Abstract. The Amazon basin is the world's largest rainforest and the most biologically
diverse place on Earth. Despite the critical importance of this region,
Amazon forests continue inexorably to be degraded and deforested for various
reasons, mainly a consequence of agricultural expansion. The development of
novel policy strategies that provide balanced solutions, associating
economic growth with environmental protection, is still challenging, largely
because the perspective of those most affected – local stakeholders – is often
ignored. Participatory fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) was implemented to
examine stakeholder perceptions towards the sustainable development of two
agricultural-forest frontier areas in the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazon. A
series of development scenarios were explored and applied to stakeholder-derived FCM, with climate change also analysed. Stakeholders in both regions
perceived landscapes of socio-economic impoverishment and environmental
degradation driven by governmental and institutional deficiencies. Under
such abject conditions, governance and well-integrated social and
technological strategies offered socio-economic development, environmental
conservation, and resilience to climatic changes. The results suggest there are
benefits of a new type of thinking for development strategies in the Amazon
basin and that continued application of traditional development policies
reduces the resilience of the Amazon to climate change, whilst limiting
socio-economic development and environmental conservation.
Policy recommendations for environmental conservation in the Chindwin River Basin
