Focus region Amazonia/Brazil

Brazil, an upper-middle-income economy in the tropics, is characterized by an expansion of the industrialized food production for the world market at the expense of protecting the world’s largest tropical rainforest and the associated traditional livelihoods of local communities.

In addition to deforestation, the Amazon is threatened by climate-change-induced extended periods of reduced precipitation. The region suffers from land conflicts between subsistence farmers, large-scale cattle ranching and agro-industrial operations as well as gold mining, indigenous and traditional communities.

In quantifying water productivity and footprints of Brazil’s major rain-fed crops, i.e. cotton, maize, soybeans, and wheat, we found opportunities to improve green water productivity but limited options for supplemental irrigation. Double-cropping of soybeans and maize offers another opportunity to cultivate agricultural land in Brazil more efficiently.

Using strategy to preserve biodiversity while saving space: In an assessment of biodiversity priority areas in the Neotropics, we identified inadequately protected biodiversity hotspots and present a strategy to adequately conserve threatened species and ecosystems while minimizing competition with agricultural land.

However, in political and scientific discussions on sustainable land management strategies for the Amazon region pluriversal perspectives and environmental justice issues are widely ignored, even though Amazonian population is socio-culturally highly diverse and Latin America is worldwide considered the continent with the most unequal land and income distribution.