Amazon Forest Fires

CSF worked with Brazil 2000 course participant, Ricardo de Assis Mello, a researcher with IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute), to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of alternative agricultural methods aimed at preventing destructive forest fires.

Farmers in the Eastern Amazon see few alternatives to the traditional slash and burn agricultural. As a direct consequence, in the states of Pará and Mato Grosso, the area of forest burned by accidental fires is greater than the amount of land intentionally burned for agriculture. Ricardo worked with IPAM as part of a World Bank Pilot Program for Tropical Forest Protection that aims to develop no-burn agricultural clearing methods.