Economic trends in the timber industry of Amazônia: sure by results from Pará State. 1990-1995

STONE, S. 1997. Economic trends in the timber industry of Amazônia: sure by results from Pará State, 1990-1995. The Journal of Developing Areas, 32, 97-122.

Introduction

As one of the last terrestrial frontiers, the Amazon has captured worldwide attention with its wealth of biological diversity, indigenous groups, minerals, and raw materials. In the last decade, attention has focused not only on ranching and land conflicts, but also increasingly on logging dynamics and their role in the frontier economy.’ Although only one of a number of extractive activities practiced on the frontier, timber extraction is one of the most visible and potentially catalytic in transforming the landscape. Rapid growth in logging and large land acquisitions by Asian logging firms have created concern that the next few decades will bring wholesale liquidation of the some 80 billion cubic meters (m3) of timber estimated to be contained within the Amazon Basin. Until the 1980s, timber extraction in the Amazon was limited to fluvial areas and a few high-value species, such as mahogany, in the uplands. With the exception of a few large plywood producers in the Amazon delta, processing capacity was limited,5 and low levels of selective extraction resulted in minimal damage to residual forest stands. As domestic and international wood prices rose and new roads decreased the costs of transportation, however, the number of commercially viable species and the area of economically accessible forest has grown.’ Over the past two decades, changing economic conditions have stimulated a wave of investment in the timber industry, by opening new areas to extraction and altering the way timber is cut, hauled, and processed. This paper examines these changes by studying three locations over time in the Eastern Amazon. Building on earlier efforts to characterize the timber industry-including the work by the Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazonia (IMAZON),8 Mirjam A. F. Ros-Tonen,9 and Anthony B. Anderson and others’0-the present research attempts to identify the principal economic trends
by analyzing extraction, transportation, and processing data collected by the author in 1995. Interviews focused on three milling areas: the Amazon delta, an old upland frontier, and a new upland- frontier-all previously surveyed by researchers from IMAZON in 1990. Using these studies as a point of reference, the 1995 survey examines changes in levels of investment in machinery, use of
labor, and unit costs of production over time in each of these areas. The results provide an overview of frontier dynamics that even over the short period of five years may suggest how the industry will evolve as it grows and spreads across the Amazon Basin.