20% OF AMAZON JUNGLE HAS BEEN CUT DOWN

[Anonymous]

Pressures build on Amazon jungle
The
Amazon is not just a precious resource for Brazil but for the entire
world, and the year ahead seems likely to produce important indications
of what the future holds for this vast rainforest.The scale of the
challenge is widely acknowledged.
In
the past 40 years, close to 20% of the Amazon has been cut down.Land
cleared for cattle is the leading cause of deforestation, while the
growth in soya bean production is becoming increasingly significant.
Illegal logging is also a factor.Deforestation and forest fires are now
responsible for nearly 75% of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions.In the
past three years the Brazilian government has celebrated a 59% cut in
the rate of deforestation, but there are now signs of problems ahead.

Fines
In
December, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said there had
been a 10% increase in deforestation between August and November 2007
and announced a range of measures to try to stem this.The president
signed a decree imposing fines for buying or trading goods such as beef
or soya planted illegally on deforested properties.Several hundred
federal police are to be sent to the area to help combat environmental
destruction, joining more than 1,600 inspectors already there.In recent
years the government says it has carried out numerous inspections,
seized more than one million cubic metres of wood, cancelled thousands
of land registrations and arrested hundreds of people, as well as
creating large conservation areas.At the United Nations Conference on
Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia, last month, Brazil also announced
the creation of a voluntary fund to protect the Amazon, due to be
launched in 2008.

Growing concern
On a broader international
front, it was also agreed at Bali that forest conservation would be
included in discussions about a future agreement on global warming.The
new measures may be a sign of growing government concern, and it will
only become clear in the months ahead just how effective they will
prove to be in the struggle to protect the Amazon.Environmental groups,
while welcoming the government’s efforts, say the response is simply
not good enough.Critics had already warned that recent falls in
deforestation could be explained by a drop in market prices for
products such as soya and meat, and that once these rose again land
clearance would start to increase.”We have a national plan to fight
deforestation that, historically, was a good plan on paper but lacked
implementation both due to political will and due to resources,” said
Marcelo Furtado, campaigns director for Greenpeace in Brazil.”Although
the government could celebrate in recent years a decrease in
deforestation, the fact is that structurally this didn’t change.”The
environment ministry still lacks funding. You still have situations
where the police don’t have a helicopter to fly over a certain area or
there is no fuel in the truck to go to verify if an area is being
deforested or not. You still have a problem with availability of maps,”
Mr Furtado said.”The tools to decrease deforestation and monitor
implementation of the law are still not good enough.”

Frontier mentality
That
concern is reflected by John Carter, director of Alianca da Terra, a
group that promotes environmental awareness in land management.Mr
Carter, however, has a different perspective on the causes and how the
problem needs to be addressed.”Most of the environmental groups are
concentrating on the law and why the law is not being upheld and they
mysteriously forget this is a frontier and no-one ever upheld the law
in any frontier in Europe or the United States, anywhere,” he says.He
believes giving producers incentives to reduce the impact on the forest
will prove more effective than traditional conservation methods.The
results of failure can be seen in the thick smoke of forest fires being
used to clear land.”I would easily say [2007] was one of the worst
years I have seen in 11 years living here,” said Mr Carter, who was
born in the US but moved here with his Brazilian wife.”I flew with
several different people at several different times in September and
October and I couldn’t see the end of my wings, I couldn’t see the
ground.”I tried to land in the Xingu park [in Mato Grosso]… I
couldn’t… I couldn’t see the runway. I was flying 300 ft (91m) above
the forest and couldn’t even see it.”

Responsibility
Andre
Lima, a senior official at the environment ministry with responsibility
for the Amazon says it will be difficult to keep deforestation in 2008
down to the level achieved in 2007, especially given the growing market
pressures.But he believes the presidential decree will force a wider
range of people to address these concerns.”What is important to do is
to share out responsibility for illegal deforestation,” he says.”The
responsibility is not only with the farmers involved at the forefront,
but it is the chain of production that buys from them as well. The big
soya companies, the meat storage plants that have set up there and know
there is no authorisation for deforestation in the area.”They have to
assume a share of the responsibility.”The next few months will be a
test of that resolve, but there seems to be a growing recognition on
all sides that the Amazon faces another testing period. 

[Author]

January 21, 2008 at 11:58 AM