Forests and cities: essays on urban growth and development in the Brazilian Amazon

• Autor(a) principal: Sergio André Castelani
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.11606/T.12.2013.tde-06022014-171117

The Brazilian Amazon has been undergoing a process of population growth and urbanization in recent decades. Its urban population increased from 42% to 71% between 1960 and 2010, and in the last decade, its overall population grew around 21%. Such rises bring important consequences not only economically, but also in environmental terms, especially considering that the largest remaining rainforest in the world is located within this region. Nevertheless, this scenario is still poorly addressed by literature. Bearing this in mind, this thesis aims to examine some economic and environmental aspects related to this context, and is specifically divided into three essays. Firstly, a spatial econometric approach is implemented, based on the framework of spatial economics models, in order to investigate whether this process of urbanization has been generating local economic growth and development. In the second essay, aiming to measure the environmental impacts of such population growth and urbanization, an Interregional Input-Output model is built, for the year of 2004, merging data regarding the productive structure and land use transition in the Brazilian Amazon. Specifically, this method allows the measurement of how much local deforestation may be attributed to the consumption of goods and services demanded by households living within the region, considering all direct and indirect production of inputs and outputs in every region of Brazil. Moreover, in order to capture the effects of local urbanization, special focus is given to the demands of the families living within the five Brazilian Amazon metropolitan regions. Finally, in the third essay, given that population growth and urbanization processes are directly related to migration flows, an econometric model was implemented in order to investigate the determinants of immigration and emigration flows between the Brazilian Amazon and the rest of Brazil. This estimation allowed the comparison of the reasons that have been driving the exit and the entry of individuals in the region. Such methodology makes use of estimators which take into account econometric problems commonly attributed by literature to the modeling of migration flows, such as the sample selection issue regarding the potential differences in skills between migrants and non-migrants. As main results, we find evidence that these local processes of urbanization and population growth have been causing a \"trade -off\" in the region: on the one hand, such processes seem to be driving local economic growth and development, but on the other, they also tend to increase regional deforestation. Furthermore, we find evidence that although the immigration and emigration flows of the Brazilian Amazon have been currently well-balanced, local vegetative growth still has been fueling such population growth and urbanization. Moreover, we find that the motivations which lead individuals to immigrate to the Brazilian Amazon are quite distinct from those that encourage people to leave it: whereas the former seek immediate higher levels of real income, the latter seem to move to cities with higher levels of education.