Avanca Brasil and deforestation in the Amazon (Brazil)

The goal of this study is to predict the change in deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon resulting from road paving under Avanca Brasil. Predictions are reported in Chapter 5, where I find that the effect on on-farm deforestation is a moderate 2.5 percent increase, and in the very long run, a 7.9 percent (entire Amazon) or 11.5 percent (forest biome only) increase. When off-farm deforestation is considered as well, net deforestation increases 10.3 percent and gross deforestation increases 14.4 percent. In the very long run, both net and gross deforestation increase by around 25 percent.; Chapter 1 explains why researchers should treat the Legal Amazon as two separate ecozones, forest and cerrado. I then estimate the magnitude of forest regrowth in the Amazon and, finally, demonstrate the importance of deforestation "seeds" from which deforestation spreads. Chapter 2 presents a simple dynamic model of land clearing. It includes several regressions which confirm the importance of starter deforestation and show how the effect of roads on deforestation appears substantially stronger when deforestation "seeds" are not controlled for. The regressions also show the importance of agroclimatic variables and the effectiveness of protected areas.; Chapter 3 demonstrates a new spatial disaggregation technique that allows one to map the likely distribution of farm activity inside the cross-sectional units. The technique is more efficient than standard regression analysis on uncensored data, but not necessarily so with censored data.; Chapter 4 uses satellite data for 1996 to 1999 to show that after a slight rise, rates of deforestation decline with increases in deforestation levels, and that this effect is quantitatively large and statistically significant. Rates of deforestation computed in Chapter 4 show that clearing of agricultural land might take place over 60 years until steady state is reached.; Deforestation rates on land already settled are not responsive to farmgate prices, though deforestation levels are. New settlement locations are very sensitive to farmgate prices. Even after controlling for prices and agroclimatic suitability, new farm establishments are much more likely to locate close to already established farms than far from them.