Annual Amazon Forest Loss Three Times What Previously Thought
12/27/97
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
A new report by the Brazilian congressional committee investigating
foreign logging companies estimates that the Amazon is being lost at a
rate of 20,000 square miles a year, three times the previous estimate.
Twelve percent of the Amazon has already been lost--mainly to logging
and wildfires. And this comes as the threats are growing
exponentially--both from El Nino induced burning and an influx of
industrial loggers with intentions to greatly expand the scale of
forest harvest. The article also discloses that the Brazilian
government's own figures concerning deforestation rates are being
withheld in what amounts to a cover-up. What is known is that
satellite analysis indicates that deforestation is occurring over a
larger area than previously. The Amazon, responsible for maintenance
of global ecological systems, will be lost within 50 years if current
trends continue. Failure of developed countries to make the resources
necessary to conserve/manage this global eco-treasure amounts to
complicity in dismantling of the Earth's maintenance systems.
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Brazil quiet as evidence of Amazon's demise mounts
Source: Associated Press
Status: Copyright, contact source for reprint permission
Date: Monday, December 15, 1997
Byline: By Michael Astor
RIO DE JANEIRO -- No one disputes that the Amazon rain forest is
shrinking, but just how fast it's disappearing is a mystery -- and a
political hot potato in Brazil.
A new report by a congressional committee investigating foreign
logging companies says the Amazon is vanishing at a rate of 20,000
square miles a year.
That's more than three times the rate of 1994, the last year for which
official figures are available.
About 12 percent of the 2 million-square-mile wilderness is gone.
Scientists say the loss -- mainly from wildfires and logging -- adds
to the greenhouse effect that is believed to cause global warming.
"If nothing is done, the entire Amazon will be gone within 50 years,"
said the 110-page report's author, Rep. Gilney Vianna of the leftist
Worker's Party in the Amazon state of Mato Grosso.
Although the numbers are only estimates, it's hard for the government
to refute them without figures of its own. That's another problem,
because the official numbers have been under wraps for nearly three
years.
The government had promised to release its figures Dec. 1. They were
withheld after Eduardo Martins, president of Brazil's Environmental
Protection Agency, asked for more data on the average size of
deforested areas and the types of vegetation affected.
"The rate of deforestation is only good for a headline but does
nothing to resolve the problem," said Martins. "I wanted to look at
the causes."
Vianna and several leading environmentalists say the release was
delayed to avoid potential embarrassment for Brazil at the
international conference on greenhouse gas emissions in Kyoto, Japan.
Martins denied it, but he admitted the government's numbers will show
that Amazon destruction is on the rise.
He said figures on western Rondonia state reflect the deforestation
trend across the Amazon: deforestation rose sharply in 1995 before
leveling off slightly in 1996 and 1997.
Determining the extent of deforestation is the job of the
government's National Space Research Institute.
At its headquarters in Sao Jose dos Campos, 190 miles southwest of
Rio, 120 analysts have spent the last five months toiling over photos
from NASA's Landsat-TM satellite showing deforestation from 1995 to
1997.
In 1994, 80 percent of Amazon deforestation was revealed in 38 of the
229 satellite images that cover the Brazilian Amazon.
This year, the number of images that captured the same percentage of
deforestation climbed to 47, said Ulf Walter Palme, the project's
technical director.
The increase means the area of destruction has expanded since then by
122,544 square miles -- an area roughly the size of Italy.
The government relies solely on satellite images in compiling its
figures. Vianna's report arrives at substantially higher figures by
including estimates on the cutting of lots smaller than the 16-acre
minimum measurable by the satellite photos.
Vianna has called for a 10-year moratorium on cutting and burning in
the Amazon.
"We need the moratorium because the government has no coherent policy
in the Amazon," he said.
"Seventy percent of the burnings are authorized by the government and
so is the vast majority of the deforestation."