The preservation of the world’s remaining forests is one of the most pressing issues we face today. Forests are also home to most of the world’s wildlife as well as some of the remaining indigenous populations. Besides, the felling of trees releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and wreaks havoc with weather conditions, water sources, rainfall etc. Renewable energy alone will not save the planet. Halting forest loss is known to be one of the most cost-effective ways to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Tropical rainforests are the focus of major concern as they are targeted by cattle ranchers, loggers and palm oil plantations, to name some of the most ferocious causers of devastation. Global deforestation stands at roughly “13 million hectares per year, or 36 football fields a minute. It generates almost 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissionsâ€, says WWF.
Earlier this week, the Brazilian government announced a 45.7 percent fall in deforestation rates of the Amazon forest within the country’s borders. The period measured was August 2008 to July 2009. While this sounds like good news, 7,008 square kilometres of forest were cleared. That is 80 times the size of Manhattan, surely not a small area and probably not quite accurate since the figures released are preliminary. Once they are consolidated, they are likely to go up (last year they did by 1,000 square kilometres).
Greenpeace welcomed the news but said deforestation rates are still too high. The organization said that it is Brazilian society that must get credit for a reduction in the deforestation of the Amazon. “Brazilians have for years demanding action to protect the Amazon, forcing governments to introduce measures in order to decrease the size of the disaster. And when governments abide by the law, deforestation rates fallâ€, said Paulo Adario, head of the Amazon campaign.
The organization added that actions carried out by the Public Ministry of the Amazonian state of Pará played a major role in deforestation reduction. These included freezing cattle ranching in the state with the highest rates of deforestation, and the implementation of an initiative called “Moratória da Soja†to guarantee the forest-friendliness of the product. The global financial crisis also contributed to decrease demand for products that come out of the Amazon, such as meat, soy and wood.
And while Amazon deforestation may have decreased for now, the Cerrado region, a savanna area of two million square kilometers in Brazil’s heartland, lost more than 20,000 square kilometers of forest over the last year, still according to WWF. The situation there has become so critical that it prompted Brazil’s biggest TV network, Rede Globo, to broadcast a documentary about it. It was aired last night and you can see one of the clips below. The voice-over is in Portuguese but the imagery gives an idea of the beauty of the region and how agribusiness is eating into it.
We can all help by making sure we only buy products that are green certified. By eliminating demand for forest-unfriendly products (watch out for palm oil, which is very common and is destroying Indonesian forests), we can play a role in preserving one of the world’s biggest treasures: its forests.
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