Amazon Deforestation Accelerates for First Time in 4 Years
Destruction of the Brazillian Amazon rainforest has accelerated over the 2007/2008 period, according to The National Institute For Space Research (INPE).
Satellite images by the Institute reveals that 4,633 square miles (12,000 square kilometers) of rainforest was destroyed from August 2007 through July 2008. That’s an area roughly the size of the state of Connecticut in the United States.
This is an increase from the 2006/2007 figure of 4,332 square miles (11,224 square kilometers).
As dissapointing as the increase is, it is still well below the record figure of 10,570 square miles (27,379 square kilomters) recorded in 2004.
Positive Outlook for the Future
Environment Minister Carlos Minc says that, although he is not happy with the 2008 figure, he is sure it would have been much worse without government policies aimed at tackling illegal logging.
“Many had expected an increase of 30-40 percent and we managed to stabilize it,” he said.
“When you confiscate soy and beef it hurts them in the pocket,” he continued.
Mr Minc is referring to confiscated farm products from illegally cleared land as well as cut financing for unregistered properties.
“Today’s figures are unacceptable but the long-term trend remains positive and they show that it is possible to do something about deforestation,” said Paulo Moutinho, coordinator at the Amazon Research Institute.
More Needs to be Done
Moutinho also believes that more needs to be done to discourage deforestation.
“We need to make it more expensive to cut a tree than to preserve it” he said.
This is a sentiment shared by Prince Charles, who launched his Prince’s Rainforest Project last year in order to make rainforests more valuable alive than dead.
Prince Charles has said “It seems to me that the central issue in this whole debate is how we put a true value on standing rainforests to the world community”.
One way of doing this, according to Canopy Capital, is to place a price on the services that rainforests provide to the wider community.
Tags: amazon, Brazil, deforestation, rainforest
