Forest Maps

Maps represent selected features of

the terrain to which they
correspond. How much can a forest
map show about what's really going
on in the forest? The answer to this
question depends on what
instruments and data are available
to the map maker, and on what she judges important to represent.
Maps represent the concepts their makers use in designing them, as
well as features of the terrain.

The global forest cover map that opens this page was originally
compiled by the World Conservation Monitoring Center, a research
center created by a consortium of conservation organizations later
incorporated into the United Nations Environment Program. It is a
compilation of various other maps, including NOAA and Landsat
satellite maps. Since no world-wide, uniform analysis of satellite
images of the same scale, collected at the same time, exists, the
WCMC map uses different maps, of differing scales, based on data
collected at different times. Remote sensing scientists consider these
data internally inconsistent, i.e., incomparable. [Read more about
Measuring the State of the World's Forests]

Most of the satellite image maps used in the global forest cover map
are based on relatively coarse resolutions (1 km). Hence, on the basis
of the data and available instruments for measuring forests, the map
is quite limited in terms of the inferences, hypotheses, or still more,
calculations that can be made from it. It is still however a very good
symbolic representation approximating the extent of global forest
cover — it is currently the best there is.

The map also has selected biologically defined forest types as the key
feature to be distinguished, e.g., "lowland evergreen broadleaf rain forest".
Different colors represent different forest types. This reflects the priorities of
the biological scientists and traditional conservation organizations (largely
concerned with creating parks and other protected areas that exclude to the
extent possible human occupation) who compiled it. The ultimate goal is
the protection of representative parts of as many biologically distinct
ecosystems as possible, by means of the creation of protected areas more
or less along the lines of the kinds of parks and reserves that exist in the
United States (see Schwartzman, Moreira and Nepstad, 2000).

Environmental Defense | 2001

Amazonian Deforestation

By contrast, look for example at the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA)

map of indigenous lands and deforestation in the Amazon. Image 1
shows indigenous territories and forest areas that have been cleared
since the 1970s in the Brazilian Amazon. Since deforestation has been
monitored using Landsat images in the Brazil since the early 1980s,
there are relatively homogenous, mutually comparable data sets
underlying this representation. One can, for example, compare areas
deforested at the municipal (or county) level based on data of the
same scale, collected contemporaneously (within the same year) The
location of Indian lands is well known in Brazil, because indigenous
communities and organizations and their allies nationally and
internationally have pressured the government to comply with
Constitutional guarantees of indigenous land rights. As a result, about
20% of the Amazon, or 1 million km2 (the green areas on the map),
has been officially recognized as indigenous land, mostly over the last
fifteen years.

Image 1: Amazonian Indigenous Reserves &

Deforestation Patterns
(Data courtesy of Instituto Socioambiental / Macapa 1999 Seminar)

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Both the government agency responsible for the official recognition, or
"demarcation" process (the National Indian Foundation, FUNAI), and
ISA have systematically collected the geographic coordinates of the
more than 540 indigenous areas in Brazil, so that they can be
accurately mapped (in fact, that ISA and its predecessor indigenous
rights organizations were able to accumulate these data over the last
twenty years, independently of the government, was of strategic
importance to the indigenous peoples' struggle for the land.)

ISA, and Environmental Defense, maintain that official recognition of

indigenous land rights, demarcation of indigenous lands, and support
for the sustainability of indigenous lands are critically necessary to the
protection of tropical forests on any but a miniscule scale. We see
indigenous peoples and their organizations as key allies for
sustainability in tropical forests, since they occupy large parts of the
remaining tropical forests; are a political constituency that opposes the
most destructive forms of development; and have very substantial
interests at stake in the outcome. This understanding is reflected in
the Amazon maps.

Roads to Ruin

Look at the map labeled IMAGE 2. Along with deforestation, the map
shows the routes of roads, industrial waterways and pipelines planned
for the Amazon in the Brazilian government infrastructure
development program, Avança Brasil. Interpretation of satellite data
over more than twenty years shows conclusively that road building and
road paving are the major vectors of deforestation in the Amazon.

Environmental Defense | 2001

 Image 2: "Brazil in Action" (Brasil em Ação) Federal
Government Sponsored Development Projects and
Deforestation Patterns
(Data courtesy of Instituto Socioambiental / Macapa 1999 Seminar)

The routes of major federal highways are clearly visible in IMAGE 3.

In regions of less deforestation — from Rio Branco in Acre state, the
364 highway can be seen going northwest, the Porto Velho — Manaus
highway, the Transamazon in eastern Amazonas and northern Pará
states, the Cuiabá — Santarém running north — south in Pará. The
heaviest deforestation, along the "arc of deforestation" running from
Maranhão through eastern Pará and northern Mato Grosso and
Rondonia has similarly radiated out from roads.

Environmental Defense | 2001

 Image 3: Amazonian Deforestation Patterns
(Data courtesy of Instituto Socioambiental / Macapa 1999 Seminar)

Virtually all of the deforestation from Cuiabá in Mato Grosso to Porto

Velho in Rondonia for example, follows the BR-364 highway, and has
mostly occurred since the road was paved in the notorious World
Bank-financed Polonoroeste project. The most intensely deforested
areas — Maranhão, eastern Pará, northern Mato Grosso — represent
what can be expected along the Avança Brasil road corridors if they
proceed without serious measures, and investments, to protect the
forest and create the bases for sustainable use.

Out to Pasture

Look at the pattern of deforestation in northern Mato Grosso in IMAGE

4. Most of this land is now cattle pasture and soy plantations, large
part of the reason that Mato Grosso is Brazil's second largest soy

Environmental Defense | 2001

 Image 4: Amazonian Conservation Areas &
Deforestation Patterns
(Data courtesy of Instituto Socioambiental / Macapa 1999 Seminar)

producer. Note the rectangular area of forest around the river,

surrounded by red on three sides.

Now look at the map in Image 1. The barrier to frontier expansion in

Mato Grosso is the Xingu Indigenous Area. The adjacent Kayapo and
Panará Indigenous Lands, in Pará, also mark the limits of
deforestation. Even though the Kayapo in particular have allowed
selective logging and gold mining in parts of their lands, the area of
forest cover they have maintained is immense (over 10 million
hectares, or about 25 million acres). Because the Indians of the Xingu
(16 different ethnic groups), the Kayapo and the Panará control access
to their lands, and because they have won official recognition of their
rights to them, they have halted the expansion of deforestation.

Environmental Defense | 2001

Conservation Barriers

Now look at the map in Image 2. This map shows federal and state
conservation units as well as deforestation and indigenous lands. Much
more land in the Amazon is indigenous land than is conservation units
(more than twice as much). In the most dynamic frontiers — eastern
Pará, Mato Grosso, and Rondonia — Indian lands are much more
extensive barriers to deforestation than conservation units. Access to
land is the source of intense, often violent, conflict on the frontier.
Because the indigenous peoples are there, and because they have won
many of these conflicts, they have succeeded in protecting much more
forest than traditional conservation units in these regions.

Differing views of what is at issue in conservation, as well as differing

priorities, inform and are visible in the WCMC and the ISA maps. The
difference in this case is great. The WCMC protected areas maps or
tables for South America count for a little more than 1 million km2 of
protected forest areas for all of South America. None of the indigenous
lands of the Amazon (in Brazil alone a million square kilometers) are
included in their lists, because their categories of protected areas do
not include indigenous lands.

That these maps reflect different concepts of the issues underlying

forest protection (and destruction) does not of itself necessarily mean
that one map is better or more scientifically sound than the other.
There are of course objective criteria with which to compare the two
maps. Consistency of the underlying data is one, and in this respect
the ISA map is more sound. The ISA map also includes data on many
more topics than do WCMC maps, even those at the country scale.
Using the different data layers of the ISA maps, one could frame and
analyze questions or hypotheses on the process of deforestation.

Tracking Colonization

Look at Image 5, which represents deforestation and the colonization

projects of the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform.
Would the number of colonization projects per county correlate with
deforestation? How many of the colonization projects are within 25
kilometers of a major road? Such questions could be answered with
this data (although these answers would remain provisional, since the
INCRA colonization project data were obtained extra-officially and are
regarded by the compilers of the map as suspect). Looking at the
topics, or list of data layers, included in the interactive map one gets

Environmental Defense | 2001

 Image 5: “Brazil In Action” Projects, INCRA Settlements and
Deforestation in the Amazon
(Data courtesy of Instituto Socioambiental / Macapa 1999 Seminar)

an idea of some of what is not represented in many forest maps,

either because the data have not been collected elsewhere, or were
not available, or because the map-makers did not find them relevant.

This is another very important criterion with which to compare forest

maps: how transparent is the map about the assumptions and
priorities it reflects, about the data that have gone into it, about what
it chooses to represent and what it chooses not to represent? Looking
at the WCMC map and table of protected areas in South America, one
would never know that indigenous lands were not represented, or even
that they existed.

Environmental Defense | 2001

Frontier Forests

Another organization (the World Resources Institute, WRI) has used

the WCMC maps to identify what they call "frontier forest" — forest
held to be ecologically intact — to be capable of maintaining its full
complement of biological diversity over the long run as well performing
the other ecological services forests provide us. These can be seen at
www.globalforestwatch.org. WRI has made a very serious effort to
define in a precise way what the idea of "natural" forest means.
Hundreds of scientists and experts were consulted in an effort to
specify for each region of the world which forest areas are "frontier"
forests that are in no immediate danger, which are threatened, and
which are no longer "frontier" forests.

A key concept in this definition of naturalness is that intact forest is

that which can be expected to support a genetically viable population
of "top" predators through the naturally occurring disturbances over
100 years. "Top" predators are those at the top of the food chain - in
forests, the largest carnivores, such as jaguars and harpy eagles. This
definition is one that many conservation biologists feel best defines the
highest priority areas for conservation. A region that can support a
healthy population of top predators is presumed to be ecologically
whole.

The WRI text on "frontier" forests says that the exercise is intended
purely to provide sound, accurate information on these forests, and
makes no claim to define conservation priorities. The "frontier" forest
maps tell a different story, however. We see clearly delineated the
deep green of pristine natural forest beyond any immediate threat, the
red of threatened "frontier" forest, and the dull brown of non-"frontier"
forest. These, and a general non-forest category, are the only
distinctions represented in the maps. Most Americans and Europeans
think of nature as untouched by man, unaltered — what one expects
to find in a North American park. The hierarchy of priorities assumed
in the maps appears, for North Americans and Europeans at any rate,
simple — the most pristine is most natural, the disturbed part is less
so, and the non-"frontier" no longer natural at all. Conservation
priorities follow, as it were, naturally.

Differing Scales

One problem with this kind of presentation is that of the underlying

data. The WCMC maps, as noted, use data collected at different times,

Environmental Defense | 2001

at different scales, using different methodologies. What appears as a
homogeneous category (non-"frontier," say) may not be so. The maps
say, in effect, that sufficient data exist to represent, at a scale of 1:5
million, where genetically viable populations of top predators reside in
forests and where they do not. But there are very large tropical forest
areas in which little if any research on this has been done, and
similarly great areas where the status of the fauna is disputed. Neither
of these issues are evident in the WRI maps.

Another problem is that important assumptions behind the maps

remain ambiguous and obscure. The text argues that the maps are
works-in-progress, only approximations, and that actual conservation
priorities and decisions require working at much more restricted scale.
But what then are the continental-scale maps for, if not to identify
which forest is intact and therefore should be saved and which is no
longer natural and consequently not necessary to save?

Other organizations - including the major grassroots organizations in

the Amazon, and many southern NGOs — start from different
presuppositions and have different priorities. The National Council of
Rubber Tappers (CNS), the representative organization of Amazon
forest communities that live from small-scale, sustainable harvest of
forest products such as natural rubber, holds that the Amazon is much
too large and governmental control over what goes on there too weak
to imagine that any significant part of the remaining forest will be
protected in uninhabited parks defended by guards. Only if forest
communities can be assured land rights, and conditions created to
allow them a decent living on a sustainable basis, will it be possible to
preserve large expanses of the existing forest.

Thus, the CNS proposed and is implementing extractive reserves —

protected areas managed by forest peoples who live in them — as well
as promoting public policies that favor forest communities. The CNS
maintains that conservation is a political process, and that the local
organizations and communities it represents are a key constituency in
this process. Their forest map would include the existing extractive
reserves (included in the Image 2 map among federal and state
conservation units), as well as their 26 regional offices in seven
Amazon states. It would also include the indigenous areas, since CNS
allies itself with the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of
the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), the indigenous peoples' umbrella
organization. It would not be a map that left people out altogether.

Environmental Defense | 2001

Intact Forests

ISA and the other members of consortium that produced the Amazon
map similarly see forest peoples as part of the solution to forest
destruction rather than as the problem. Strengthening and multiplying
local constituencies for sustainability and forest protection — Indians,
rubber tappers, fishing communities, increasingly, small farmers
through their unions — in the forest and on the frontier are much
higher priorities for these groups than determining which forest is
"intact." The land deforested in the Amazon since the 1970s is already
roughly the size of France. Amazonian environmentalists have already
determined that unless frontier expansion can be halted or greatly
slowed, and unless enduring prosperity for local people based on the
forest can be achieved, all forest ecosystems will ultimately be at
serious risk of large scale destruction.

The interactive Amazon map thus reflects the goal of protecting very
large areas of the remaining forest including indigenous lands and
other inhabited areas, and includes the level of development pressure,
or threat to, these area as an important criterion in setting priorities.
The question posed by comparing the WCMC and "frontier forest"
maps with the maps produced at the Macapá seminar is, who will
ultimately set the priorities for conservation in the world's forests, by
which criteria?

Environmental Defense | 2001