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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Brazil Quiet as Evidence of Amazon's Demise Mounts

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

1/22/98

OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE

The following Associated Press article synthesizes recent reports

regarding significant new evidence that the Amazon is greatly

threatened. As with every preceding wilderness that was thought to be

endless and incapable of ever being lost through over-exploitation,

the Amazon is poised to begin an inexorable downward spiral. The

global community must confront immediately the poverty, non-

sustainable land uses (including industrial logging and agriculture),

and ecological ignorance that threatens this critical planetary

ecosystem engine. Organize, resist and advocate for preservation of

the Amazon!

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: Brazil quiet as evidence of Amazon's demise mounts

Source: Associated Press via The Detroit News

Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint

Date: Monday, December 15, 1997

Byline: 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."

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