THE VINE JUNE 10, 2008
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This is hugely depressing: Despite the Brazilian government's recent crackdown on illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest, rates of deforestation are booming, with far more acreage clear-cut over the last nine months than were torched over the full year before that. The rates had been especially high in the 1990s, but slowed again in the early '00s, until a gradual uptick began a couple of years ago, culminating in the recent rise. And the year's deforestation is not even close to finished: "The Amazon's dry season, when farmers do most of their burning and clearing, starts this month. That means the 12-month total ending in August will surely climb, said Marcelo Marquesini, a Brazil-based forests expert with the international environmental group Greenpeace."
The deforestation isn't just a problem for the animal and human species living in the Amazon; it has also led to Brazil's status as the world's fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, since the trees, once harvested, are burned, releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The New York Times ran a piece in April about "Operation Arc of Fire," the Brazilian government's controversial plan to enforce logging laws with teams of armed soldiers. Since Arc of Fire has only just begun, it's probably too soon to judge whether it's working--but at deforestation's exponential rate, there may not be much time to judge in any case.
--Britt Peterson
4 comments
I agree, this is hugely depressing. While I think attention to "Carbon Footprints" and the like is warranted, this is a reminder that other, often contributory environmental crises are overlooked in the glare of that particular issue.
- drdannyu
June 10, 2008 at 1:24pm
This is hugely depressing, Britt. I read something on this just the other day. I think that we need an international agency of some sort to address such issues, say, the World Biodiversity Organization, under the auspices of the UN, which hopefully would function more like the WHO than as UNESCO historically has. It could declare certain areas such as the Amazon to be of the highest importance to preserve. A military-style force could be appended to such a concern, sort of a UN-style peacekeeping force, only in the case, a forest-guarding phalanx that would aid the Brazilian government. Sovereignty issues would inevitably arise but the Brazilian government could point out that the vast majority of its people do not benefit from destroying the Amazon.
- liberal reformer
June 10, 2008 at 2:24pm
You are addressing symptoms without finding a cure. deforestation is depressing and in the long term bad for the populus, however it is feeding someones familly who would otherwise go hungry. Sending soldiers in to shoot the deforesters is not a long term solution the solution lies in making it non-profitable to de-forest. Please read www.mongabay.com/brazil.html for more information. Elephant poaching was only nipped when it became an international crime to transport ivory deforestation will only be solved when we provide a more lucrative alternative to the people responcible. The only good sending soldiers will accomplish is to reduce the population enough so that they don't need the revenew any more.
- philthyw
June 10, 2008 at 6:21pm
A recent article in the Economist puts the blame squarely at the feet of biofuels. Brazil supplies nearly nearly half its fuel from ethanol and especially biodiesel made from sugar cane and soybeans respectively. Increasing crop prices are driving this ironic worsening of the global warming impact.
A couple of years ago, I was in favor of crop-based fuel, but I have come to realize the operating carbon balance in most cases is at best only slightly positive (Brazil's sugar-cane ethanol being an exception with an energy balance around 10), that when deforestation is taken into account there is a huge negative impact on carbon and the environment (or fertilizers in the Mississippi delta leading to ocean dead-zones), and that it is obscene to put food in our gas tanks when people are starving and food prices are skyrocketing.
Phil, the megafarms that are deforesting huge chunks of the Amazon right now are not small time operations but often exceed thousands of acres, especially for beans. The subsistence farmers are in fact being pushed out by this process, and the small communities that could subsist on the bounty from the Amazon are left with little option but to seek low paying jobs on the new megafarms. This isn't helping those folks either as I understand it.
- dbhuff
June 11, 2008 at 11:48am