'Football pitch' of Amazon forest lost every minute
By David Shukman
Science editor, Brazil
2 July 2019
An area of Amazon rainforest roughly the size of a football
pitch is now being cleared every single minute, according to satellite data.
The rate of losses has accelerated as Brazil's new
right-wing president favours development over conservation.
The largest rainforest in the world, the Amazon is a vital
carbon store that slows down the pace of global warming.
A senior Brazilian official, speaking anonymously, told us
his government was encouraging deforestation.
How is the forest cleared?
Usually by bulldozers, either pushing against the trunks to
force the shallow roots out of the ground, or by a pair of the machines
advancing with a chain between them.
In one vast stretch of recently cleared land, we found giant
trees lying on their sides, much of the foliage still green and patches of bare
earth drying under a fierce sun.
Later, the timber will be cleared and sold or burned, and
the land prepared for farming.
In other areas, illegal loggers carve new tracks through the
undergrowth to reach particularly valuable hardwood trees which they sell on
the black market, often to order.
What does this mean for the forest?
Satellite images show a sharp increase in clearances of
trees over the first half of this year, since Jair Bolsonaro became president
of Brazil, the country that owns most of the Amazon region.
The most recent analysis suggests a staggering scale of
losses over the past two months in particular, with about a hectare being
cleared every minute on average.
The single biggest reason to fell trees, according to
official figures, is to create new pastures for cattle, and during our visit we
saw countless herds grazing on land that used to be rainforest.
Over the past decade, previous governments had managed to
reduce the clearances with concerted action by federal agencies and a system of
fines.
But this approach is being overturned by Mr Bolsonaro and
his ministers who have criticised the penalties and overseen a dramatic fall in
confiscations of timber and convictions for environmental crimes.
Why does this matter?
The forest holds a vast amount of carbon in its billions of
trees, accumulated over hundreds or even thousands of years.
Every year, the leaves also absorb a huge quantity of carbon
dioxide that would otherwise be left in the atmosphere adding to the rise in
global temperatures.
By one recent estimate, the trees of the Amazon rainforest
pulled in carbon dioxide equivalent to the fossil fuel emissions of most of the
nine countries that own or border the forest between 1980-2010.
The forest is also the richest home to biodiversity on the
planet, a habitat for perhaps one-tenth of all species of plants and animals.
And it is where one million indigenous people live, hunting
and gathering amid the trees.
What does Brazil's new policy mean?
According to a senior Brazilian environment official, the
impact is so "huge" that he took the risk of giving us an
unauthorised interview to bring it to the attention of the world.
We had to meet in secret and disguise his face and voice
because Mr Bolsonaro has banned his environment staff from talking to the
media.
Over the course of three hours, a startling inside picture
emerged of small, under-resourced teams of government experts passionate about
saving the forest but seriously undermined by their own political masters.
Mr Bolsonaro swept to power on a populist agenda backed by
agricultural businesses and small farmers, many of whom believe that too much
of the Amazon region is protected and that environment staff have too much
influence.
He has said he wants to weaken the laws protecting the
forest and has attacked the civil servants whose job it is to guard the trees.
The result, according to the environment official, is that
"it feels like we are the enemies of the Amazon, when in fact we should be
seen in a completely different way, as the people trying to protect our
ecological heritage for future generations".
"They don't want us to speak because we'll say the
truth, that conservation areas are being invaded and destroyed, there are many
people marking out areas that should be protected."
So what could happen next?
The official believes the figures for deforestation could be
even worse than officially recognised.
"There's a government attempt to show the data is
wrong, to show the numbers don't portray the reality," he told me.
Ministers are considering hiring an independent contractor
to handle information from satellite images of the region, questioning the work
of the current government agency.
Also, the rainy season is only now coming to an end, and
because deforestation typically takes place in the drier months of the year,
the official fears that the pace of losses could pick up speed.
"In truth, it can be even worse," he said, because
many of the areas recently damaged haven't yet been picked up by satellite
images.
"People need to know what's happening because we need
allies to fight against invasions, to protect areas, and against
deforestation."
What does the government say?
We made repeated requests for interviews with the ministers
for environment and agriculture but were refused.
Earlier this year, Mr Bolsonaro, who's known as the
"Trump of the Tropics", invited the US president to be a partner in
exploiting the resources of the Amazon.
Last month, in an interview with BBC Brasil, the environment
minister Ricardo Salles, said landowners should be rewarded for preserving
forest and that developed nations should foot the bill.
And there's an assertive response when voices in the outside
world call for the forest to be saved.
The president's top security adviser, General Augusto Heleno
Pereira, told Bloomberg last month that it was "nonsense" that the
Amazon was part of the world's heritage.
"The Amazon is Brazilian, the heritage of Brazil and
should be dealt with by Brazil for the benefit of Brazil," he said.
What's the view of the farmers?
For decades, farming organisations have argued that the
network of protected areas of forest, including reserves for indigenous people,
is too restrictive for a developing country that needs to create jobs.
A leading figure in the farmers' union in the city of
Santarem, a hub for soya and cattle, told me that other countries had cleared
their trees for agriculture but now wanted Brazil not to do the same.
Vanderley Wegner said that the US and Europe, which buy
produce from the Amazon region, have far less stringent controls on their
forests, and that Europe "has very little forest left" anyway.
"We have to develop the Amazon. More than four million
people live here and they need development too, it's a constitutional right of
every Brazilian citizen," he said.
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