Fabio Homero Diniz: From landless to forestless? Settlers, livelihoods and forest dynamics in the Brazilian Amazon

This research investigated how settlers make their living; how their activities and practices affect forest cover changes; and how future prospects for both, i.e. people and forest, are envisioned. The research produced five key messages: 1) small farmers within the studied area are achieving livelihood security through on- and off-farm income; 2) there is a strong trade-off between livelihood security and environmental sustainability; 3) settlers’ contribution to deforestation is less than often assumed; 4) policies strongly affect the settlers’ realities; hence their views are crucial for effective policymaking; and 5) livelihood trajectories and forest dynamics models are more appropriate to capture the realities of the human–environment systems than livelihoods as snapshots and unidirectional deforestation models.