Publication of Amazon Deforestation has been delayed
12/2/97
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Publication of Amazon Deforestation has been delayed
Source: Reuters
Date: 12/2/97
Author: Michael Christie
Copyright 1997: Reuters Limited
Copyright 1997: Cable News Network, Inc. A Time Warner Company
SAO JOSE DOS CAMPOS, Brazil, Dec 2 (Reuters) - To a
satellite camera 400 miles (700 km) high up, the fires that
have ravaged the Amazon rain forest resemble bruises. This
year, the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso looks like it has
been beaten black and blue.
``The fires have been really bad. Mato Grosso has been
specially hard hit,'' said Thelma Krug, head of Earth
observation for the Brazil's National Space Research
Institute (Inpe).
Inpe was supposed to have revealed on Monday long-awaited
data on 1995 and 1996 deforestation rates in the vast
Amazon, which covers an area larger than Western Europe. The
report was to discuss the extent of the damage to the Amazon
from agriculture, logging and road and dam building.
Brazilian current affairs magazine Veja this week accused
the government of deliberately delaying the publication of
the figures to hide ``bad news'' during President Fernando
Henrique Cardoso's state visit to Britain, which began
Monday.
But Krug, taking Reuters on a tour last week of a former
missile factory in Sao Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo state,
where Inpe has rented rooms for its 110-strong staff of
satellite image analysts, insisted there was no subterfuge.
She said the team, working around the clock since July, had
simply not managed to finish analyzing 229 images, each 114
miles by 114 miles (185 km by 185 km) , from the U.S.
Landsat satellite.
``The analysis is not ready. I won't let myself be pressured
into rushing my work. I'd prefer to delay until I can
produce an analysis that can't be questioned,'' she said.
In the 1970s and 1980s, before the 1992 Rio Earth Summit
helped make environmental awareness fashionable, 10 percent
of the Amazon was cut down. Then deforestation slowed down.
But the latest data, divulged over a year ago, showed the
rate rose again in 1994, reaching 5,750 square miles (14,896
square km) of deforestation, compared with 4,298 square
miles (11,130 square km) in 1991.
With South America's largest economy having left
hyperinflation and economic chaos behind in the past three
years, environmentalists suspect the rate of deforestation
continued to rise.
Krug declined to even hint at a trend. ``I have an idea but
I may be wrong,'' she said, explaining that the 1995 and
1996 data was being thoroughly reviewed. ``I have every hope
we will be able to reveal the analysis before the end of the
month,'' she said.
Putting a positive spin on the delay in publishing the data,
Krug said she also hoped to be able to give a rough guide to
deforestation in 1997 by analyzing 46 ``critical'' areas,
which have traditionally suffered the most.
Many of those are in the state of Mato Grosso, where forest
fires set by farmers and exacerbated by unusual dryness
brought by the El Nino weather phenomenon have ravished huge
areas.
On satellite images, the fires look like giant black and
blue bruises amid the pink and white of cleared land and the
deep green of dense jungle.
Many images are covered by a fine haze. ``We didn't know
what this haze was. The images from earlier years didn't
have it. Then we realized it was smoke,'' said Krug.