Source: MediaGlobal
The exodus of rural Amazonians may be leaving areas of the Amazon rainforest vulnerable. The Ribeirinhos (which means “river dwellers”) have begun migrating from the rainforest to urban cities in search of better opportunities.“Rural people serve both as informal monitors of land invasions… and serve as the political justification for the protection of forests,” Dr. Luke Parry, researcher at the Lancaster Environment Centre, told MediaGlobal. “The loss of the rural population may thus reduce both the monitoring in remote areas and the long-term viability of some types of reserve creation.”
A desire to access education is the main cause of the exodus, said Parry. “One of the main attractions of an education is that it broadens the opportunities open to a young adult.” Even if more schools are built, teachers are reluctant to spend long periods of time in isolated settlements, and improving the education still would not prevent migration, explained Parry. “It is likely that many people would use that education and leave to an urban area anyway, and maybe have a better chance of accessing the urban job market,” said Parry.
The Ribeirinhos, who practice many forest and river-based livelihoods, often take their taste for wild foods, such as turtles and hunted forest animals, with them to the cities. “The commercial pressure to harvest this wildlife for urban populations could be exerting negative effects of exploited plant and animal populations,” explained Parry.
“We observed a very great spatial extent of commercial harvesting, often hundreds of kilometers beyond the last household on a given river.” Parry added, “ River-dwellers reported the growth in the scale and intensity of commercial harvesting, particularly for turtles, over time, and in many cases indicated that they perceived this had led to a decline in the abundance of some species.”
Parry observed the cost to the environment of extensive commercial harvesting of vulnerable plant and animal populations while conducting an 11-month survey to study the impact of rural-to-urban migration in the Amazon. The results of the study were published in an article in the latest issue of Conservation Letters titled “Rural–urban migration brings conservation threats and opportunities to Amazonian watersheds.” The study was counterintuitive in that it found that potential conservation benefits would be gained from rural migration because of a subsequent reduction in forest and aquatic subsistence harvesting from the Ribeirinhos.
However, abandoning the forest by the rural Amazonians also opens up the threat of future deforestation, due to a loophole in Brazilian policy. It is possible to gain property by showing occupation of the land. “Deforesting areas is a common method of demonstrating occupation and ‘improvement’ of that land,” said Parry. “The abandonment of large areas of forest in remote headwaters means that there is a lot of unclaimed land and a high chance of land-grabbing in those areas become bisected by new highways and link-roads.”
Ribeirinhos struggle to find support from conservation groups. As the mixed descendants of indigenous people, European colonists, and escaped African slaves, the Ribeirinhos are frequently overlooked by the conservation and development community, explained Parry. “In my opinion indigenous groups have got stronger support from the media and NGOs than the non-tribal Ribeirinhos of Amazonia.”
Parry will continue to study the impact rural-to-urban migration is having on the rainforest. “I am keen to understand more about the well-being of the migrants that leave these remote rural areas for the rapidly expanding neighborhoods, almost shanty towns, around the edges of rainforest cities.”