Critical Appraisal of Road Building

Given the primary and demonstrable importance of road building in causing livestock-related deforestation, it is essential that government and donors adopt a critical attitude to road building. This remains true despite the importance that governments inevitably attach to road building in terms of national integration and national security. Specifically:

- Roads linking existing population centres can be routed to avoid giving access to uncleared forest.
- Donors can withhold funds from, or attach strong conditionalities to, projects likely to cause deforestation.
- Mining or timber access roads, built by the private sector, can often cause more deforestation indirectly, through opening access to ranching, than through their primary objectives. Governments should be prepared to regulate directly to limit construction of such roads.
- The option of limiting settlement or forest clearance along the path of new roads through direct regulation or the establishment of protected areas has invariably been unsuccessful. Policy must limit building of roads to new areas, rather than attempting to mitigate their effects in this way.
- In areas of long-standing livestock production, converse policies may apply. Provision of feeder or farm-to-market roads may be a key policy to allow intensification of production through marketing of livestock products and use of outside inputs. Such intensification will make use of existing pastures more sustainable and lessen pressure to clear new forest.

Research/Appraisal Methods

The probability of deforestation based on patterns of deforestation in relation to existing roads should ideally be established for the country/region concerned. The use of GIS and satellite imagery will be important here. Environmental economic analysis could then be used to calculate the real costs, including environmental costs, of road building projects.

Key references

Kaimowitz, D. 1995. Livestock and Deforestation in Central America in the 1980s and 1990s: A Policy Perspective. EPTD Discussion Paper, IFPRI, Washington DC. Click to view as Word document . (further information including copies of the report can be obtained from IFPRI at http://www.iimi.org/ifpri)

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