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Agribusiness Opportunity Costs and Environmental Legal Protection: Investigating Trade-Off on Hotspot Preservation in the State of São Paulo, Brazil

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Abstract

Prior to deforestation, São Paulo State had 79,000 km2 covered by Cerrado (Brazilian savanna) physiognomies, but today less than 8.5% of this biodiversity hotspot remains, mostly in private lands. The global demand for agricultural goods has imposed strong pressure on natural areas, and the economic decisions of agribusiness managers are crucial to the fate of Cerrado domain remaining areas (CDRA) in Brazil. Our aim was to investigate the effectiveness of Brazilian private protected areas policy, and to propose a feasible alternative to promote CDRA protection. This article assessed the main agribusiness opportunity costs for natural areas preservation: the land use profitability and the arable land price. The CDRA percentage and the opportunity costs were estimated for 349 municipal districts of São Paulo State through secondary spatial data and profitability values of 38 main agricultural products. We found that Brazilian private protected areas policy fails to preserve CDRA, although the values of non-compliance fines were higher than average opportunity costs. The scenario with very restrictive laws on private protected areas and historical high interest rates allowed us to conceive a feasible cross compliance proposal to improve environmental and agricultural policies.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions, which improved the final version of the manuscript. We also wish to thank CNPq - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Landscape Ecology and Conservation Laboratory, Department of Ecology, Biosciences Institute, University of São Paulo, Rua do Matão, trav. 14, n.321, 05508-900, Cidade Universitária, São Paulo, Brazil

    Alexandre Toshiro Igari, Leandro Reverberi Tambosi & Vânia Regina Pivello

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  1. Alexandre Toshiro Igari
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  2. Leandro Reverberi Tambosi
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Correspondence to Alexandre Toshiro Igari.

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Igari, A.T., Tambosi, L.R. & Pivello, V.R. Agribusiness Opportunity Costs and Environmental Legal Protection: Investigating Trade-Off on Hotspot Preservation in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. Environmental Management 44, 346–355 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-009-9322-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-009-9322-8

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