Amazon Rain Forest May Face Greatest Threat Ever

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

10/28/97

OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE

The demise of the Amazon may be closer than any of us realize as a

confluence of El Nino conditions and increased fires, regional

investment and other factors such as oil exploration, mining, logging,

infrastructure projects and farming are clearly increasing the

pressures on the Amazonian ecosystem. Latest deforestation figures

show increases in 1994, reaching 5,750 square miles (14,896 sq km)

compared with 4,298 square miles (11,130 sq km) in 1991. If large-

scale industrial forestry, as is practiced in rainforests in Africa

and Asia, expands further into the Amazon; there is every reason to

expect massive increases in the rate of fragmentation and ecological

decline of this globally crucial ecosystem.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: Amazon Rain Forest May Face Greatest Threat Ever

Source: Reuters

Date: October 24, 1997

Byline: By MICHAEL CHRISTIE, Reuters

BRASILIA (October 24, 1997 10:40 p.m. EDT http://www.nando.net) - The

"lungs of the Earth" may be under threat as never before,

environmentalists say. As South America powers away from the economic

debacle of the 1980s, the world's largest remaining tropical forest,

which plays a key role in making the air on Earth breathable, is

increasingly at risk from oil exploration, mining, logging,

infrastructure projects and the inexorable advance of farming.

Add to that a surge in fires, partly due to extra-dry conditions

brought on by the El Nino weather phenomenon, and the challenges

currently facing the Amazon rain forest's fragile ecosystem could be

insurmountable. "Brazil, and the world, may be much closer to the end

of the Amazon forest than anyone has ventured to guess," Steve

Schwartzman of the Washington-based Environmental Defense Fund said.

Pressure groups say regional economic stability and soaring foreign

investment mean there is more pressure than ever to develop the

Amazon's 3.7 million square miles (6 million sq km), an area larger

than Western Europe.

Deforestation, pumped up by government subsidies for cattle-ranching,

soared in the late 1980s before falling back as the 1992 Rio Earth

Summit helped make ecological awareness chic. But the latest figures

showed deforestation rose again in 1994, reaching 5,750 square miles

(14,896 sq km) compared with 4,298 square miles (11,130 sq km) in

1991.

With 10 percent of the Amazon already gone, the global conservation

community is on tenterhooks ahead of the Nov. 30 publication by

Brazil's Space Research Institute (Inpe) of the 1995 and 1996

deforestation figures.

CRITICS SAY 'TREE HUGGERS' CRY WOLF

The "tree-hugging" brigade is always crying wolf, Brazilian officials

charge. But even they concede the number of fires in the Amazon river

basin has soared by up to 28 percent this year over 1996.

The Amazonian capital Manaus has been choking on thick smog for a

month and airports throughout the region are open only to instrument-

guided landings because of low visibility.

In the northern Amazon, the fires are being exacerbated by El Nino,

which has caused unusual heat and dryness. There, especially around

Manaus, subsistence farmers depend on primitive slash-and-burn

techniques to clear land for crops.

Elsewhere, the fires are blamed on the expanding agricultural frontier

as high global prices spawn a mad rush to plant soybeans. Cattle-

ranching also plays a role.

Brazil's top eco-policeman, Eduardo Martins, president of

environmental agency Ibama, is reassured by studies showing less than

10 percent of fires are directly related to deforestation. "But I am

concerned about the rate of conversion to agriculture. If it continues

like this, well...," he said.

Some environmentalists fear the possible consequences of the burning

could be far less obvious, and possibly far more devastating, than

generally realized. World Bank-backed research by scientists Daniel

Nepstad and Paulo Moutinho has found that for every acre of burning

forest detected by satellite sensors, there is another acre burning

out of sight.

DEGRADATION, DROUGHT WREAK HAVOC

In addition, Nepstad says, half of Brazil's Amazon may be losing its

ability to stay evergreen during the five-month dry season as

degradation and drought wreak havoc with deep water sources, also

making the forest vulnerable to fire.

Some 6,800 square miles (11,000 sq km) of forest is degraded every

year by fly-by-night operators illegally felling mahogany and virola

hardwood. Sunshine getting through the thinning canopy then dries up

loose foliage and branches, providing kindling for fires raging

through jungle that is normally too damp to go up in flames.

"We are facing a very dangerous scenario. Virgin forest that always

acted as a firebreak because it did not burn is losing that ability

and becoming flammable," Nepstad said by phone from the Woods Hole

Research Center in Massachusetts.

As he was speaking to Reuters, he learned that half of an experimental

stretch of forest he was studying had burned.

Fires in the Amazon make for sexy headlines, but the crackle of flames

only helps to mask the roar of chainsaws and bulldozers as Brazil and

its neighbors start construction on roads, dams, industrial waterways

and pipelines in the name of progress and regional economic

integration.

"If built, a number of mega-projects planned for the Amazon region

would open up the heart of the world's largest tropical rain forest to

intensive exploitation. It would be disastrous," said Atossa Soltani

of U.S. pressure group Amazon Watch.

The projects are numerous. Many are on Brazilian President Fernando

Henrique Cardoso's priority "Brazil in Action" list.

FORGING EXPORT CORRIDORS

Road, rail and river-widening projects are aimed at forging export

corridors from the central farmlands through Venezuela and Guyana to

the Caribbean or the Brazilian coast. Oil firms are sniffing around

for potentially rich deposits, while Brazil's Petrobras is developing

the Urucu-Jurua natural gas field in the Solimoes River basin, deep in

the Amazon.

International logging giants, many from Asia, are eyeing huge tracts

of jungle, and there have been dozens of requests by mining companies

for exploration rights.

Standing over a map showing roads, railways and industrial riverways

criss-crossing the Amazon like a spider's web, Ibama chief Martins

hesitated briefly before saying: "This is the fundamental structure we

need to achieve all our aims. Without it, the country will not be able

to develop economically. But these are also the limits."

He added: "Let's make it clear. Brazil will preserve more biodiversity

than any other country. We have an international obligation to save

the Amazon. But we also have an obligation to improve the lives of the

17 million people who live there and to make use of our comparative

advantages."

Brazil's "Wild West" Roraima state, which will soon have a power line

from Venezuela, illustrates the dilemna. Nestled between Venezuela and

Guyana, Roraima's 250,000 people live off federal handouts. There is

little economic activity except drugs and contraband smuggling and

illegal mining.

State Planning Secretary Cezar Augusto Mansoldo said the energy from

Venezuela was necessary, not just to put an end to frequent power cuts

but also to "civilize" the state. "Our schools only have a few hours

of light a day. Without electricity it's practically impossible to

advance," he said.

But critics say that no matter how well-intentioned, Ibama has neither

the money nor the muscle to enforce environmental standards and ensure

development is sustainable.

Tough new environmental legislation is moving laboriously through

Congress. In the meantime, Ibama does not even have the power to

collect the fines it levies, and most of the illicit timber it

triumphantly seizes is handed back, quietly, to the loggers.

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