AMACRO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ZONE: FROM DEVELOPMENT PROJECT TO ADVANCING THE DEFORESTATION FRONTIER IN THE SOUTHWEST OF THE LEGAL AMAZON
Deforestation Frontier; Amazonian Regional Development; Land Categories; Public Policies; Geoprocessing.
This thesis analyzes the transition from Sustainable Development Zone (ZDS) AMACRO of a development project to advance the deforestation frontier in the southwest of the Legal Amazon, from 2008 to 2022. The analyses of both the ZDS AMACRO as a whole and the contributions of its conservation units, federal rural settlements, indigenous lands and private rural properties are considered. The methodology used consisted of geoprocessing techniques using the ArcGis 10.8 software with the databases of the National Institute for Space Research and PRODES for deforestation, BDqueimadas for hot spots and MAPBIOMAS for agricultural estimation. Analyses of descriptive statistics and linear regression, coefficient of determination and bivariate analysis were carried out for a better understanding of the influence of land tenure categories on deforestation in the AMACRO ZDS. The results showed that deforestation in the AMACRO ZDS averaged 1,852 km² from 2008 to 2022, with an upward trend without reaching stability with peaks in 2021 (3,553.7 km²) and 2022 (4,236.9 km²). Fires as components associated with deforestation activities exhibited numbers of hot spots with patterns similar to the deforestation data at km2 of both the scale of the AMACRO ZDS and the scale of the portions of each state that make up the AMACRO ZDS. From 2018 to 2022, there is a marked expansion of the deforestation frontier from southeast to northwest (from the portion of the State of Rondônia to the portion of Amazonas in the AMACRO ZDS), characterized by the deforested areas in km2, their coefficients of variation and number of hot spots. The positive linear relationship between areas with agricultural activities and deforested areas is verified, the most intense being observed in the Amazonas portion of the AMACRO ZDS (R² = 0.9632), indicating that the increase in agriculture is more strongly associated with deforestation when compared to the portions of the AMACRO ZDS of Rondônia (R² = 0.849) and Acre (R² = 0.8536). The predominance of deforestation occurred in federal rural settlements, representing an average of 39.7% of deforestation in the AMACRO ZDS. In contrast, conservation units and indigenous lands contributed with an average of 9.8% and 0.65%, respectively. In the federal rural settlements, conservation units and indigenous lands of the AMACRO ZDS, deforestation occurred in a directly proportional manner with very low to low dispersion (R2 = 0.98, 0.96 and 0.69 respectively), showing the marked direct relationship between the deforestation of these land units and the total deforestation of the AMACRO ZDS. Private rural properties in the State of Acre portion of the AMACRO ZDS maintained their deforestation participations ranging from 10.75% to 19.43% of the total AMACRO ZDS, while the Amazonas and Rondônia portions had relatively higher percentage participations (25.37% to 46.29% and 37.63% to 61.49%, respectively). These are results that show contradictions in the environmental sustainability proposal of ZDS AMACRO, evidencing the weakening of public policies for the management of the Amazon territory with regard to socioeconomic development and the use of sustainability concepts.