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.”

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.

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.

What is the Rainforest Alliance

The Rainforest Alliance is a member based organization dedicated to helping people, wildlife, and the natural environment.

Based in New York City, the Rainforest Alliance has offices throughout the United States and the world. The Rainforest Alliance works with people who depend on the land for their livelihood. It aims to help them become more sustainable in the way they work the land. In particular, the alliance helps these people grow food, harvest wood and host travelers.

The Rainforest Alliance has programs in many environmental areas such as forestry, agriculture, and tourism. It also offers third party certification and verification for forestry companies who opt for sustainable forestry.

Rainforest Alliance’s Approach

The Rainforest Alliance believes that it is possible to create a sustainable society. A society that protects the planet and provides sustainable livelihoods for its people.

To achieve this, it aims to transform the current destructive market system into one that values sustainable production, sourcing, consumption and equitable trade.

The Rainforest Alliance believes that the sustainable management of all businesses requires the following:

• Clean air and water
• Healthy biodiversity and wildlife habitat
• Reduction of waste and toxicity
• Reduction and mitigation of global warming
• Dignified and safe living and working conditions, with adequate food, education and health care for workers and their families
• Equal opportunity for all

Furthermore, it believes that the following is required in order to achieve a sustainable market:

• Sustainable sourcing, supply chain management and public accountability are standard practice
• Products carry prices that reflect their real environmental, economic and social value
• Sustainable producers, small and community-based businesses have equitable market access
• People demand and have access to high-quality, sustainable and healthy products and choices
• Financial and insurance sectors support sustainable operations and penalize unsustainable ones
• Governments support sustainability through procurement, incentives, and regulations
• Civil society sources sustainably

To learn more about the Rainforest Alliance, check out the official website.

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.

After living in Sydney (Australia) for many years, I decided to do the big “sea change” and move to a smaller, more relaxed town (well “city” actually).

I got in my car and drove around 3,000 kilometers north to a relatively small city called Cairns. Cairns is a coastal city with a huge tourism trade. Much of the tourism centers around natural attractions such as the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest.

My drive north took just over a week. It’s possible to do the trip in about 3 days but I wanted to take my time. Some people take weeks, but I had a car full of belongings so I decided not to take too much time. A week gave me a good feel for many of the beautiful places along the way and I got some nice photos out of it too!

I’ve now been in Cairns for around 5 months and I love it! I can cycle most places I need to go and there are plenty of natural attractions to take advantage of. So far, this seachange has been perfect!

Check out my Sydney to Cairns photos.