Illegal logging could destroy Amazon in 50 years: Greenpeace
Copyright 2001 Agence France Presse
November 20, 2001
PARIS, Nov 20 - The Amazon, which today represents a quarter of the planet's forests and is one of its most diverse reserves of plants and animals, could disappear within the next 50 years, environmental pressure group Greenpeace warned on Tuesday.
At the current rate of destruction, the Amazon will be reduced in 50 years time to scattered clumps of trees, warned Paulo Adario, the Brazilian head of Greenpeace's international campaign against deforestation. "Over four and a half centuries, from 1500 to around 1970, only one percent of the Amazon rainforest was destroyed. In the three decades since, 590,000 square metres of forest have been chopped down.
"That's 15 percent of the Amazon -- an area bigger than France," Adario told a news conference.
An area of about the same size was being exploited illegally, he added.
Adario was speaking in Paris at the start of a month-long tour of Europe and North America to alert governments, industries and citizens to illegal logging and forest clearance in the Amazon.
The illegal trade in mahogany -- a wood much prized by French importers -- was a case in point, Adario said.
He said mafia groups were buying illegally chopped mahogany from the Kayapo Indians in the eastern part of the rainforest for 25 dollars (28 euros) per square metre (11 square feet) and selling it to foreign timber importers for 1,100 dollars per square metre.
Adario urged foreign timber companies like France's Lapeyre to only import wood from Brazil that was certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as having come from a soundly- and ecologically-managed forest.
The certificate would initially raise the purchasing price by 10 percent but large scale importers could always negotiate a reduction, he said.