‘Dangerous moment’: record deforestation in Amazon shows stakes of Brazil election

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A fire in a forest area and view along the BR-319 highway near Porto Velho, Rondônia. (Photo: Bruno Kelly/Amazônia Real, 8/12/20).

The runoff between Bolsonaro and Lula, warned one activist, is “not just about the future of Brazil, the result will have an impact on all of humanity.”

By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Conservationists and climate campaigners on Friday renewed criticism of Brazilian right-wing President Deforestation, Brazil, Jair Bolosnaro, Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, Fires, Amazon, Amazon Rainforest, Luiz Inácio Lula da SilvaDeforestation, Brazil, Jair Bolosnaro, Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, Fires, Amazon, Amazon Rainforest, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—who faces a runoff later this month—after government data revealed deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest broke yet another record last month.

“The Bolsonaro government is a forest-destroying machine.”

—Marcio Astrini, head of the Climate Observatory

According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), 1,455 square kilometers or about 562 square miles were lost, up 48% from the same month last year and the greatest loss of forest for any September since record-keeping began.

“Friday’s preliminary figures also pushed deforestation in the region to a record high for the first nine months of the year, according to INPE, with 8,590 square kilometers cleared from January to September, equal to an area 11 times the size of New York City and up 22.6% from last year,” Reuters noted.

Mariana Napolitano, WWF-Brazil’s science manager, told the news agency that rising deforestation had “pretty relevant impacts not only for the biome, but also for the weather and the region’s rainfall regime, as well as economic impacts for those who live in the Amazon and Brazil as a whole.”

The new deforestation numbers come in the lead-up to the October 30 runoff election between Bolsonaro and leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who nearly won in the first round of voting last weekend.

“This is a very dangerous moment,” Marcio Astrini, head of the Climate Observatory, told The Guardian. “The Bolsonaro government is a forest-destroying machine.”

The watchdog group’s leader suggested that illegal loggers and ranchers are working to clear parts of the Amazon—the majority of which is in Brazil— before Bolsonaro’s potential defeat. He said that “they can see that their president could lose the election so they’re taking advantage of this final stretch of Bolsonaro to tear down everything they possibly can.”

If Bolsonaro’s government “is given another four years, the Amazon’s future will be uncertain,” Astrini added. “What’s at stake here is either us continuing to have any hope that the Amazon can be kept from collapsing—or definitively surrendering it to environmental criminals.”

Greenpeace campaigners on Friday delivered similar warnings, highlighting how the destruction of the vital rainforest has ramped up since Bolsonaro took office in 2019.

“In recent years, the Bolsonaro government has shown complete disregard for a safe climate and for the Amazon rainforest, Indigenous peoples, and traditional communities,” said Greenpeace Brazil spokesperson Cristiane Mazzetti.

“His administration has actively promoted an anti-environment, anti-Indigenous, and anti-democratic agenda that has resulted in a severe increase in carbon emissions and that paints a grave scenario in Brazil,” the campaigner added. “This destructive project cannot continue.”

Not only has Bolsonaro “allowed and in fact encouraged catastrophic levels of deforestation in the Amazon and other climate-critical Brazilian forests,” but “his administration has also lobbied the U.K. and E.U. to try and block crucial legislation that could stop deforestation-linked products entering our markets,” noted Paul Morozzo, senior food and forests campaigner at Greenpeace U.K.

“The Brazilian elections are not just about the future of Brazil, the result will have an impact on all of humanity,” Morozzo warned. “If we lose the Amazon, we lose the fight against the climate crisis.”

Research released last month by Indigenous leaders and scientists showed that parts of the rainforest may have hit a tipping point and never recover from a shift to savannah.

What is a wetland? An ecologist explains

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Photo by Tyler Butler on Unsplash
Photo by Tyler Butler on Unsplash

By Jon Sweetman, The Conversation US CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Wetlands are areas of land that are covered by water, or have flooded or waterlogged soils. They can have water on them either permanently or for just part of the year.

Whether it’s year-round or seasonal, this period of water saturation produces hydric soils, which contain little or no oxygen. But this doesn’t mean that they are lifeless: Wetlands are full of unique water-loving plants and wildlife that have adapted to wet environments.

Wetlands can take many different forms, depending on the local climate, water conditions and land forms and features. For example, swamps are dominated by woody trees or shrubs. Marshes often have more grasslike plants, such as cattails and bulrushes. Bogs and fens are areas that accumulate peat – deposits of dead and partly decomposed plant materials that form organic-rich soil.

Trillions of dollars in ecological benefits

Wetlands are important environments for many reasons. They provide ecological services whose value has been estimated to be worth more than US$47 trillion per year.

For example, wetlands support very high levels of biodiversity. Scientists estimate that 40% of all species on Earth live or breed in wetlands.

Wetlands are critical homes or stopovers for many species of migratory birds. In the central U.S. and Canada, for example, wetlands in the so-called prairie pothole region on the Great Plains support up to three-quarters of North America’s breeding ducks.

The hunting and conservation group Ducks Unlimited works to conserve prairie pothole wetlands on North America’s Great Plains.

Along with providing important habitat for everything from microbes to frogs to waterfowl, wetlands also work to improve water quality. They can capture surface runoff from cities and farmlands and work as natural water filters, trapping excess nutrients that otherwise might create dead zones in lakes and bays. Wetlands can also help remove other pollutants and trap suspended sediments that cloud water bodies, which can kill aquatic plants and animals.

Because wetlands are often in low-lying areas of the landscape, they can store and slowly release surface water. Wetlands can be extremely important for reducing the impacts of flooding. In some places, water entering wetlands can also recharge groundwater aquifers that are important for irrigation and drinking water.

Wetlands also act as important carbon sinks. As wetland plants grow, they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They they die, sink to the bottom of the wetland and decompose very slowly.

Over time, the carbon they contain accumulates in wetland soils, where it can be stored for hundreds of years. Conserving and restoring wetlands is an important strategy for regulating greenhouse gases and mitigating the impacts of climate change.

Resources at risk

Despite the many valuable services they provide, wetlands are constantly being destroyed by draining them or filling them in, mainly for farming and development. Since 1970, the planet has lost 35% of its wetlands, a rate three times faster than the loss of forests.

Destruction and degradation of wetlands has led to the loss of many organisms that rely on wetland habitat, including birds, amphibians, fish, mammals and many insects. As one example, many dragonfly and damselfly species are declining worldwide as the freshwater wetlands where they breed are drained and filled in. A marsh or bog may not look like a productive place, but wetlands teem with life and are critically important parts of our environment.

Disclosure statement
Jon Sweetman receives funding from the US EPA for work on wetland restoration. He is affiliated with the Society for Freshwater Science, the Ecological Society of America, and the Society of Wetland Scientists

Pockets of collaboration offer hope for tackling global challenges

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United Nations Headquarters. Flags of member nations flying at United Nations Headquarters. Dec. 30, 2005. Joao Araujo Pinto.
United Nations Headquarters. Flags of member nations flying at United Nations Headquarters. Dec. 30, 2005. Joao Araujo Pinto.

By Børge Brende, President, World Economic Forum (Public License).

World leaders are gathering in New York for the opening of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly and to discuss the major issues of the day. The list of agenda items is long.

The war in Ukraine continues to rage, energy markets are unstable, global temperatures are rising, and the COVID-19 pandemic lingers as other public health concerns emerge. Meanwhile, inflation has proved to be ubiquitous, burdening consumers, businesses, and governments worldwide.

To address these challenges, global leaders will likely stress the need for strengthening cooperation within, what the UN Secretary-General has called, today’s “fractured world”. The question is: at a time when fragmentation appears to be increasing, what can global cooperation, practically, look like?

Thankfully, we have examples. Because despite challenging headwinds, there are instances—pockets—of collaboration that are not only promising but offer insight into what makes cooperation possible, and even durable.

Fruitful collaboration tends to be characterised by three factors: the need is urgent, the area for collaboration is specific, and the benefits are clear.

Climate action is perhaps the most salient example of each of these.

The urgency of addressing global warming is undeniable. Climate change is increasingly wreaking havoc worldwide, causing immense economic and human suffering. The devastating flooding in Pakistan is the latest example of lives being lost due to more intense weather patterns. This is why the UN raised the alarm earlier this year, stating in its latest climate report that the time for action to avoid catastrophic global warming is “now or never.”

As a result of the urgency, there are specific actions needed. World leaders have developed benchmarks that, if achieved in time, could mitigate the negative effects of climate change. This includes efforts to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030 and hit net-zero emissions by 2050. Such a reduction, experts hope, could limit global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. So far, over 70 countries, which account for 76% of global emissions, have created timelines for reaching net-zero.

And the benefits of collaborating on climate change are clear. We know the effects of a warming planet respect no border, so reaching our climate objectives can only happen when parties work together. Moreover, the transition to green energy systems—key to combatting climate change—is expected to generate over 10 million global jobs this decade.

All this is why 196 parties came together in 2015 to adopt the Paris Agreement and agreed last year at the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow (COP26) to increase carbon-cutting commitments.

Climate action also offers evidence that countries can compartmentalise and prioritise collaboration on a specific issue, despite disagreements elsewhere.

The United States and China, for instance, have shown a willingness to coordinate. Last year at COP26, the two countries issued a joint declaration that articulated the “seriousness and urgency of the climate crisis” and outlined areas in which both sides would take cooperative action.

More recently, at the World Economic Forum’s May 2022 Annual Meeting in Davos, US and Chinese climate envoys reaffirmed climate cooperation between their two countries. To be sure, this collaboration has hit road bumps, with talks recently suspended. But US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry has expressed hope they would resume because climate action “is the one area that should not be subject to interruption because of other issues that do affect us.”

It is also worth remembering that even during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union coordinated environmental protection policies, specifically on guidelines around air and water pollution, environmental preservation and general mechanisms for tracking the changing climate.

Importantly, we do not need to wait on the side-lines for these three elements—urgency, specificity, and beneficial outcomes—to appear on their own. Instead, from tackling the COVID-19 pandemic to bolstering the global economy to unlocking the benefits of new technology, leaders can build momentum toward cooperation by identifying and advancing each of these elements.

There is one other factor that makes cooperation promising when it takes place. That is, inclusivity.

Partnerships between businesses, governments, and civic organizations are helping advance important efforts in battling climate change. Over 7,000 companies, 1,000 educational institutions and 1,000 cities have joined the UN-backed Race to Zero campaign to cut global emissions by 50% by 2030, which the World Economic Forum is helping advance. This type of widespread collaboration not only makes positive outcomes more likely but serves as a binding force among parties that improves durability.

Tackling the world’s challenges is no easy task. This is why we must remain on the lookout for early signs of where collaboration is possible—and shape the context so that it then becomes likely. The stakes are simply too high to allow disagreements elsewhere to hamstring progress around crucial issues.