Informed by 1980 and 1991 census data and municipal health services statistics from the Brazilian Amazon, this article highlights indicators deemed determinant of environmental quality in the vast region's urban settings. This time period was one of rapid urbanization and spontaneous, unplanned growth as precipitated by Brazil's debt crisis, government decentralization, reduction of agricultural subsidization, and booms in extractive industries. Perz's report focuses on three general aspects of environmental quality affecting urban populations: environmental hazard production, i.e. pollution; protection from such hazards, i.e., housing and amenities; and defense against such hazards, i.e. income and healthcare. Within each of these categories, he further explores other sub-concepts which fit into his analytical framework comparing different sized populations, populations of old and new municipalities and populations from distinct subregions of the Amazon. It is found that environmental hazard production has increased while protection and defenses against hazards have decreased. This poor inventory of environmental resilience was found to vary according to the type of urban population. New, frontier and small urban areas showed the worst statistics for environmental health. These findings cause concern today because the conditions that gave rise to such uncontrolled growth are still present in the current economic and political climate of the Brazilian Amazon. The author warns against the idea that bigger, established cities hold a promise for better environmental quality of life for new rural-urban migrants, and suggests that policies and economic measures focus on improving the sustainability of rural systems of agriculture or extraction, thereby addressing the larger urban population problem at its root. If this strategy does not yield successful, then the author predicts more chronic migration, possibly out of the Amazon entirely, as people search for economic security.

Prepared by Megan Glore