Biogeografia da conservação frente à expansão agrícola: conflitos e prioridades

• Autor(a) principal: DOBROVOLSKI, Ricardo
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFG
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.bc.ufg.br/tede/handle/tde/2640
• topic: Agricultura; Mudança de uso e cobertura do solo; IMAGE; Conservação da Biodiversidade; Planejamento Sistemático de Conservação; Prioridades Globais de Conservação da Biodiversidade; Hot spots de Biodiversidade; Áreas Protegidas; Conservação de Mamíferos; Brasil; Agriculture; Land Use And Land Cover Change; IMAGE; Biodiversity Conservation; Systematic Conservation Planning; Global Biodiversity Conservation Priorities; Biodiversity Hotspots; Protected Areas; Mammals Conservation; Brazil; CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::ECOLOGIA

Agriculture is the human activity with the greatest impact on the environment. Specifically, it represents the greatest threat to biodiversity. In the future, this activity should expand due to population growth, increased consumption and production of biofuels from food. To understand the possible impacts of this expansion on biodiversity, we used scenarios of land use change between 1970 and 2100 from IMAGE (Integrated Model to Access Global Environment) to test the following hypotheses: (i) areas considered as global priorities for conservation by international NGOs will be preferentially impacted by agricultural expansion in the XXI century, (ii) there is a conflict between the priority areas for carnivores conservation and agricultural expansion, and this conflict can be reduced by incorporating information on agricultural expansion in the prioritization process, (iii) the integration among countries for conservation planning may benefit both biodiversity and agricultural productivity, (iv) Brazilian protected areas will be impacted by agricultural expansion in the future and this impact will differ between protected areas of integral protection and those of sustainable use. We found that: (i) the impact on priority areas for conservation depends on the criteria by which they were set, so that areas defined by its high vulnerability are currently most affected than those of low vulnerability. Throughout the XXI century this impact is expected to increase, although the difference between the two types of priorities remains, except for High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas, defined by their low vulnerability in current time, but for which most pessimistic scenarios forecast an impact similar to priority areas of high vulnerability, (ii) there is a high spatial congruence between areas with high agricultural use in the future and priority areas for conservation of carnivores. This conflict can be reduced if the prioritization process include information on agricultural expansion; this incorporation, however, causes a profound change in the distribution of priority areas and reduces the number of protected carnivore populations, (iii) the integration of countries to create a set of priority areas for conservation that represents 17% of the land surface can protect 19% more mammal populations without reducing food production, compared to a strategy in which each country seeks to protect its territory independently, and (iv) the impact of agriculture in Brazil is expected to increase until the end of the century, threatening even the protected areas and their surroundings. This impact, however, should not be different between areas of sustainable use and those of integral protection. We conclude that agricultural expansion should remain a major threat to biodiversity in the future, even in areas of special interest for conservation. Conservation actions should be planned taking into account this threat in order to reduce their potential impacts. For this, countries like Brazil should strengthen its surveillance on agricultural expansion and on how this activity is developed. Furthermore, the integration of international conservation efforts should be pursued, given its benefits for biodiversity and food production. Finally, humanity must choose methods of agricultural production that reduce its impacts, including avoiding its future expansion, so as to meet the increasing needs of a human population globally.