Amazon Rain Forest May Face Greatest Threat Ever
10/28/97
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
The demise of the Amazon may be closer than any of us realize as a
confluence of El Nino conditions and increased fires, regional
investment and other factors such as oil exploration, mining, logging,
infrastructure projects and farming are clearly increasing the
pressures on the Amazonian ecosystem. Latest deforestation figures
show increases in 1994, reaching 5,750 square miles (14,896 sq km)
compared with 4,298 square miles (11,130 sq km) in 1991. If large-
scale industrial forestry, as is practiced in rainforests in Africa
and Asia, expands further into the Amazon; there is every reason to
expect massive increases in the rate of fragmentation and ecological
decline of this globally crucial ecosystem.
g.b.
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Title: Amazon Rain Forest May Face Greatest Threat Ever
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1997, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 24, 1997
Byline: By MICHAEL CHRISTIE, Reuters
BRASILIA (October 24, 1997 10:40 p.m. EDT http://www.nando.net) - The
"lungs of the Earth" may be under threat as never before,
environmentalists say. As South America powers away from the economic
debacle of the 1980s, the world's largest remaining tropical forest,
which plays a key role in making the air on Earth breathable, is
increasingly at risk from oil exploration, mining, logging,
infrastructure projects and the inexorable advance of farming.
Add to that a surge in fires, partly due to extra-dry conditions
brought on by the El Nino weather phenomenon, and the challenges
currently facing the Amazon rain forest's fragile ecosystem could be
insurmountable. "Brazil, and the world, may be much closer to the end
of the Amazon forest than anyone has ventured to guess," Steve
Schwartzman of the Washington-based Environmental Defense Fund said.
Pressure groups say regional economic stability and soaring foreign
investment mean there is more pressure than ever to develop the
Amazon's 3.7 million square miles (6 million sq km), an area larger
than Western Europe.
Deforestation, pumped up by government subsidies for cattle-ranching,
soared in the late 1980s before falling back as the 1992 Rio Earth
Summit helped make ecological awareness chic. But the latest figures
showed deforestation rose again in 1994, reaching 5,750 square miles
(14,896 sq km) compared with 4,298 square miles (11,130 sq km) in
1991.
With 10 percent of the Amazon already gone, the global conservation
community is on tenterhooks ahead of the Nov. 30 publication by
Brazil's Space Research Institute (Inpe) of the 1995 and 1996
deforestation figures.
CRITICS SAY 'TREE HUGGERS' CRY WOLF
The "tree-hugging" brigade is always crying wolf, Brazilian officials
charge. But even they concede the number of fires in the Amazon river
basin has soared by up to 28 percent this year over 1996.
The Amazonian capital Manaus has been choking on thick smog for a
month and airports throughout the region are open only to instrument-
guided landings because of low visibility.
In the northern Amazon, the fires are being exacerbated by El Nino,
which has caused unusual heat and dryness. There, especially around
Manaus, subsistence farmers depend on primitive slash-and-burn
techniques to clear land for crops.
Elsewhere, the fires are blamed on the expanding agricultural frontier
as high global prices spawn a mad rush to plant soybeans. Cattle-
ranching also plays a role.
Brazil's top eco-policeman, Eduardo Martins, president of
environmental agency Ibama, is reassured by studies showing less than
10 percent of fires are directly related to deforestation. "But I am
concerned about the rate of conversion to agriculture. If it continues
like this, well...," he said.
Some environmentalists fear the possible consequences of the burning
could be far less obvious, and possibly far more devastating, than
generally realized. World Bank-backed research by scientists Daniel
Nepstad and Paulo Moutinho has found that for every acre of burning
forest detected by satellite sensors, there is another acre burning
out of sight.
DEGRADATION, DROUGHT WREAK HAVOC
In addition, Nepstad says, half of Brazil's Amazon may be losing its
ability to stay evergreen during the five-month dry season as
degradation and drought wreak havoc with deep water sources, also
making the forest vulnerable to fire.
Some 6,800 square miles (11,000 sq km) of forest is degraded every
year by fly-by-night operators illegally felling mahogany and virola
hardwood. Sunshine getting through the thinning canopy then dries up
loose foliage and branches, providing kindling for fires raging
through jungle that is normally too damp to go up in flames.
"We are facing a very dangerous scenario. Virgin forest that always
acted as a firebreak because it did not burn is losing that ability
and becoming flammable," Nepstad said by phone from the Woods Hole
Research Center in Massachusetts.
As he was speaking to Reuters, he learned that half of an experimental
stretch of forest he was studying had burned.
Fires in the Amazon make for sexy headlines, but the crackle of flames
only helps to mask the roar of chainsaws and bulldozers as Brazil and
its neighbors start construction on roads, dams, industrial waterways
and pipelines in the name of progress and regional economic
integration.
"If built, a number of mega-projects planned for the Amazon region
would open up the heart of the world's largest tropical rain forest to
intensive exploitation. It would be disastrous," said Atossa Soltani
of U.S. pressure group Amazon Watch.
The projects are numerous. Many are on Brazilian President Fernando
Henrique Cardoso's priority "Brazil in Action" list.
FORGING EXPORT CORRIDORS
Road, rail and river-widening projects are aimed at forging export
corridors from the central farmlands through Venezuela and Guyana to
the Caribbean or the Brazilian coast. Oil firms are sniffing around
for potentially rich deposits, while Brazil's Petrobras is developing
the Urucu-Jurua natural gas field in the Solimoes River basin, deep in
the Amazon.
International logging giants, many from Asia, are eyeing huge tracts
of jungle, and there have been dozens of requests by mining companies
for exploration rights.
Standing over a map showing roads, railways and industrial riverways
criss-crossing the Amazon like a spider's web, Ibama chief Martins
hesitated briefly before saying: "This is the fundamental structure we
need to achieve all our aims. Without it, the country will not be able
to develop economically. But these are also the limits."
He added: "Let's make it clear. Brazil will preserve more biodiversity
than any other country. We have an international obligation to save
the Amazon. But we also have an obligation to improve the lives of the
17 million people who live there and to make use of our comparative
advantages."
Brazil's "Wild West" Roraima state, which will soon have a power line
from Venezuela, illustrates the dilemna. Nestled between Venezuela and
Guyana, Roraima's 250,000 people live off federal handouts. There is
little economic activity except drugs and contraband smuggling and
illegal mining.
State Planning Secretary Cezar Augusto Mansoldo said the energy from
Venezuela was necessary, not just to put an end to frequent power cuts
but also to "civilize" the state. "Our schools only have a few hours
of light a day. Without electricity it's practically impossible to
advance," he said.
But critics say that no matter how well-intentioned, Ibama has neither
the money nor the muscle to enforce environmental standards and ensure
development is sustainable.
Tough new environmental legislation is moving laboriously through
Congress. In the meantime, Ibama does not even have the power to
collect the fines it levies, and most of the illicit timber it
triumphantly seizes is handed back, quietly, to the loggers.