Rape of the Amazon
by Ray Block
Everything about the Amazon is big. If you take the river, it is by far the greatest in the world .by so many measures. The volume of water it carries is a high 20 per cent of all the freshwater into the oceans.
The tropical rainforest itself, home of the most biodiverse and intact wilderness of 5.5 million square kilometres is the largest in the world, the last big space covered with tropical plants and animals. In the 10 years from 1991 to 2000, about 500,000 sq km of the Amazon was lost to deforestation. Since 1970, at least 17.1 per cent of the rainforest has been illegally cleared, or cultivated, with the cutting down of forests. And in the western Amazon, over 180 oil and gas blocks zoned for exploration and development await the oil rigs.
60 per cent of the Amazon is located in Brazil, with the balance shared by eight other countries- Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, French Guiana and Guiana.
Reporter Brazil, a non governmental campaign group says that the total acreage of soya crops in northern Brazil increased 20 per cent in the 2007-08 season compared to the previous year, reflecting further encroachment of the forest area. 45 per cent of the country’s cropland is devoted to soy. Other areas, similarly stolen are earmarked for rice growing. To clear the land, plantation owners commonly stretch a long chain between two bulldozers, and rip out the vegetation along their path. Then the roots and top layer of soil are swept together and set on fire.
Apart from cropland, ranchers are using 50 million hectares for grazing cattle. It is estimated that if deforestation continues, the Amazon rainforest will shrink by up to 40 per cent by 2020. Deforestation adds greatly to greenhouse gas, because a partially decimated Amazon as a huge carbon sink reduces nature’s capacity to lock away C02.
Both CBS News and International Herald Tribune of August 4 2008 reported that Brazil was on the “brink of civil war”. The two news groups said that in the most northern area of the Amazon, a land conflict between Indians, who want to maintain their traditional life style in the jungle and rice farmers had turned violent.
The conflict is over possession of a 1.7 million hectare Indian reservation decreed by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2005. To the indigenous, this was the reclamation of ancestral land.
The dispute has gone to the country’s Supreme Court for resolution. But the court itself is concerned that if the violence of the dispute doesn’t dissipate, it could escalate into civil war. Brazil’s 1988 constitution decreed that all Indian ancestral lands must be demarcated and turned over to the tribes within five years. While that process has yet to be completed, in 2008 Indian tribes already control 11 per cent of Brazilian territory and 22 per cent of the Amazon.
If the Indians lose the case, they will be up in arms. But there are a lot of forces including retired generals of the Army, and governors of the states who support the farmers. There is a great amount of tension in this case.
An interesting website http://forestpolicyresearch.org/2008/09/22/404-latin-america reported that the official launch of the website Globo Amazonia and the interactive map Amazonia.vc in the Fantastico television show on September 7, registered 13 million protests against fires and deforestation in the Amazon.
The protests came from more than 230,000 users who installed Amazonia.vc, which allowed them to follow the devastation of the forests in real time. The users can record their protests, which can then be used by the news team of the website as material in the production of new programs.
In 2008, there has been more vigorous attempts by Brazilian authorities to clamp down on illegal logging. Satellite imaging equipment enable the authorities to have in real time speedy information on where the latest areas of deforestation are appearing, so they can target enforcement efforts on the ground.
However, given the huge size of the Amazon, and the support given to loggers by local officials, it is an extremely difficult policing task to keep the unruly ranchers, loggers, and farmers from further poaching of the Amazon. Norway will give Brazil US$1 billion by 2015 to preserve the Amazon rainforest, as long as they keep trying to stop deforestation.
The $1 billion will be the first of other donations to raise $21 billion to protect nature reserves, persuade loggers and farmers to stop destroying trees and to finance scientific and technological projects.
“Efforts against deforestation may give us the largest, quickest and cheapest reductions to greenhouse gas emissions,” said the Norwegian Prime Minister. “Brazilian efforts against deforestation are therefore of vital importance if we shall succeed in our campaign against global warming.”
Another deterrent to further deforestation has been the role of the Brazilian vegetable oils industry in the Amazon to place a moratorium on the purchase of soybeans produced on rainforest lands deforested, which came in effect in October 2006. This was in response to a campaign by Greenpeace.
Another positive step was the decision of the Brazilian state of Para, which in July 2008 announced a ban on the sales of illegally logged timber from the Amazon. The agreement, which was signed by the Association of Timber Export Industries and the Para Federation of Industries is known as the Pact for Legal and Sustainable Timber. As much as 80 per cent of timber produced in the Amazon is illegal.
“Greenpeace welcomed the announcement. “In a country where intention and action don’t always meet, the implementation of this agreement by industry and Government will be vital for establishing effective protection for the forests while preserving jobs,” said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace Amazon campaign director. “It will benefit local communities and promote legal and sustainable logging activities.”
Posted under Climate Change, Economies
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