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4. ECOSYSTEM SERVICES AND FOOD SECURITY
Ecosystem services have been referred to in the literature as the “conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems, and the species that make them up,
sustain and fulfill human life” Daily, 1997: 3 or as “benefits human populations derive, directly or indirectly, from ecosystem functions” Costanza et al., 1997: 253.
These include provisioning, regulating, and cultural services that directly affect people and supporting services needed to maintain the other services Figure 3.
Figure 3. Ecosystem Services MEA, 2005
The provisioning services are the products obtained from ecosystems, including food and fiber, fuel, genetic resources, biochemical, natural medicines and
pharmaceuticals, ornamental resources and freshwater. Regulation services refer to the benefits obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes, including air
quality maintenance, climate regulation, water regulation, erosion control, water purification and waste treatment, regulation of human diseases, biological control,
pollination and storm protection MEA, 2005. The cultural services are the nonmaterial benefits people obtain from ecosystems through spiritual enrichment,
cognitive development, reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experiences, this refers to cultural diversity, spiritual and religious values, knowledge systems traditional
and formal, educational values, aesthetic values, cultural heritage values and recreation and ecotourism. Finally, the supporting services are those that are
necessary for the production of all other ecosystem services. They differ from provisioning, regulating, and cultural services in that their impacts on people are
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either indirect or occur over a very long time, whereas changes in the other categories have relatively direct and short-term impacts on people. Some examples
of supporting services are primary production, production of atmospheric oxygen, soil formation and retention, nutrient cycling, water cycling, and provisioning of
habitat MEA, 2005. The Global Environmental Change and Food Systems GECAFS global
interdisciplinary initiative, launched in 2001 to explore the links between food systems and the earth system, put forward a comprehensive framework to analyze
the “activities, processes and outcomes involved in modern food systems and all possible interactions with global environmental change”Ericksen et al., 2010: 27.
The final aim is to help policy-makers design strategies to minimize vulnerability of food systems to environmental change, while preventing further environmental
degradation. Figure 4 displays the activities within a food system the production, processing, packaging, distribution, retail and consumption of food, but also the
different outcomes they may contribute to: food security defined in terms of food utilization, access and availability, social welfare in this case, food systems are
regarded as a source of livelihoods or environmental welfare recognizing the impact that food systems have on ecosystems and their services Ericksen et al.,
2010.
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Figure 4. Interactions between ecosystem services and food security GECAFS,
2009 cited in Ericksen et al., 2010 Put in a broader context, food systems including activities and outcomes are
influenced by and influence environmental and socioeconomic conditions. On one hand, food production and the activities that follow it up until food consumption are
primarily determined by environmental factors such as land cover and soils, climate conditions, water availability and quality, nutrient availability and cycling, sea
level and biodiversity. At the same time, food system activities are also a factor of demographics, economics, social, cultural, political and institutional contexts and
technological developments. In their turn, food systems provide important environmental and socio-economic feedbacks, such as impacts on water quality and
quantity, greenhouse gas GHG emissions or impacts on livelihoods Figure 5.
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Figure 5. Interactions between ecosystem services and food security Ericksen et
al., 2010 The Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest and among the least populated
dense forests, provides important ecosystem services at different spatial scales. They include biodiversity –the approximately 5.4 million km²-large basin covers one
of the world’s greatest assemblages of terrestrial and aquatic biological diversity Dirzo and Raven, 2003, carbon sequestration by biomass and soils
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, the regulation of water and nutrient cycles, the modulation of regional climate patterns, and the
amelioration of infectious diseases, which helps to sustain life at the local, regional and global levels Chagnon, 2005; Fearnside, 2008; Malhi et al., 2008.
Climate-regulating services are important for agriculture in the Amazon basin, which is the origin of the moisture that is transported to the breadbasket region of
Brazil and further contributes to its center-west region where farmers grow soybeans Martinelli, 2008. Moreover, the Amazon basin also hosts some of the
largest stores of genetic material Malhi et al., 2008, which plays an important role
2
The total carbon in forest biomass of the Amazon basin considering both the dead and below ground biomass was estimated as 86 Pg C ± 20 Saatchi et al., 2007, which highlights its role as a global carbon
sink.
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in people’s diets. Ecosystem services also support agricultural production such as cattle, soybean and timber, which constitutes 6 of Brazil’s gross domestic product
or GDP it goes up to 25 after including agribusiness CRS 2006; Fearnside, 1989. Other services include hydroelectric power and evapotranspiration
3
, transportation via river ways, access to freshwater and recreational opportunities.
Many of the world’s rural poor are dependent on the flow of ecosystem services to ensure their food security, both directly e.g. wild food; Dugan et al., 2010;
Bharucha and Pretty, 2010 and indirectly e.g. pollination and pest regulation of crops; Ricketts et al., 2008; TEEB, 2010. Flows of services are shaped by complex
dynamic systems that operate over multiple temporal and spatial scales and often exhibit stochastic behavior Koch et al., 2009. This complexity makes it difficult to
resolve an appropriate course of collective action to pursue sustainable livelihoods. Food, nutrition and health of small-scale farming families in the Amazonia depend
to a major extent on the benefits obtained from nature, ranging from the provision of a wide diversity of food resources, fuel wood for cooking and medicinal plants, to
the sustenance of agriculture and disaster risk reduction. For instance, protein from forest wildlife plays a crucial role in food security for the rural poor. According to
Nasi 2011, bush meat in the Amazon basin accounts for 63 + 25 kgcapitayear. Consumption is highly concentrated in low-income households and there seems to
be a correlation between increasing income in the household and a transition to other sources of protein e.g. poultry.
Another key service that is part of the diet of the local inhabitants is fish and its consumption can be alternated with bush meat. A significant percentage of the
Amazonian economy and the nutritional sustenance of its inhabitants are based on the diversity of aquatic organisms –especially fish– that are important factors for
the region’s economic, social and cultural movement. The fish production generated revenues between US 100 million and US 200 million per year since 1990 UNEP,
ATCO and CIUP, 2009. The following table Table 2 provides an overview of the interactions between
ecosystem services and food security in the Amazon basin.
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The basin provides approximately 35 of rainfall in the basin and strongly influences precipitation throughout South America, pollination, wildlife habitat, fire regulation, and flood control Eltahir and Bras, 1996; Foley et al., 2007. At
the global scale, the Amazon’s evaporation and condensation drive global atmospheric circulation Malhi et al., 2008.
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Table 2. Ecosystem services and food security interactions in the Amazon basin Ecosystem
services Food security
Provisioning Animal and plant genetic resources diversifying
diets; e.g. wild “bush” meat, fishery, fruits, nuts and other plant species as protein source in
diets. Fresh water essential for agriculture
Timber and firewood for cooking
Regulating Temperature and rainfall variation impacts on
Amazon agriculture, e.g. drought and floods affect crop and livestock yield and quality and
limit access to food
Water supply and seasonality determine commodity geo-distribution
Pollination important especially for harvesting produce in some outcrossing crops
Supporting Detoxification influences fish populations in the
Amazon basin rivers Nutrient
cycling in
soils and
primary production critical for crop productivity and
food quality in the Amazon biome Cultural
Availability of locally-preferred foods in the diets of Amazon inhabitants
Ecosystem services support the food system, food productivity and, evidently, food security. However, food productivity may lead to a gradual loss of ecosystem
services. For example, smallholder farmers in the Amazon may in part contribute to this loss, especially with regards to aboveground and root carbon, provided by
secondary forest´s fallows, while the reduction in fallow age results in a reduction of biodiversity Börner et al., 2007. This process could deteriorate due
to agricultural intensification, which, on the other hand, may significantly increase the income of smallholder farmers in the Amazon. The ability to conserve the
biodiversity of the Amazon will therefore require the involvement of smallholder farmers with measures implemented to improve their livelihoods.
In summary, the Amazon provides agro--biodiversity, mean for carbon sequestration, regulates water and nutrient cycles, and modulates climate patterns,
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which contribute to agriculture in its basin. As the next sections will show, deforestation for agricultural production affects these environmental services and
contributes significantly to GHG emissions, which leads to global warming that reduces crop and livestock yields, thereby affecting food security.
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5. AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION AND FOOD SECURITY IN THE AMAZON