Socioeconomic Development and Deforestation in the Cerrado Biome, Brazil: Spatial Interactions and Heterogeneity

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between socioeconomic development and deforestation in the Cerrado biome, mainly focusing on the current Brazilian agricultural frontier of Matopiba. More specifically, we search for spatial interactions, heterogeneity, and spatial clusters among the municipalities using the exploratory analysis of spatial data (ESDA). Due to the many possible socioeconomic variables related to deforestation decisions, we create a Socioeconomic Development Index (SDI) that synthesizes all possible influences using factorial analysis from multivariate statistics. We also grouped cluster analysis municipalities with dissimilar deforestation and economic development patterns. The results show that the biome’s economic development and deforestation are spatially concentrated and heterogeneous and are negatively associated for the majority of Cerrado municipalities both in the spatial and cluster analysis, indicating that socioeconomic development may be an inhibitor of deforestation.