Glimmer of Hope for the Amazon
12/17/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Brazil-Environment: Glimmer of Hope for the Amazon
Source: InterPress Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 17, 1999
RIO DE JANEIRO, (Dec. 17) IPS - Brazil's eroding environment makes it
easy today to feel pessimistic regarding the future of the Amazon
jungle, says Phillip Fearnside, after 23 years conducting research in
the area. But, he adds, there is some room for hope, because the fate
of the "planet's lung" basically depends on human decisions.
"Decisions that will be key to the fate of the Amazon have still to be
adopted," unlike in many parts of the world which have already
suffered irreversible desertification, says the expert, who works with
the Department of Ecology of the governmental National Institute for
Amazon Research.
Global warming, added to the El Nio weather phenomenon and human
action, could lead the region to environmental disaster, and
governments, society and the international community at large must act
soon, he underlines.
The prospects for sustainable future development depend on recognizing
that the Amazon forest lends "environmental services," such as the
preservation of biodiversity and the climate, which should be
remunerated, argues Fearnside.
IPS: Could global warming be catastrophic for the Amazon?
FEARNSIDE: Without a doubt, especially when compounded by other
changes. The region can lose rain due to global warming, but also due
to the loss of what is known as "evapotranspiration" -- water that
evaporates from the leaves of trees, providing a source of moisture in
the air, which is lost when the trees are cut down. If the forests are
replaced by pastures, the passage of water from the ground to the air
is interrupted, especially in the driest season, and rainfall is
reduced.
Then there is the El Nio effect, a natural phenomenon that may be
aggravated by human action, which represents for the Amazon major
swings in weather patterns from one year to another, and which causes
drought, like the 1997-98 El Nio, which led to forest fires in Roraima
[a state in northern Brazil, on the Venezuelan border].
Added together, these phenomena have the potential to cause a
disaster, with fires destroying a large part of the remaining forests.
IPS: But won't the heating of the planet's surface lead to an increase
in rainfall?
FEARNSIDE: Global warming will have a different impact on different
parts of the world. Although it will cause greater evaporation, in the
Amazon rains will diminish rather than increase. Around half of the
region's rainfall comes from the forests. And in dry years, that
proportion is even higher.
It is the dry season, not the average annual rainfall, which really
counts in terms of the impact on the forest. If the critically dry
months stretch on too long, the trees enter a phase of stress when
they use up the water stored in the soil. If rainfall is abundant
during the rest of the year, the average goes up, but the damages
remain.
Even the felling of just a few trees aggravates the situation. Logging
activity leaves behind dead branches and trees -- in other words fuel
for the flames when everything dries out. Scattered logging sites
represent thousands of opportunities for forest fires to start and
spread, making the Amazon forest much more vulnerable than 100 years
ago, for example.
It is also important to point out that over the past 2,000 years,
there were already four El Nios much worse than last year's "mega-
Nios" which produced widespread fires in the Amazon. And that since
1976 the phenomenon has become more frequent, and no one knows exactly
why. It may be linked to the beginning of the rise in the temperature
of the oceans.
IPS: And aren't human assaults on the environment, like slash-and-burn
techniques, logging, or the clearing of forests to make farmland, also
becoming more intense?
FEARNSIDE: They are expanding year by year. But it is not something we
should see in a fatalistic light, as lacking any solution. A large
part of these problems depends on human decisions. There are people
who choose the route of development, and can even influence climate
change, although part of the damage has already been done by the
(greenhouse) gases released into the atmosphere.
IPS: What activity poses the greatest threat to the future of the
jungles?
FEARNSIDE: They overlap, but the cause of the greatest destruction of
the Amazon forest is the expansion of pastureland on large and medium-
sized ranches, aimed more at keeping the property from being invaded
(by landless peasants who claim it has been left idle) and
expropriated for agrarian reform, than at producing beef.
For that reason it is important to adopt policies that eliminate the
possibility of profiting by speculating with land and of protecting
property by cutting the timber. Tax breaks encouraging ranching were
lifted in 1991, but the old ways of doing things have not changed.
Proof that large landowners are not interested in production can be
found in Manaos, the capital of the state of Amazonas.
Seventy-five percent of the beef consumed in the city comes from other
states, despite the creation of the local Agricultural District, with
big incentives, nearly 20 years ago.
The large estates that benefited from the initiative mainly lie
abandoned today, without pastureland, because in that area there are
no threats to property, nor wood of great value. Manaos is a big
market of two million inhabitants, nearly all of whom eat meat, open
to anyone who wants to supply it, in optimum conditions, because there
is no competition from anywhere nearby.
IPS: Wouldn't the installation of a biotechnology center in Manaos, as
announced, contribute to more sustainable development?
FEARNSIDE: I consider it a good idea. The region has valuable genetic
and pharmaceutical material, and the tendency now is to simply take
the plants elsewhere, to places where there are laboratories and
skilled technicians, like Sao Paulo, or abroad, to carry out the
industrial and intellectual part of the process.
But it is important to do that in Manaos, so the local people and
government feel an interest in conserving the forests, which become a
source of income and jobs.
But a single project cannot resolve everything. It must be made clear
that forests not only offer goods to be extracted, like pharmaceutical
products, but also environmental services that must be exploited.
Preserving biodiversity and the climate, recycling water, and curbing
the greenhouse effect are services that should constitute the basis
for local development in the area, rather than destruction of the
forests.
IPS: But that has no economic value, it is not remunerated.
FEARNSIDE: No, but the time for that is coming. The Kyoto Protocol (on
climate change), for example, enables the mobilization of large flows
of money to combat the greenhouse effect, as a clearer prospect than
those offered to preserve biodiversity.
Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol provides for the possibility of
"emissions trading". Brazil's forests could enter into that; by
checking deforestation, the country would earn credits to sell to
other countries that have assumed commitments to reduce their
emissions of ozone-depleting gases, which cause the greenhouse effect.
There is also the Australian clause, named for the country that
proposed it, by which countries that were net producers of emissions
of those gases in 1990, due to deforestation, can earn credits if they
slow down their deforestation rate.
That is not the case of the United States and Europe, which in 1990 no
longer had forested areas under threat, but instead have reforestation
programs. But Brazil is in the same situation as Australia; the
Protocol ensures it the concrete option of obtaining credits by
curbing the destruction of its forests. The credits can then be sold,
for a price much higher than what can be fetched selling wood and
beef.
IPS: But isn't the Brazilian government opposed to emissions trading?
FEARNSIDE: The Foreign Ministry is opposed to it, but not the
Environment Ministry. In June, at a meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia,
Environment Minister Jos Sarney Filho signed a declaration asking that
reduction of deforestation be included in the Clean Development
Mechanism, one of the alternatives proposed for financing projects
designed to curtail greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries.
IPS: Isn't there a lack of adequate international aid for
environmental preservation in the Amazon?
FEARNSIDE: The money provided by the seven richest countries (G-7),
$250 million, although modest in global terms, is significant compared
to the sum allotted by the Brazilian government.
But the aid, which depends on pressure from voters in wealthy
countries, has fallen. The G-7 program was announced in 1990 and put
into effect in 1992, at a time when the Amazon was daily fare on
television, which generated pressure on the governments to do
something. The commitment to shell out funds was the result.
But now that the first $250 million are running out, it is getting
more difficult to obtain funds, because there is no longer daily news
coverage of threats to the Amazon; there are other priorities,
unemployment and other internal problems.
The amount of funds offered has tapered off, even though the problem
not only remains, but has become more pressing, with deforestation
picking up speed, and even though awareness of the impact on other
countries, due to the greenhouse effect, has grown. With climate
change it is different, the amounts involved are much greater, and
don't depend on political pressure on the domestic front.
The United States, for example, plans to spend eight billion dollars a
year on the so-called "flexibility mechanisms": the Clean Development
Mechanism, emissions trading and the joint implementation of projects.
That cannot be compared to $250 million for the Amazon, which is not
even an annual sum, but has been stretched out over six or seven
years.
Brazil must assume a leadership role in environmental questions,
pressing for more in-depth commitments in the climate change talks,
for example.
IPS: How do you see the future of the Amazon a few decades from now?
FEARNSIDE: The important thing is to stress that the future depends on
decisions to be made by society; it does not lie outside humanity's
control. For example, if government funds are invested in waterways,
railways and highways, the impact is big. Just like in logging, which
will tend to increase substantially in the next few decades, because
Asia's tropical forests are disappearing and will no longer supply the
global market.
It depends on decisions by the government. Settling landless peasants
in already deforested areas has a greater political cost, because it
means taking property away from landowners.
Distributing virgin forestland that does not have an owner is easier,
but the environmental cost is much greater.
IPS: Does today's situation only allow for a pessimistic vision of the
future?
FEARNSIDE: Without a doubt. But there is also some room for hope,
because decisions that will be key to the fate of the Amazon have
still to be adopted. That is not the situation in many already
desertified parts of the world. In Brazil, the future has yet to be
determined.