Amazon deforestation rate plunges 41 percent

Amazon deforestation rate plunges 41 percent

October 26, 2006

Today the Brazilian government announced a sharp drop in Amazon deforestation.

Forest loss for the 2005-2006 year was 13,100 square kilometers (5,057 square miles) of rainforest, down more than 40 percent from last year. The figure is the lowest since 1991 when 11,130 square kilometers (4,258 square miles) of forest were lost.

Last month the government announced 16,700 square kilometers (6,450 square miles) of forest had been lost this year, but revised the figures after additional data was analyzed.

Deforestation peaked in 1995 when 29,059 square kilometers (11,219 square miles) of forest were cut. Deforestation has plunged by almost 50 percent since 2004. Falling commodity prices, increased enforcement efforts, and government conservation initiatives are credited for the drop.

“We aggressively increased enforcement of environmental laws in the past years and it has worked,” Joao Paulo Capobianco, Brazil’s minister-secretary of biodiversity and forests, told the Associated Press.

DEFORESTATION IN BRAZIL: 60-70 percent of deforestation in the Amazon results from cattle ranches while the rest mostly results from small-scale subsistence agriculture. Logging results in forest degradation but rarely direct deforestation. However, studies have showed a close correlation between logging and future clearing for settlement and farming. Graphic by R. Butler.

In the past four years Brazil has set aside more than 100 million hectares of the Amazon basin from development. The country now has some 173 million hectares of forest, an area nearly three times the size of France, under some form of protection, giving it the largest protected areas system in the world. At the same time the government has aggressively gone after illegal loggers and land developers in the region. According to the ministry of biodiversity and forests, more than 400 have been arrested, $1.3 billion in fines levied, and 28 million cubic feet of wood seized in enforcement operations over the past four years. Some of the arrests have been among agents of the federal environmental protection agency where corruption has historically been a problem. In total the government has spent about $93 million fighting deforestation according to the ministry.

While the government has been quick to take credit for the drop in deforestation, analysts say declining commodity prices have played a key part in reducing forest clearing rates. Most recent deforestation in the Amazon results from agricultural expansion, especially among cattle ranchers, large-scale soybean producers, and subsistence farmers. A study published last month by NASA researchers showed that forest clearing for large-scale agriculture has recently become a significant cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The study, published online in the September 14, 2006 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that in 2003 — when some 24,130 square kilometers of forest were lost across the Amazon — more than 20 percent of the forests in the state of Mato Grosso were converted to cropland, suggesting that the recent expansion of mechanized cropland in the region is contributing significantly to deforestation.

The PNAS findings seemed to confirm the suspicion that Brazil’s soybean production is impacting the Amazon and followed a controversial Greenpeace report which accused fast-food chain McDonald’s of underwriting deforestation in the Amazon through its purchase of soy-based animal derived from soybeans grown in the Amazon Basin. The charges led the company to launch an investigation into Greenpeace’s claims and helped trigger a two-year moratorium by Brazilian soy crushers and exporters on trading soybeans grown on newly deforested lands in the Amazon basin.

Causes of Amazon deforestation. RELATED ARTICLES Avoided deforestation could help fight third world poverty under global warming pact — 10/31/2006 Avoided deforestation will be a hot point of discussion at next week’s climate meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. Already a coalition of 15 rainforest nations have proposed a plan whereby industrialized nations would pay them to protect their forests to offset greenhouse gas emissionsm. Meanwhile, last month Brazil — which has the world’s largest extent of tropical rainforests and the world’s highest rate of forest loss — said it promote a similar initiative at the talks. At stake: potentially billions of dollars for developing countries. When trees are cut greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere — roughly 20 percent of annual emissions of such heat-trapping gases result from deforestation and forest degradation. Avoided deforestation is the concept where countries are paid to prevent deforestation that would otherwise occur. Policymakers and environmentalists alike find the idea attractive because it could help fight climate change at a low cost while improving living standards for some of the world’s poorest people and preserving biodiversity and other ecosystem services. A number of prominent conservation biologists and development agencies including the World Bank and the U.N. have already endorsed the idea. Brazil claims soy and beef not responsible for Amazon deforestation — 10/26/2006 Brazil rejected claims that soybean farms and cattle pasture were destroying the Amazon rainforest, according to a report from Reuters. At the opening of an organic food products fair in Sao Paulo, Agriculture Minister Luis Carlos Guedes Pinto said that only 0.27 percent of Brazil’s soybean crop is grown in the Amazon region, while less than 1.5 percent of Brazil’s beef for export comes from the rainforest. Largest seizure of illegally logged Amazon rainforest timber announced by authorities — 10/23/2006 IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency, announced the largest seizure ever of illegally logged timber from the Amazon rainforest. During a week-long operation — code named Kojima — in late September, authorities impounded nearly 15,000 cubic meters of unlicensed wood in the Amazonian state of Para. The agency said it was probably the largest seizure ever in the state. Para was the state where last year Sister Dorothy Stang, an American nun who worked with rural poor, was killed by gunman associated with local plantation owners. In response to the murder, the Brazilian government sent in the army to quell violence in the region and promised to step up environmental monitoring efforts. Global warming could cause catastrophic die-off of Amazon rainforest by 2080 — 10/22/2006 For the Amazon, there is an immense threat looming on the horizon: climate change could well cause most of the Amazon rainforest to disappear by the end of the century. Dr. Philip Fearnside, a Research Professor at the National Institute for Research in the Amazon in Manaus, Brazil and one of the most cited scientists on the subject of climate change, understands the threat well. Having spent more than 30 years in Brazil and now recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on the Amazon rainforest, Fearnside is working to do nothing less than to save this remarkable ecosystem. Fearnside believes saving the Amazon will require a fundamental shift in perception where the Amazon is recognized as an asset beyond the current price of mahogany, soybeans, or cattle, where its value is only unlocked by its destruction. The Amazon is far worth more than this he says. It can play a key role in fighting climate change while providing economic sustenance for millions through sustainable agriculture and rational utilization of its renewable products. It can serve as a storehouse for biodiversity while at the same time ensuring reliable water supplies and moderating regional temperature and precipitation. In short, maintaining the Amazon as a viable ecosystem makes sense economically and ecologically — it is in our best interest to preserve this resource while we still can. Brazil says no to rainforest privatization plan, asks Gore for help — 10/18/2006 On Tuesday Brazil rejected a alleged British proposal to fight climate change by ‘privatizing’ parts of the Amazon rainforest, according to Reuters. In an editorial published on the opinion page of Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, Environment Minister Marina Silva and Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said that the Amazon was ‘not for sale’. Their comments were expected since Brazil has long objected to internationalization of the Amazon, seeing such attempts as a threat to its sovereignty. The ‘Amazon privatization’ report, which originally appeared in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper on October 1, 2006, said that David Miliband, Britain’s Environment Secretary, planned to propose an initiative that would turn parts of the Amazon into an ‘international trust’ wherein credible buyers could lockup parts of the rainforest for preservation. However, shortly after the article was published, Miliband’s office strongly rejected the story. Photos of newly discovered species in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest — 10/18/2006 Brazil has announced the creation of a Amapa State Forest, a 5.7 million acre Amazon protected area larger than the state of New Jersey. According to Conservation International (CI), “the designation protects a crucial section of the Amapa Biodiversity Corridor of northern Brazil, which includes some of the most pristine remaining Amazon forest.” The Amapa Biodiversity Corridor — which includes a variety of ecosystems including tropical forests, mangrove swamps, savannah, and wetlands — is home to more than 1,700 species of animals and plants, including 430 species of birds, 104 species of amphibians, 124 reptile species and 127 mammal species, including 62 bat species, according to biological surveys conducted by Conservation International (CI) and the Amapa State Institute for Research. At the core of the Amapa Biodiversity Corridor is Tumucumaque National Park, the world’s largest tropical forest park.

“Soy farming is having a huge impact in the Amazon right now, for three reasons,” said William F. Laurance, president of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) and a senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in an earlier interview with mongabay.com. “First, industrial soy farmers are themselves clearing a lot of forest. Second, soy farmers are buying up large expanses of cleared land from slash-and-burn farmers and cattle ranchers, and the displaced farmers and ranchers often just move further out into the forest, maintaining a lot of pressure on frontier areas. Finally, the soy farmers are a very powerful political lobby that is pushing for major expansion of roads, highways, river-channelization projects, and other transportation that will criss-cross large expanses of the Amazon. This infrastructure is acting like Pandora’s box–it is opening up the frontier to spontaneous, unplanned colonization and exploitation by ranchers, farmers, hunters, and illegal gold miners.”

Beyond agriculture, logging and infrastructure development also contribute to forest loss and degradation in the Amazon.

Climate change: the lurking risk

Scientists are increasingly concerned about the effect of global warming on the Amazon forest. While it’s unclear how higher global temperatures will impact the forest in the long-term, in recent years the Amazon have been plagued with devastating droughts that have stranded communities and fueled forest fires that damage the Amazon ecosystem. Some researchers believe much of the Amazon could become savanna before the turn of the century, a shift that could have a profound impact on local precipitation and weather patterns.

While industrial fossil fuel combustion is responsible for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation in the Amazon may account for 4-6 percent of total global emissions of such heat-trapping gases. In recognition of this, next month at climate talks in Nairobi Brazil is expected to propose a plan to seek compensation from industrialized countries for conserving its rainforests to fight global warming. The plan follows a similar initiative by a coalition of developing countries proposed last November at climate talks in Montreal.

“Avoided deforestation has great potential both in the struggle against global warming and as a means of maintaining Amazonian forest with all of its environmental services, of which carbon storage is only one,” Dr. Philip Fearnside, a Research Professor at the National Institute for Research in the Amazon in Manaus, told mongabay.com in an interview. “The proposals by the Coalition of Rainforest Nations and by Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment are certainly positive.”

“It’s potentially a win-win situation for everybody involved,” said Laurance in a statement earlier this year. “The forests win, the atmosphere wins, the international community wins, and developing nations struggling to overcome poverty win.”

The Amazon: Earth’s Largest Rainforst

Monkey frog in Peru. Photo by Rhett A. Butler

The Amazon is Earth’s largest rainforest. Some scientists estimate that perhaps 30 percent of the world’s land species are found in the Amazon. The bulk of Amazon rainforest is found in Brazil, which today houses about one-third of the world’s remaining rainforests.

The Amazon has experienced an exceptional extent of forest loss over the past two generations—an area almost certainly exceeding 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles), or about 15 percent of its total surface area of 4,005,082 square kilometers, has been cleared in the Amazon since 1970, when only 2.4 percent of the Amazon’s forests had been lost. The increase in Amazon deforestation in the early 1970s coincided with the construction of the Trans-Amazonian Highway, which opened large forest areas to development by settlers and commercial interests. In more recent years, growing populations in the Amazon region, combined with increased viability of agricultural operations, have caused a further rise in deforestation rates. Since the close of the 1990s, annual deforestation rates of primary forest cover in Brazil have climbed by more than a third.

This article used information from an AP report as well as extensive excerpts from previous mongabay.com articles.

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Rhett Butler Editor

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DeforestationGreenRainforest DeforestationRainforestsRemote SensingSatellite ImageryThreats To RainforestsAmazonBrazilLatin America

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