RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — New satellite photographs show that the destruction of Brazil’s fragile Amazon rainforest has exploded this year, fueling fears that the government’s efforts to stop deforestation have been fruitless. Brazil’s DETER real-time monitoring system found that more than 430 square miles of forest, an area a bit smaller than the city of Los Angeles, vanished in the month of April, while about 2,300 square miles, larger than the state of Delaware, were destroyed between last August and April.
That’s raised red flags among environmentalists, who say that soybean farming, cattle production and illegal logging are destroying the world’s largest rainforest despite the government’s attempts to halt the deforestation. Chopping down and burning the rainforest releases tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change. Brazil is the world’s fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, largely because of deforestation, according to the U.S.-based World Resources Institute.
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. Marquesini said that rising prices for soybeans, beef and other commodities are pushing farmers to clear more land in the sprawling rainforest, which is about the size of the western United States. Brazil’s PRODES monitoring system had found deforestation rates plummeting by more than 50 percent between Aug. 2004 and July 2007, a trend that Brazil’s government credited to tougher enforcement of environmental laws and the creation of more forest reserves. The new DETER data, however, suggests that the drop will end this year, environmentalists said.
The fate of the Amazon has been at the center of a growing debate here over how this nation of 185 million people can both protect the forest and feed its booming economy, which depends on exporting soybeans and other commodities. The internal struggle claimed its most high-profile victim last month when Environment Minister Marina Silva, a celebrated environmentalist, resigned, saying that she was fighting a losing battle against pro-development policies. Her replacement, Carlos Minc, said Monday that he’d continue Silva’s fight and announced that environmental officials would start seizing any cattle found grazing on illegally deforested land.
The DETER data found that 70 percent of deforestation in April occurred in Mato Grosso.
– from www.mcclatchydc.com