Weakening the Brazilian legislation for forest conservation has severe impacts for ecosystem services in the Atlantic Southern Forest
Introduction
The rapid degradation of forest ecosystems compromises the long term provision of ecosystem services (MEA, 2005). Agriculture is a major threat to Brazil's forests but also a major driver of economic growth, which takes precedence over environmental protection and ecosystem services in national policies (Martinelli and Filoso, 2009, Martinelli et al., 2010a, Tollefson, 2010, Sparovek et al., 2011). Conservation of the Atlantic Forest – the most threatened ecosystem in Brazil – is regulated by the National Forest Act (NFA), originally promulgated in 1965, and the Atlantic Forest Law (Brasil, 2006). However, poor enforcement of both policies has resulted in the continued loss of Atlantic Forest remnants (INPE and SOS Mata Atlântica, 2011), threatening the ecosystem's resilience (Lees and Peres, 2008, Galetti et al., 2010, Metzger et al., 2010).
The Atlantic Forest Law regulates the conservation of the Atlantic Forest biome, while the NFA regulates conservation of natural ecosystems across all Brazilian states, in public and private properties. Unfortunately, in 2012 the National Congress voted to weaken the NFA from 1965 (NFA65). The debate under the NFA65 reform resulted in an intense mobilization by civil society and the Brazilian scientific community. Different sectors worked on technical reports emphasizing the negative implications of the NFA65 change when faced with the demands from the agribusiness sector (Instituto Socioambiental, 2012, Via Campesina Brasil, 2011, ABEMA, 2012, ANA, 2012). There was also an effort by the Brazilian scientific community to warn of the impacts that the NFA65 change could have on the natural ecosystems resilience and provision of ecosystem services (Develey and Pongiluppi, 2010, Galetti et al., 2010, Metzger et al., 2010, Nazareno et al., 2011, SBPC, 2011, Sparovek et al., 2011, Ferreira et al., 2012); however, it had a low impact on the policy makers (Ferreira et al., 2012).
The final version of the reformed NFA approved by the Congress was subjected to veto and modifications by President Rousseff in May 2012 (Brasil, 2012a, Brasil, 2012b), though it still resulted in fewer obstacles to increased agricultural expansion into forests and other natural ecosystems. The impacts of policy changes have been modeled extensively for the Amazon (Nepstad et al., 2008, Soares-Filho et al., 2006), but recently studies simulating the impacts of policy changes on the Atlantic Forest have increased in number (Teixeira et al., 2009, Ditt et al., 2010, Garcia et al., 2013).
While there was a weakening of the NFA65, Brazilian policy makers have also been developing incentive-based policies to reward landowners for the ecosystem services generated by forest conservation, complementing legal mandates affecting land-use in the Atlantic Forest. One approach directed towards landowners is payments for ecosystem services (PES). Approximately 80 such programs targeting the Atlantic Forest reward forest restoration and biodiversity conservation (Guedes and Seehusen, 2011, Pagiola et al., 2012). One of the main challenges for incentive based policies is to understand the tradeoffs expected at local, regional and global scales between ecosystem services and financial returns across different ecosystems under different policy scenarios (Goldstein et al., 2012).
The goal of this article is to use spatially-explicit models of land-use change and ecosystem services to improve the understanding of the tradeoffs and their mutual interactions, and based on this to discuss the implications for the policies at stake (Chan et al., 2006, Nelson et al., 2009, Goldstein et al., 2012, Su and Fu, 2013). Specifically, the spatially-explicit InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) modeling tool (Tallis et al., 2011; Sharp et al., 2014) is applied to evaluate the impact on ecosystem services caused by changes in land-use and land-cover patterns associated with three different policy options for the southern Atlantic Forest. The results inform a discussion on policy options that can balance the apparently conflicting goals of economic growth and conservation of ecosystem services and the expected impacts of the NFA65 reform on ecosystem services provision. A case study approach was adopted. The Chapecó Ecological Corridor was established in 2010 in Santa Catarina State, southern Brazil, to protect relevant biodiversity areas. As highlighted by the Chapecó Ecological Corridor Management Plan, the analysis focuses on provisioning services (i.e. commodities in the region with the greatest market potential), carbon storage, erosion regulation, as well as habitat for biodiversity (FATMA, 2009).
Section snippets
Study site
The Atlantic Forest is mainly distributed along the Brazilian coast and is a global biodiversity hotspot. Originally it covered 1,315 million hectares, however policies favoring agricultural expansion and urbanization since colonial times have reduced forest cover by 85% from its original extent (Ribeiro et al., 2009). Actually the Southern Brazilian states together contain 34% of the forest remnants (INPE and SOS Mata Atlântica, 2014).
In spite of the high level of fragmentation, the remaining
Analysis of ecosystem service changes and correlations
The InVEST tool was used to model the ecosystem services of carbon storage, habitat quality and erosion regulation, while ArcGIS 10 was used to simulate the provision of agricultural commodities and non-timber forest products (NTFPs). It was assumed that existing and restored Araucaria forests produce NTFPs, deciduous forests will generate no revenue, and remaining land will be allocated toward commodities. The data were run in 100 × 100 m resolution, and included the following ecosystem services:
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Impacts of environmental policy changes on LULC patterns
According to the baseline map, the CEC has 56% of its area under agricultural uses, of which 30% is grains. 48% of the PPA along rivers and springs should be recovered within the NFA12 and 54% within the NFA65. Nevertheless, adding the PPA of slopes under 45 degrees, hilltops and the wider strips of PPA, the NFA65 would result in a total forest gain of 80 thousand hectares. Araucaria Forest increased by 60% and Deciduous Forest by 54% within this policy option. The conversion of PPA along
Impacts of environmental policy changes on LULC patterns
In line with other research, changes of environmental policies influenced LULC patterns with significant impacts on ecosystem goods and services provisioning (De koning et al., 2007, Liu et al., 2008, Swetnam et al., 2011, Goldstein et al., 2012). The National Forest Act from 1965 NFA65 was the most relevant policy option for the conservation of natural ecosystems and provisioning of ecosystem goods and services, while the Business as Usual BAU scenario resulted in the largest losses.
Brazilian
Conclusions
The increase in native vegetation under the NFA policy dating back to 1965, could significantly enhance ecosystem services, while the BAU increases the likelihood that the Atlantic Forest will surpass irreversible ecological thresholds (Lees and Peres, 2008, Metzger et al., 2009, Galetti et al., 2010). One policy favors forest conservation and the other economic growth. The NFA12 also enhances ecosystem services compared to the BAU, but it is closer to the baseline situation. To determine which
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