Land and deforestation embodied in trade: an analysis for brazilian biomes

Abstract

Given the social and ecological importance of Brazilian biomes, which, in addition to providing important environmental services on a global scale, also contribute to the country's income generation in activities linked to agribusiness trade, the objective of this thesis is to evaluate agricultural land and agriculture-caused (AC) deforestation embodied in Brazilian trade, both at the intranational and international levels. To this end, we constructed an inter-regional inputoutput matrix, named MIP-Biomas, which contains 47 regions, correspondent to the divisions of biomes within their respective federative units, cross-referenced to 36 activities. The MIPBiomas was built based on the 2015 matrix of the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), considering product-based technology and the Interregional Input-Output Adjustment System (IIOAS) method. This matrix also has the opening of the vector of exports to some of the main Brazilian trading partners, namely, the European Union, the United States, and China, as well as the rest of the world. Combining the monetary data from MIP-Biomas and physical data on direct agricultural land use and AC deforestation taken from satellite images of Mapbiomas, we constructed separate indicators to measure agricultural land content and AC deforestation content embodied in both intranational and international trade. Among the results, at the intranational level, we find that there is a greater concentration of trade with agricultural land content in the Cerrado, Mata Atlântica, and Amazônia biomes, and with AC deforestation in the Amazônia, Caatinga and Cerrado ones. It still stands out the pressure exerted by regions of the Mata Atlântica on land use and deforestation throughout the national territory, with land and deforestation displacement from the South affecting the North of the country, and a concentration of the impacts of the North and Northeast regions in their own territories. At the international level, although trade with land use comes mainly from the Cerrado and Mata Atlântica biomes, the AC deforestation content from the Caatinga and Mata Atlântica biomes is projected. At the sectoral level, in both intranational and international trade, we verify a concentration of agricultural land and AC deforestation content in activities linked to the food sectors, highlighting proteins such as bovines and their meats, milk and its derivatives, in addition to pork and poultry. It is emphasized that there are regional and sectorial variations in these results, as detailed. The results contribute to an evaluation of the sources and destinations of agricultural land use and AC deforestation in Brazilian trade and can serve as a basis for the formulation of national and international policies to fight against deforestation.