I'll have another soy latte' please.
The economy booms, the trees vanish
May 19th 2005
>From The Economist Global Agenda
http://www.economist.com/agenda/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=3996152
Graph & Image: http://www.economist.com/images/GA/2005w21/RainForest.jpg
Alarming new figures show that the destruction of the Amazon rainforest-the world's biggest tropical forest-has accelerated. Booming agriculture, especially soya growing, is one of the main culprits
IF IT were simply a matter of passing strong laws to protect it, the Amazon rainforest-the world's largest tropical forest, around the size of western Europe-would be safe. Brazil, whose territory includes about two-thirds of the forest, has impressively tough laws that, on paper, set most of it aside as a nature reserve and impose stiff penalties for illegal logging. But the latest annual figures for deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, published by the government on Wednesday May 18th, have confirmed a disturbing recent trend: the destruction is accelerating despite all efforts to curb it. In the year to August 2004, more than 26,000 square kilometres (10,000 square miles) of forest were chopped down, an area larger than the American state of New Jersey.
The area deforested in the past year was up 6% on 2003, far worse than the Brazilian government's predictions that it would rise by no more than about 2%. It was the second worst year for the destruction of the rainforest since satellite surveys began (see chart). It is reckoned that almost a fifth of the Brazilian part of the forest has now been wiped out; if it were to continue at this rate, it would all be flattened within the next two centuries. Things are hardly any better in those portions of Amazonia that lie in neighbouring countries: Ecuador has lost about half of its forest, mainly due to illegal logging, in the past 30 years. Worse, tropical forests have been disappearing at an even faster rate elsewhere in the world, such as in Africa. The world's greatest stores of biodiversity-and some of its main suppliers of the oxygen we breathe-are still being chewed up at an alarming rate, despite decades of talk among world leaders and environmentalists about the need to preserve them.
As has been seen before in Brazil, the surge in the rate of deforestation is a sign that the country's economy is booming-recently it has been growing at an annual rate of around 5%. Most of the timber felled illegally in Amazonia is sold to domestic buyers, in particular to the construction industry in Brazil's richer southern states. But the forest is also threatened by the rapid expansion of farming and ranching. In the past year, almost half of the total deforestation was in the state of Mato Grosso on the forest's southern fringe, where huge areas have been flattened to grow soybeans. Last year Brazil earned about $10 billion from exporting soy products, exceeding its income from coffee and sugar, the country's traditional export crops. Mato Grosso's governor, Blairo Maggi, is also its soybean king-his family's farms are the world's largest single producer of the crop.
The rate at which the forest is being flattened could easily rise further. To boost the region's economic development and make inroads into poverty, the government plans to asphalt and widen the potholed BR-163 highway that slices the forest roughly in half, running from north to south. Though the government has been working with environmental groups and others to try to limit the scheme's impact, past experience has shown that improved road access invariably means more encroachment on the forest by loggers, ranchers, farmers, mineral prospectors and others.
Use it or lose it For much of Brazil's recent history, in particular during the country's 1964-85 military dictatorship, successive governments were obsessed with populating and "developing" Amazonia, convinced that otherwise a foreign power might seize it. Large sums were spent building highways to open up the forest and lavish subsidies were offered to get people to resettle there. However, the huge swathes of abandoned former forest land alongside previous road schemes show that, in fact, much of the region lacks suitable soil and climate for agriculture.
More recent governments have taken the axe to the more egregious schemes that encouraged people to destroy the rainforest. Besides Brazil's tough conservation laws, there are now countless projects, often backed by multilateral agencies, to develop sustainable forestry, eco-tourism and other means of providing a living for the region's inhabitants without harming their environment. Mato Grosso state has pioneered the use of satellite-mapping to enforce a law that obliges Amazonia's landowners to leave 80% of forested land untouched. Police, environmental inspectors and other state agencies are being pressed to work together more closely to clamp down on illegal logging.
Nevertheless, the priority of Brazil's President Lula da Silva and his government is to cut poverty-and they know that the surest way to achieve this is through strong economic growth. So, as the BR-163 highway project demonstrates, conservation still comes second to economic development. The many sustainable-forestry schemes are seeking ways to have both instead of having to choose one or the other. But while some are highly promising, taken together they have so far had much less impact than might have been hoped.
Most important of all, the institutions that are supposed to protect Brazil's forest-the federal and state environmental agencies, national and local police forces and the judicial system-are weak, poorly co-ordinated and prone to corruption and influence-peddling by illegal loggers and the farming lobby. The murder earlier this year by hired gunmen of Dorothy Stang, an American nun who challenged the loggers and land grabbers, shows how ruthless the forest's enemies can be.
The forest's best hope may lie with Brazilians' growing wealth. The country's steady economic and political advance since its restoration of democracy is leading to the development of a larger and more environmentally conscious middle class, a phenomenon which in richer countries has forced governments to take tougher action to conserve natural resources. Around the world, valuable work is being done to improve the understanding of the many "services" that the earth's forests provide-from water filtration and flood prevention to fruit and fresh air-and to seek to finance their conservation by charging those who benefit from them.
In the long term, such movements ought to provide a lifeline for the Amazon forest. But will they come in time? Brazil has already all but lost one of its two original rainforests-only slivers remain of the Mata Atlântica, which once covered huge areas along the country's Atlantic coastline. Its remaining rainforest is still four-fifths intact. But, day by day, the chainsaws and the bulldozers are hacking it away. <...>
