Tag: Deforestation

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

/ activist360
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.

Amazon deforestation hit record high in February—up 62% from 2021

/ activist360
Amazônia Real from Manaus AM, Brasil, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amazônia Real from Manaus AM, Brasil, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This absurd increase shows the lack of policies to combat deforestation and environmental crimes in the Amazon, driven by the current administration. … The destruction just isn’t stopping.

—Romulo Batista, Greenpeace Brazil

By Jenna McGuire, Common Dreams (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached a record high for the month of February, jumping by nearly two-thirds over last February’s level, according to official data released Friday.

Satellite images released by the Brazilian space agency INPE’s DETER monitoring program show 199 square kilometers (77 square miles) of the Amazon rainforest was lost to deforestation last month—the highest rate recorded in February since the agency began keeping records in 2015 and a 62% increase from last year during the same month.

Environmentalists find the data particularly alarming since February is considered the rainy season in the Amazon and generally sees the lowest rates of deforestation throughout the year.

As Indigenous communities and global environmentalists have been sounding the alarm on the imperiled rainforest, deforestation has skyrocketed under Brazil’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. While the Amazon covers land in nine countries, approximately 60% of the forest lies in Brazil, which has reached its highest level of deforestation in more than a decade.

“This absurd increase shows the lack of policies to combat deforestation and environmental crimes in the Amazon, driven by the current administration. The destruction just isn’t stopping,” said Romulo Batista of Greenpeace Brazil in a statement.

Deforestation is predominantly caused by animal agriculture, soy production, logging, mining, and major construction, and has greatly impacted the nearly one million Indigenous people from over 300 tribes who live in the Brazilian Amazon.

“We are going to be eating the rainforest in our burgers,” Holly Gibbs, a land use scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told the Washington Post. “This is our moment as Americans to step forward and leverage some pressure to save the world, by helping to save the Amazon, which is critically important for the future of our planet.”

Research published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change found that the world’s largest rainforest was quickly reaching its “tipping point” and that the Amazon “has been losing resilience since the early 2000s, risking dieback with profound implications for biodiversity, carbon storage, and climate change at a global scale.”

Humanity subsidizing ‘our own extinction,’ warns study

/ activist360 / Leave a comment
Extinction Rebellion blockade of the Oberbaumbrücke. Credit: Leonhard Lenz, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Extinction Rebellion blockade of the Oberbaumbrücke. Credit: Leonhard Lenz, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

World governments are spending $1.8 trillion annually to support fossil fuel emissions, deforestation, water pollution, and other harms to biodiversity and the planet.

By Julia Conley, Common Dreams (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Releasing a new study showing that world governments spend at least $1.8 trillion annually to subsidize activities which worsen the climate crisis, global subsidies experts on Thursday said leaders must eliminate or redirect the financial supports as part of an ambitious Global Biodiversity Framework at an upcoming summit in China.

“Reforming the $1.8 trillion a year of subsidies that are harming the environment could make an important contribution towards unlocking the over $700 billion a year needed to reverse nature loss by 2030.

The B Team and Business for Nature, two organizations that push businesses around the globe to adopt sustainable practices, supported the study, titled Financing Our Survival: Building a Nature-Positive Economy Through Subsidy Reform.

According to the authors—Doug Koplow of subsidy research firm Earth Track and Ronald Steenblik of the International Institute for Sustainable Development—a lack of transparency regarding the use of subsidies means that the amount of government money being spent on the destruction of nature could be much higher than the research shows.

Photo by Evan Nitschke from Pexels
Photo by Evan Nitschke from Pexels

“Nature is declining at an alarming rate, and we have never lived on a planet with so little biodiversity,” said Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and a member of The B Team. “At least $1.8 trillion is funding the destruction of nature and changing our climate, while creating huge risks for the very businesses who are receiving the subsidies… Harmful subsidies must be redirected towards protecting the climate and nature, rather than financing our own extinction.”

The report identifies at least $640 billion in annual fossil fuel subsidies, $520 billion used by the agricultural sector, $350 billion in water management and wastewater infrastructure, and $155 billion subsidizing logging and unsustainable forest management, all of which account for the majority of annual subsidies.

The equivalent of at least 2% of the global GDP is being spent by governments to finance water pollution and air pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, biodiversity loss, planet-heating fossil fuel emissions, risks to ecosystems in oceans and waterways across the globe, and other harms to nature and humanity, the authors said.

To help finance climate crisis mitigation measures in the Global South—as wealthy nations pledged they would in 2009, promising $100 billion annually—and redirect government funds toward a transition to renewable energy and a reversal of nature loss, hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies must be eliminated or repurposed, according to the report.

A draft of the Global Biodiversity Framework calls for $500 billion per year in reformed subsidies—a target that “needs to be strengthened” in April at the U.N. Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Kunming, China.

“The case is clear: reforming the $1.8 trillion a year of subsidies that are harming the environment could make an important contribution towards unlocking the over $700 billion a year needed to reverse nature loss by 2030 as well as the cost of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050,” wrote the authors. “This needs to happen alongside aligning all private financial flows to nature-positive and increasing public and private finance to deliver innovative financial solutions that help protect, restore, and conserve nature.”

“With political determination and radical public-private sector collaboration,” they added, “we can reform these harmful subsidies and create opportunities for an equitable, nature-positive and net-zero economy. To do so, we must bring awareness, transparency, and disclosure on subsidies from both governments and business.”

Ahead of the biodiversity conference in April, said Business for Nature, negotiators must strengthen the Global Biodiversity Framework draft by including a commitment to reform “ALL harmful subsidies, including indirect and direct incentives.”

“Climate action is at a crossroads, in part because of the large scale of public money flowing to harmful industries and practices,” said Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and member of The B Team. “We need to see thorough subsidy reform from governments and businesses, with social and environmental considerations at the heart, to ensure a just and equitable transition for all.”