Earlier this month the Brazilian government announced that annual Amazonian deforestation had grown by 2 percent last year to just over 9,000 square miles, courtesy of Brazilian beef and soy growers, and their consumers. This loss of ancient rainforests, covering an area the size of the U.S. state of New Hampshire, would be the second highest annual loss since official record-keeping started in 1988. One would expect the response of the Brazilian government and international community to be one of outrage, and to hear renewed pledges to reign in the destruction.
Unfortunately the Brazilian government under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hailed the news as a positive development. In doublespeak and greenwash worthy of the Toxic Texan, the Lula administration proclaimed that their policies had stabilized the situation, stopping things from getting worse. Lula has good company when it comes to accepting atrociously high deforestation figures rather than acknowledging failure of forest and land management policies. The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) routinely issues such platitudes in regard to high global deforestation rates. Stabilization of deforestation at historically unheard of rates implicitly accepts that most forests will be lost, and delays only slightly inevitable widespread collapse of terrestrial ecosystems.
Only indications that deforestation rates are falling dramatically, and eventually that natural forest cover is growing, can be construed as good forest conservation news. Current loss of the world's forests - at 50% of their pre-human extent and with only 20% remaining as large, viable forests - has already exceeded the point whereby forests can continue providing ecological processes and patterns required for their sustainability, and indeed the sustainability of the global ecological system.
Humanity's survival is utterly dependent upon the continued existence of large forests. The Earth's last majestic primary forest wildlands must be put under strict protection and/or local community eco-management. Secondary forests that have already been commercially logged at least once must be placed under strict certified management and aided to regenerate and expand. Only drastic reductions in deforestation rates, and eventual growth in natural forest extent in previously deforested areas, will indicate an improved state of the world's forests - or a particular nation's forest lands. Forests and other natural systems must remain the context to human societies if we are to be sustained.
