The issue: In the Amazon Basin, 70% of people already live in cities and the numbers keep rising as more farmers make the move from rural areas to urban centers. However, this migration is hardly permanent. Even though they may be formally counted as urban dwellers, migrants keep connections to their rural households. They also have a say in rural land use decision making, for example through the remittances they send back home and the consumption choices they make.
Research findings: The research is based on data collected over more than a decade in two long-settled regions of Amazonia. Scientists assess consumption patterns of migrants and how these affect both urban markets and land use in rural areas. Despite general poverty, migrant farmers have affected markets for food and construction materials. For example, the growth of slum settlements has driven the demand for cheap timber. To meet these new preferences, villages have reduced the average size of croplands to make space for fast-growing tree species, leading to an overall increase in tree cover. But timber is not the only commodity affected by more dynamic urban-rural linkages: Farmers settling in cities also bring their own culinary preferences. In some regions of the Amazon, this comes in the form of an appetite for açaí, a palm fruit often used in desserts. The renewed hunger for the tree-based fruit has led to afforestation in certain areas – contrary to much of the rest of the Amazon basin.
In conclusion, the authors find that neither demographic flows nor their impact on the environment are straightforward. Rather, migration is an extended and complex process, not a simple event, and the migrants, although now counted as urban residents, are often not truly absent from rural areas.
Some key facts and figures:
- Since 2006, more people live in cities than in rural areas
- 43% of urban dwellers in developing countries live in slum areas
- Since the 1970s. slums have grown faster than cities in general
- 70% of the population in the Amazon basin now lives in cities
- An increasing number of households are multi-sited: of 483 villagers surveyed in Brazil, 83% also had a household in the city
- New informal city settlements rely on cheap timber: since 1986, this led to a a growth of fallows in rural areas from 5% to 18% – 86% of these fallows contain timber
- With the ruralization of cities, demand for the açaí fruit increased: to meet this demand, 75% of land in nearby rural areas is now under forest cover – this is equivalent to a four-fold increase since 1985
Download the full article: Padoch et al 2008
