The COVID-19 crisis and Amazonia's indigenous people: Implications for conservation and global health.

Ecosystem health and zoonotic diseases are closely interwoven. Even as we grapple with the SARS-Coronavirus-2 pandemic, which may have its origins in wildlife, weakening environmental policies in the Brazilian Amazon are elevating the risk of additional zoonotic spillover events. We examine the links between deforestation and disease emergence in the Amazon, as illustrated by outbreaks of yellow fever virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, and Oropouche virus. It has been well established that in Brazil, indigenous territories exhibit lower rates of forest conversion and degradation than in areas designated for sustainable use. In this way, Amazonia's indigenous tribes promote public health while sustaining ecosystem services. However, indigenous land rights are under attack due to current policies enabling illegal land grabbing, mining and logging. Further adding to the existential struggle of indigenous tribes, malaria and SARS-Coronavirus-2 are wreaking havoc on these vulnerable populations. There is a critical need for protection of indigenous people's rights and health, as well as a sustained effort to support the study of mechanisms underlying anthropogenic land use change and zoonotic disease risk.

Agronomic or contentious land change? A longitudinal analysis from the Eastern Brazilian Amazon.

Since 1984, nearly 1,000 people have been killed in the Brazilian Amazon due to land conflicts stemming from unequal distribution of land, land tenure insecurity, and lawlessness. During this same period, the region experienced almost complete deforestation (< 8% forest cover by 2010). Land conflict exacts a human toll, but it also affects agents' decisions about land use, the subject of this article. Using a property-level panel dataset covering the period of redemocratization in Brazil (1984) until the privatization of long-term leases in the Eastern Amazon (2010), we show that deforestation is affected by land conflict, particularly in cases of expropriation of property for agrarian reform settlement formation and when that conflict involves fatalities. Deforestation on agrarian reform settlements is much greater when soils are poor for agriculture and when the land has been the object of past conflict. Deforestation and conflict are episodic, and both agronomic drivers and contentious drivers of land change are active in the region. Ultimately, the outcome of these processes of contentious and agronomic land change is substantial deforestation, regardless of who was in possession and control of the land.

Spatially complex land change: The Indirect effect of Brazil's agricultural sector on land use in Amazonia.

Soybean farming has brought economic development to parts of South America, as well as environmental hopes and concerns. A substantial hope resides in the decoupling of Brazil's agricultural sector from deforestation in the Amazon region, in which case expansive agriculture need not imply forest degradation. However, concerns have also been voiced about the potential indirect effects of agriculture. This article addresses these indirect effects forthe case of the Brazilian Amazon since 2002. Our work finds that as much as thirty-two percent of deforestation, or the loss of more than 30,000 km2 of Amazon forest, is attributable, indirectly, to Brazil's soybean sector. However, we also observe that the magnitude of the indirect impact of the agriculture sector on forest loss in the Amazon has declined markedly since 2006. We also find a shift in the underlying causes of indirect land use change in the Amazon, and suggest that land appreciation in agricultural regions has supplanted farm expansions as a source of indirect land use change. Our results are broadly congruent with recent work recognizing the success of policy changes in mitigating the impact of soybean expansion on forest loss in the Amazon. However, they also caution that the soybean sector may continue to incentivize land clearings through its impact on regional land markets.