked to deforestation through a quasi-experimental approach. Our main finding is that deforestation in the Caatinga is associated with a boom-bust development pattern or at least to a stagnation in development in highly deforested municipalities. Municipalities at the advanced stage of deforestation (<33 % of forest cover remaining) in 1991 generally had higher development indicators than the initial stage (>66 % remaining), but differences between these groups disappeared by 2010. Intermediate stage municipalities (33–66 % remaining) consistently outperformed initial and/or advanced stage municipalities in four out of six development indicators (longevity, monetary income, extreme poverty prevalence, and child mortality), indicating a temporary ‘boom’ during frontier advance, followed by a stagnation. Evidence of a boom-bust was supported by cross-sectional analysis of 2010 data using propensity score weighting and a spatial autoregressive model. Overall, our findings contribute to on-going debate and strengthen the boom-bust hypothesis. By implication, the mere consumption of natural resources is inadequate to ensure sustained development progress. Achieving sustainability in Brazil's agricultural frontiers necessitates more than apolitical technical solutions; it requires active engagement by the state, non-state institutions, and society as a whole to address the country's deep-seated inequalities and imbalanced power dynamics.

Keywords: Sustainable development; Land cover change; Semi-arid region; Longitudinal analysis; Econometric model; Deforestation dynamics; Ecosystem services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934125001509
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:forpol:v:178:y:2025:i:c:s1389934125001509

DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2025.103571

Access Statistics for this article

Forest Policy and Economics is currently edited by M. Krott

More articles in Forest Policy and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().