Guidelines to Assess the Direct and Indirect Area
of Influence of Transportation Infrastructure Projects
Climate Policy Initiative/PUC-Rio in partnership with BNDES and the state of Pará has developed and applied a market access methodology to quantify the direct and indirect impacts of infrastructure development on deforestation in Brazil (Araujo, Bragança, and Assunção 2022; Araujo, Assunção, and Bragança 2020; Bragança et al. 2021; Chiavari et al. 2022). The application of this methodology allows stakeholders to draw more precise scenarios of the impacts of infrastructure, leading to a more accurate assessment of costs and benefits of individual projects.
Mapping the areas that will be affected by a change in transportation infrastructure is crucial to assess costs and benefits. The correct mapping of the area of influence allows the identification of peoples that will be affected, the natural habitats that will be converted to agricultural use, and of emissions associated with deforestation. Areas at a greater risk of deforestation should guide mitigation efforts, with the possibility of having the development of targeted policies – such as, command and control efforts, implementation of the forest code, and the implementation of payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes – as a condition to attract investments.
This document provides a set of guidelines for assessing the direct and indirect area of influence for transportation infrastructure projects that can be used by environmental agencies, investors, and civil society.
The next sections present a blueprint of all the steps necessary to apply the market access methodology. It begins with an overview of the methodology and moves on to build each of the components of the model: transportation cost, market size, and deforestation. These three components are then combined into a statistical model to estimate the deforestation footprint of projects. Deforestation is not the only outcome that can be computed with the methodology though. A section on how to compute the carbon footprint of projects closes the blueprint. Additionally, a simplified example is developed from scratch.
