The economic and social significance of logging operations on the floodplains of the Amazon estuary and prospects for ecological sustainability.

Introduction

Timber has been exploited in Amazonia for over 300 years. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, wood was harvested from stands near the rivers and exported as logs to large European cities. Wood was of secondary importance in those days and was near the bottom of the list of exports from the Amazon region (Santos, 1980; Silva, 1987; Gentil, 1988).

In the latter part of the twentieth century, logging intensified in Amazonia. In 1950, there were only 25 sawmills in operation; 20 years later the number had risen to 287, plus 4 plywood and laminated-wood factories. Only a few species were utilized, and these were sold preferentially to foreign markets; virola (Virola surinamensis), a species from the floodplain forests, was the main timber tree all over the Amazon region. In 1972, this species alone represented almost one-half of the total log volume consumed by the wood industry (Bruce, 1976).

As the first roads were opened up and paved in the 1970s, the timber industry increased its activities in the upland forests of eastern Amazonia. Large laminated-wood factories and sawmills also increased in number in the Amazon estuary. In the 1980s there was a boom of small, family-run sawmills, based on estuarine floodplain-forest exploitation. Here, logging is not mechanized, the rivers are used to transport logs, and sawmills vary in size from small family businesses to those with more than 500 employees run by international groups.

The aim of this paper is to assess timber exploitation in floodplain forests of the Amazon estuary, including tree harvesting, log hauling, and industrial wood processing. Every phase of the operation is described and the social, economic, and environmental impacts of these activities are examined, based on data from each enterprise (number of jobs created, income from wood sales, volume of wood harvested). Finally, on the basis of historical factors and present-day operations of the timber industry, we analyze the future of logging activities in the region and perspectives for regional development of sustainable forest utilization.