Amazon Deforestation Rate Hits 3 Football Fields Per Minute,
Date Confirms
Jordan Davidson
Jul. 26, 2019 01:11PM EST CLIMATE
Aerial view of deforestation in the Western Amazon region of
Brazil on Sept. 22, 2017. CARL DE SOUZA / AFP / Getty Images
The Amazon rainforest in Brazil is being clear cut so
rapidly — a rate of three football fields per minute — that it is approaching a
"tipping point" from which it will not recover, according to the
Guardian.
As trees are lost, researchers said there is a risk that
large areas could transition from rainforest to savannah as they lose the
ability to make their own rainfall from evaporation and from plants giving off
water vapor, according to Newsweek.
A transition on that scale could have significant
implications for global warming since the rainforest absorbs vast amounts of
atmospheric carbon. Recent research
has shown the potential for massive tree plantings to remove excess carbon from
the atmosphere.
"It's very important to keep repeating these concerns.
There are a number of tipping points which are not far away," said Philip
Fearnside, a professor at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research, as
the Guardian reported. "We can't see exactly where they are, but we know
they are very close. It means we have to do things right away. Unfortunately
that is not what is happening. There are people denying we even have a
problem."
The alarming rate of deforestation and its acceleration
confirms suspicions that new president Jair Bolsonaro has allowed illegal land
invasion, logging and burning. Bolsonaro has called his own government's
satellite data lies. The president's comments followed preliminary satellite
data that showed more than 400 square miles of the rainforest had been cleared
in the first half of July — an increase of 68 percent from the entire month of
July last year, according to the BBC.
Bolsonaro, the far right politician who has said he is
fulfilling a mission from God, dismissed concerns expressed by European Union
members and called it hypocritical since so many European forests have been
wiped out.
"You have to understand that the Amazon is Brazil's,
not yours," Bolsonaro said, as the Guardian reported. "If all this
devastation you accuse us of doing was done in the past the Amazon would have
stopped existing, it would be a big desert."
The DETER-B satellite system that the Brazilian government
started to use in 2015 to track deforestation has shown that the record setting
July deforestation is on pace to clear enough forest to fit New York City twice
by the end of the month.
The DETER
satellite data is considered preliminary. Detailed figures are released
at the end of the year when data from other satellites and observatories is
also collected, according to Newsweek.
"Unfortunately, it is absurd, but it should not catch
anyone by surprise. President Jair
Bolsonaro and minister Ricardo Salles are dismantling our socio-environmental
policies," said Carlos Rittl, the executive secretary of the Climate
Observatory, an NGO formed by a coalition of environmental groups, as the Guardian
reported.
After years of conservation, Brazil's environmental track
record has nose-dived in the first seven months of Bolsonaro's administration.
He has given environmental oversight to the agriculture minister, who is the
leader of a farming lobby. His
foreign minister called climate science a part of a global Marxist plot. The
government has invited businesses to register land counter-claims in areas that
are protected nature reserves, indigenous territories and areas dedicated to
sustainable production by native forest people, according to the Guardian.
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