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This work aims to evaluate alternatives to conciliate economic growth and the Amazon preservation. For this, we measured the economic costs to preserve the Brazilian Amazon by simulating a zero-deforestation policy. We also evaluate the scenario of deforestation in Brazil in the last decades. We observed a marked growth in deforestation starting in 2014. However, in the last two years, such growth has been even more expressive, which shows the urgency of thinking in multiple ways for the problem of deforestation in the Amazon Biome. Through an economic model for Brazil, we simulated a shock on land use, which shows that there are negative effects on economic dynamism in the Amazon region and that, through a spillover effect, there may be even higher rates of greenhouse gas emissions. This work also shows that the problem of deforestation in the Amazon does not mean only the issue of reducing deforestation rates, but that it must be accompanied by a serious and plural policy aiming to reduce regional inequalities. Finally, a public and private effort is needed so that sustainable practices become more widespread and information about the importance of maintaining the forest standing and conserving the biome can be disseminated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use spatially efficient logit models to explore the role of economic incentives on the expansion of cropland in the Mato Grosso region between 2001 and 2004. An empirical measure for agricultural economic rent is used to quantify the desirability of a particular plot of land, which previous research proxies with variables such as distance to roads or urban areas, and simple climatic and edaphic variables. Results indicate that the measure for economic rent provides additional information and explanatory power to one of the most commonly used proxies, distance to roads. As predicted by economic theory, it is not simply access or variation in transportation costs that drives the spatial determinants of agricultural expansion, but the expected total returns from the venture. This suggests that spatially explicit rent models can be used to simulate the location and quantity of land-use change in an economically consistent framework. Such a framework lays the foundation for an enhanced methodology that can evaluate the ability of fiscal policy levers to influence the location of agricultural conversion with the ultimate aim of balancing economic and environmental goals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]