Opportunity cost of a private reserve of natural heritage, Cerrado biome - Brazil

摘要

Brazil is widely recognized as a world leader in agricultural production. In order to achieve this status, several agricultural frontiers were sculpted throughout the decades. This was associated to land use change, mainly the substitution of natural vegetation for agricultural crops such as soybean and corn. On the other hand, conservation units were included in the national Brazilian proposal to conserve biodiversity and natural resources. Among these is the Private Natural Heritage Reserve (RPPN), which refers to private property. In this case, the establishment of a conservation unit depends on landowner's decision making. This may be favoured because the Brazilian legislation allows economic activities (low-impact) to be developed in the RPPN. In this sense, this research was triggered to calculate the opportunity cost of an RPPN compared to the production of soybean and corn. The methodology was designed to define the net benefit of conservation based on the opportunity cost to create the RPPN. To estimate costs and revenues of agricultural production, we used secondary data. Carbon sequestration was estimated from the use of geotechnologies and parametrized equations. As a conclusion, if payments for a set of ecosystem services are accounted for, the estimated monetary values may be higher than the ones addressed to agricultural production.