Brazil to protect Amazon rainforest
Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com
March 28, 2006
At the United Nations-sponsored environmental conference meeting in Curitiba, Brazil announced plans to protect an additional 210,000 square kilometers (84,000 square miles) of the Amazon rain forest in the next three years.
The Amazon, which covers around 4.1 million square kilometers in Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, houses more than one-third of the world’s remaining rainforests. Scientists say the Amazon plays a critical role in global water cycles and climate regulation.
Despite its importance, Amazon ecosystems are disappearing due to conversion for cattle pasture and agriculture. Logging, mining and infrastructure development are also contributing to pressure on the region’s forests, which are among the most biodiverse on the planet.
Since 1970 at least 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) has been cleared in the Amazon. In recent years, growing populations in the Amazon region, combined with increased viability of agricultural operations, have fueled deforestation rates which, on an annual basis for primary forest areas, have climbed by 35 percent since the close of the 1990s. Scientists warned last week that 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest could be lost by 2050 due to agricultural expansion.
Causes of Amazon deforestation. More on the Amazon rainforest |
Brazil’s latest announcement is part of the Amazon Protected Areas Program, which aims to slow forest loss through a system of protected areas and sustainable development initiatives which provide economic incentives for responsible use of forest resources. Under the program, earlier this year Brazil unveiled a plan to allow sustainable logging across 3 percent of the Amazon.
The protected area announcement comes as cabinet ministers from nearly 100 countries arrived for the Convention on Biological Diversity in Curitiba — 400 miles southwest of Rio de Janeiro. The convention aims to evaluate progress made towards conserving global biodiversity since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
In opening remarks at the ministers’ meeting, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva blamed industrialized nations for the “unsustainable patterns of production and consumption” and called on wealthy nations to do more to protect the environment, echoing a proposal set forth by poor nations at the U.N. climate change talks last November.
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