Natural Environment Blog

Environmentalists have concerns over Brazil’s recently announced plan to save the Amazon rainforest. 

The plan, unveiled by the government on Monday, would result in a 72 percent decrease in deforestation by 2017. 

But environmental groups, while commending the government for finally taking action, believe the plan doesn’t go far enough.

Greenpeace Brazil’s View

Greenpeace doesn’t appear to be impressed with Brazil’s deforestation plan. Greenpeace maintains that deforestation of the Amazon needs to be completely eliminated - not just reduced.

Sergio Leitao, Greenpeace director of public politics in Brazil says “In adopting timid targets the government is showing that it is going in the right direction, but at the wrong speed, because the problem requires urgent solutions”

Leitao also suggests that Brazil is using its reliance on funding from rich nations as a convenient escape clause.

“By connecting the reduction of deforestation to obtaining international resources, in a moment of economic crisis, the government has an argument ready for not achieving targets in the future,” he said.  

Greepeace UK’s View

And Greepeace UK has said on its blog:

On the surface, this might sound ambitious and visionary but of course even if these targets are met, they’ll reduce deforestation but they won’t stop it.

Greenpeace UK highlights the fact that Brazil’s government seems happy to lose rainforest:

As environment minister Carlos Minc noted, if all goes to plan then in 2017 we’ll still be losing 5,000 sq km of rainforest every year (although I think he saw that as a good thing)

And, importantly, Greepeace points out that the deforestation plan only appears to be applicable to illegal deforestation.

Therefore, legal clearance of the rainforest will be unaffected. This means that a new bill soon to be voted on in Brazil’s parlaiment would effectively undermine the new plan. The bill, if passed, would allow land owners to clear as much as 50% of their forests (currently, they’re allowed to clear 20%).

On this point, Greenpeace comments:

So right there you can see that, even if illegal deforestation is cut or even eliminated, state sanctioned destruction could balloon in its place and so completely undermine any efforts to bring the rate of deforestation down.

WWF Brazil’s View 

In the meantime, WWF-Brazil has labeled the plan as “commendable but short on ambition and detail“.

However, Carlos Alberto de Mattos Scaramuzza, Conservation Director at WWF-Brazil still agrees that it is “reasonably” ambitious:

“This goal is reasonably ambitious,” he says. “To achieve it, next year deforestation will have to drop 23% in relation to this year.”

But he wants to see a plan that’s more than “reasonably ambitous”.

Instead, WWF-Brazil wants to see a goal of zero deforestation by 2015.

“This goal is achievable if key actors—ranging from indigenous peoples to ranchers—are compensated for conserving the forest and thereby avoiding deforestation” Scaramuzza says.

And WWF-Brazil’s CEO Denise Hamú agrees.

“This fund appears to be geared primarily to supporting government command-and-control programmes,” she says

“To achieve more ambitious reductions in deforestation, it will be effective mechanisms to compensate the key actors on the ground who determine the fate of the forest.”

The Brazilian government has announced plans to slash deforestation in the Amazon region by 72 percent by 2017.

The announcement, made by Environment Minister Carlos Minc in Brasilia on Monday, comes three days after it was revealed that deforestation in the Amazon had increased in 2008 for the first time in 4 years. 

Part of the plan includes adding 3,000 more officers to fight illegal logging in the Amazon.

“This plan improves Brazil’s image, we’ll have more moral authority internationally,” Minc told reporters after announcing the plan.

The 72 percent figure comes from comparing against an annual deforestation average between 1996 and 2005. Minc says the plan would reduce deforestation by 72% when compared with the 7,330 square miles lost on average each year during that period.

Reduced Carbon Emissions

Brazil’s announcement came as this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference commenced in Poznań, Poland. 

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva believes that the plan puts Brazil ahead of many other countries attending the conference.

“We will surely receive criticism, but we can say that we are presenting a better one than China or India, and better than others that still haven’t signed the Kyoto Protocol,” he said.

Minc shares the president’s view ”Just in terms of avoided deforestation in the Amazon, the plan foresees a reduction of 4.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide that won’t be emitted up to 2018, which is more than the reduction efforts fixed by all the rich countries,” he explained.

Reforestation

Brazil not only plans to reduce deforestation, but also plans to double the reforested areas to 11 million hectares by 2020.

“This means that by 2015 we will be planting more trees than cutting,” Minc said.

Brazil’s Forestry Service Welcomes the Plan

The Brazilian government’s forestry service welcomes the announcement.

“We can now adopt targets because we now have the instruments to implement them” said Tasso Azevedo, head of the forestry service.

The ‘instruments’ Azevedo refers to is the new Amazon fund established earlier this year.

The Amazon Fund

The Amazon Fund is a fund established to preserve millions of acres of the Amazon as quickly as possible. 

Through the fund, Brazil hopes to attract $21 billion in donations from rich countries to protect the Amazon.

Norway has already made a pledge of up to $1 billion to the fund. Norway’s contribution will be made by installments, each one being made on the condition that deforestation had reduced during the previous year.

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.

Rainforests are some of the world’s most ancient and complex ecosystems. They barely cover 2% of the Earth, yet more than half of all plant and animal species live there. 

Despite covering such as small part of the Earth, rainforests continue to be destroyed every day. At the current rate of deforestation, we will only have 20% of the world’s forests left by 2030.

Saving the world’s rainforests from deforestation is not a small task (just ask the UK government!). Many environmentally conscience individuals and organizations around the world are devising new ways to protect our valuable rainforests. 

Click to Save the Rainforests

One new way of protecting rainforests comes in the form of “The Rainforest Site”. The Rainforest Site is a website that allows us all to do our bit for the rainforests. By using this site, you can help keep rainforests around the world alive.

And the great thing is, it doesn’t cost you any money. Not a cent. 

All you need to do is click a button on The Rainforest Website. When you click that button, The Rainforest Website gets money from their sponsors. They then pass this money to charity organizations who help preserve the rainforests. 

According to The Rainforest Site, more than 150 million visitors have preserved more than 40,500 acres of land to date.

How Does it Work?

When you click on the button, the website displays advertising from their sponsors. These sponsors actually pay The Rainforest Site so that their advertising can appear.

100% of the sponsors’ money goes to their charity partners, who fund programs to protect and preserve rainforest habitat.

So it would follow that, the more popular the site is, the more likely sponsors will want to advertise (i.e. more people are seeing their ads). 

Who are the Charity Partners?

When you click, the following organizations get money (from the website’s sponsors). These organizations then use the money to protect the world’s rainforests:

• The Nature Conservancy
• Rainforest Conservation Fund
• World Land Trust-US
• Rainforest2Reef

These organizations protect and preserve rainforest habitat in countries such as Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, the United States, Canada, the Pacific, and more.

Cool, I Want to Help! How do I do it? 

To help save the rainforests:

1. Open The Rainforest Site
2. Click on the button entitled “Click Here to Give - it’s FREE!”
3. Repeat each day 

That’s all!

By repeating each day, you’ll ensure that money is finding it’s way to these important organizations who help protect the world’s rainforests.

To Help You Remember…

To help you remember, you could set The Rainforest Site as your “home page” when you open up the browser. Most browsers let you do this through their “Options” dialog box. 

For example:

• In Firefox, go to “Tools > Options“
• In Internet Explorer, go to “Tools > Internet Options“
• In Safari, it’s under “Edit > Preferences“

Green groups have had a mixed reaction to a new report, commissioned by the British government, on how to deal with deforestation and its impact on climate change.

The Eliasch Review, entitled Climate Change: Financing Global Forests, provides a particular focus on the financial side of this issue. It has also been written in anticipation of a new climate change deal in Copenhagan in late, 2009.

A key recommendation of the report is for a multi-billion fund be set up to provide financial incentives to rainforest nations, so that their rainforests become more valuable alive than dead. 

The report also suggests that “an ambitious international climate change deal should aim to halve deforestation emissions by 2020 and make the forest sector carbon neutral by 2030″.

According to Greenpeace, this isn’t ambitious enough. 

“This report shows a dangerous lack of ambition and vastly underestimates the scale of the action needed to tackle climate change” says Andy Tait, Greenpeace head of biodiversity.

“The review assumes a target of 50% emissions cuts by 2050. This is simply inadequate. There is a strong possibility that the UK will be legally obliged to make an 80% reduction over this period, and all developed countries will need to hit and possibly exceed this target to effectively tackle climate change” he continued.

Note that Greenpeace have previously proposed their own solution for saving the world’s rainforests.

Tom Pickens, from Friends of the Earth was also concerned about the Eliasch Review. He said “This scheme has the potential to cause even greater conflict over forests”.

But not all environmental groups shared this sentiment.

WWF-UK say the review is “welcome recognition of the importance of reducing emissions through deforestation in a global agreement to tackle climate change”.

“Sufficient and long-term funding is needed to act as an incentive to protect forests. More than one billion of the world’s poorest people rely on forests for their livelihoods, so any measures to reduce emissions from deforestation must ensure that local communities enjoy continued access to, and benefits from, forests resources” said Emily Brickell, climate and forests officer for WWF-UK.

However, while WWF-UK praise the report for its recommendations, they still believe more could be done. In particular, they believe other sources of funding should be considered, such as the use of revenues from the auctioning of pollution permits under the EU emissions trading scheme.

View the Eliasch Review web page, or download the full report (large PDF document).

In New Zealand, the Christchurch city council chopped down six trees smack bang in the middle of the city today. What makes it astonishing, is that today is both World Environment Day and Arbor Day!

The council has admitted that this was a “terrible coincidence”. The trees were being removed to make way for a controversial service lane.

Given the theme for his year’s World Environment Day (”Kick the habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy!”), this is even more of a “terrible coincidence”. Forest destruction is one of the worst causes of greenhouse gas.

And, the fact that New Zealand was also observing Arbor Day makes it almost laughable. The whole purpose of Arbor Day is to encourage individuals and groups to plant and care for trees!

And, as if that’s not enough, New Zealand was also the official host of this year’s World Environment Day…

One Christchurch resident said:

As a city that is known as the Garden City, we have that image to uphold. This makes a mockery of `let’s be aware of the environment and let’s walk or cycle to work

I imagine there will be a few red faces in the Christchurch City Council today!

Prince Charles has today launched the official website for his Rainforest Project. As I mentioned earlier, today is World Environment Day, so it’s a perfect day for launching a website aimed at saving the rainforests.

The main aim of the project, which launched on October 25 last year, is to make the rainforests “more valuable alive than dead”. Today, in many developing countries, rainforests are worth more dead than alive. This is mainly due to demand from developed countries for beef, palm oil, and soya.

When launching the Rainforest Project at a WWF dinner in October last year, Prince Charles said that rainforest destruction is responsible for around 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, second only to the energy sector. Further to this, both the Stern review and the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change report believe tackling deforestation may be one of the quickest and most cost effective means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the short term.

Prince Charles also said the following about the deforestation issue:

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 – we simply have to find ways of putting a price on them which makes them more valuable alive than dead.

Elaborating on this, Prince Charles says the project’s objective is:

To find innovative ways of paying the countries that are the custodians of the tropical rainforests an appropriate price for the eco-system services they provide and so out-compete the drivers of deforestation.

In today’s money driven society, this makes a lot of sense. After all, if countries are paid more for their eco-systems services than they are for the drivers of deforestation, then they will no longer allow their own rainforests to be destroyed. Furthermore, not only will they see value in keeping their existing rainforests, they will also see value in increasing the size of their rainforests - after all, more rainforest means more money.

How Will The Project Achieve Its Objective?

The project is engaging with rainforest nations, governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations to find the solutions to deforestation.

The project is also backed by 13 major global companies: Shell, Rio Tinto Zinc, McDonald’s, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Sun Media, Sky, Deutsche Bank, Man Group, KPMG, Barclays Bank, Finsbury and the European Climate Exchange.

Furthermore, the project is being advised by experts including: Lord Stern; Steve Howard, Chief Executive of the Climate Group; Kevin Conrad, the Executive Director of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations; Andrew Mitchell of the Global Canopy Programme; Kristalina Georgieva, Vice President of the World Bank; Reijo Kempinnen, head of the European Commission Representation in the UK; and Barry Gardiner MP.

How You Can Help

You can pledge your support on the Prince’s Rainforest Project website.

Video of Prince Charles Introducing the Rainforest Project

Here’s a video of Prince Charles introducing the Rainforest Project, as well as explaining why he feels this is such an important cause.

New satellite images have shown that Papua New Guinea’s rainforests are being destroyed much faster than previously thought.

Until now, Papua New Guinea was thought to have a very low rate of deforestation and degradation. These satellite images prove otherwise.

Papua New Guinea has the world’s third largest tropical rainforest. At the current rate of deforestation, 83 percent of accessible forests, and 53 percent of the country’s total forests, will be destroyed by 2021.

Most of the rainforest destruction is occurring due to commercial logging, agriculture and burning. Most of the logging is done by Malaysian logging firms. Typically, these timber companies pay landowners very little. According to Mongabay, these large companies pay landowners about $4-12 per cubic meter for logs, but sell the same logs for up to $160 per cubic meter.

The rainforest is not only being cleared for logging by the multinational timber firms though. It is also being done to make way for an increasing population. Papua New Guinea has one of the fastest rates of population growth in the world. This increase in population requires more land for subsistence farming.

Earlier this year, the Papua New Guinea government was accused of going from “Eco Hero” to “Eco Zero”. Dr Derek Wall, the Green party’s principal speaker, said:

In my view the Papuan government have gone from green heroes to eco zeros. One of the major causes of climate change is rainforest destruction and Papua New Guinea is under assault from corporations who want to clear cut its forests. This corporate onslaught is aided by a government that just a few weeks ago we all thought was green.

In response to the recent satellite photos, PNG’s Forest Minister, Belden Namah says:

We try to come up with policies to manage our forests, but we have interference by the industry and what I am saying is that as a government we should take a bold stand

He continues:

Industry may be a player in contributing to the economy of this country but I am more worried about generations tomorrow, about the clean air we can generate revenue and I think with the policy of carbon sequestration… is the way to go.

Satellite images: University of Papua New Guinea file photo.

According to the WorldWatch Institute, new satellite pictures indicate that the Amazon rainforest is decreasing faster than before.

The satellite images, taken by Brazilian National Space Research Agency (INPE), suggest that an estimated 7,000 square kilometers of rainforest was lost between August and December 2007.

At this rate deforestation will surpass that of 2006, where there was a total loss of 11,000 square kilometers for the whole year.

Deforestation in the Amazon had been on the decrease for 3 years, but at the current rate, it will be on the increase again.

Here are some facts regarding the earth’s forests:

• One and a half acres of rainforest is lost every second.
• To date, earth has lost 50% of its tropical forests worldwide.
• Many countries have lost between 70% and 95% of their forests in a very short timespan. In a 15 year timespan, Nigeria lost 79% of its old growth forests!
• Earth’s forests are being cut down at the same rate in which the human population is increasing. The alarming thing is that this rate is actually accelerating.
• At the current rate of deforestation, we will only have 20% of the world’s forests left by 2030. 10% will be in a degraded condition.
• Experts have estimated that all of earth’s rainforests will be gone within 40 years.

Given the alarming rate of deforestation, something big needs to be done. Our increasing demand for paper doesn’t help either. In 2003, the Certified Forest Products Council said:

Worldwide demand for paper – the single largest use of wood fiber – is five times what it was in the 1950s. This number is expected to double again over the next 50 years.

What can be done about this? I’m sure plenty could be done.

To start with, paper doesn’t need to be made from wood. For example, perfectly good paper can be made out of Jute or Hemp. These plants grow much faster than trees, and use up much less land. Trees take many years to grow. Jute and Hemp are fully grown within months. They also have a higher biological efficiency than trees planted for the same purpose.

We need to start thinking about ways to reduce deforestation - then act on it. Otherwise, some of us may actually see a day where there are no rainforests left.