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Abstract Most economic initiatives and infrastructure projects in Brazilian Amazonia have social benefits that are small and ephemeral, while their socioenvironmental impacts are severe. More sustainable forms of development are inhibited by barriers such as a decision‐making system with heavy influence (including corruption) from actors with interests in nonsustainable activities. These interests have driven a recent surge of legislative threats to environmental licensing. Better alternatives exist for many destructive forms of “development” projects. Examples include transport using rivers (rather than building highways) and electricity generation from Brazil's vast solar and wind resources (rather than hydroelectric dams). Traditional rural populations could receive support from programs that tap the value of the Amazon forest's environmental services, but institutional mechanisms are in their infancy, among challenges that include differing political interests of countries providing environmental services and those that might pay for them, lack of data and a “theoretical battlefield” regarding accounting for benefits.
Philip M. Fearnside (Thu,) studied this question.