During the
Climate Convention of 2009 (COP15), in Copenhagen, Brazil surprised the world
by voluntarily committing to reducing the upward trend in its greenhouse gas
emissions. The central element in that sustainability policy would be a
significant decrease in deforestation of the Amazon, projected to fall below
3.9 thousand km2 each year until 2020. This policy shows a clear commitment of
the country to fighting global warming. The increase in the planet's
temperature has accelerated in recent years. 2015 and 2016 have witnessed the
highest global temperatures in the historical record within the last 150 years.
For around 10
years, until the signing of the Paris Accord in the Climate Convention of
December 2015 (COP21), the best environmental piece of global news year after
year was the decrease in deforestation of the Amazon: the yearly rate of
deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell from unthinkable 28 thousand km2 in
2004 to 4.6 thousand km2 in 2012, a decrease of 83%, oscillating from 5 to 6
thousand km2/year until 2015. This stabilization trend, however, seems to have
been reverted this year. Deforestation in 2016, as measured by the PRODES
system at the National Space Research Institute (INPE) have reached almost 8
thousand km2. Image 1 compares the distribution and intensity of new
deforestation in 2014, 2015, and 2016. We can see the existence of two quite
active fronts for the entire period, more intensely in 2016.
Does this
indicate a possible reversion of the process, signaling the beginning of a new
cycle of high rates of deforestation?
First, we need
to identify the main causes of the decrease in deforestation after 2004. Many
scientific studies have debunked what was thought until 10 years ago to be the
major force of the deforestation dynamics, meaning the price of agricultural
commodities meat and soybeans, and the increase in global demand for those
products. Agricultural production in the Amazon has grown steadily while
deforestation plummeted.
These studies
also identified the effective implementation of public policies for controlling
and reducing deforestation as the fall inductor element. Considering that
nearly all deforestation is illegal, this policy was strict in directly
attacking the illegality with initiatives by IBAMA, Federal Police and the
Attorney General (MP) to monitor and disrupt organized crime, particularly
gangs that illegally extracted wood and encroached into public land. This
continued initiative of command and control had the addition of policies that
restricted credit and subsidies to unsustainable practices and created
protection areas, as well as regulating and marking indigenous land.
Finally,
awareness actions toward responsible and sustainable consumption leveraged
agreements such as the moratorium on soybean expansion into forest areas since
2006, and the MP's agreement with large cold store chains and supermarkets for
tracking the source of meat and refusal to purchase products originated in
areas illegally deforested.
Modern tools for
monitoring changes in vegetation based on satellite-borne sensors – pioneered
in Brazil by INPE –
detect illegal deforestation almost in real-time and
have been essential to environmental agencies in combating them. Technology
advances are noticeable in our ability to observe the Earth remotely. An
article in last Thursday’s Science Magazine, by American researcher Greg Asner
and others, reports the use of new technologies based on laser images captured
by aircraft to discriminate areas of maximum biodiversity in the Peruvian
Amazon and Andes that are a priority in preservation, indicating those under
greater risk of disappearing due to human action.
Two factors may
be the root for the recent increase in deforestation. First, a direct
cause-effect relation has been proven between inspection initiatives and
deforestation. The increased budget cuts by federal and state governments due
to reduced income have stopped or delayed initiatives to inspect and fight
illegal activities.
Secondly, and
more subjectively, another factor may have contributed to the increase in
deforestation: changes in environmental law. The new Forest Code, approved in
2012, provided some positive aspects, such as the Rural Environmental Registry
(CAR), but on the other hand, was heavy on deregulation and pardoned a large
portion of the illegal deforestation committed before 2008, indicating that at
some point in the future any new illegal deforestation activities will also be
pardoned.
Likewise,
despite 55% of the Amazon forest area being currently under some form of
protection, recent changes in the limits of protected areas in the region also
point to the unbalanced forces of private (agribusiness, mining and
infrastructure projects) and public interests in the region. Furthermore,
several preservation units remain unconsolidated and weakly implemented.
As geographer
Bertha Becker used to say, different time-spaces coexist in the Amazon. While
in some areas there are initiatives to intensify and insert into certified
market chains, in others a frontier mindset of encroaching and rural violence
survives. In that scenario, we can
explain, for example, the resistance of large land owners to releasing their
CPF to CAR – which is public information – based on the
fear that products without sourcing certificates will be avoided by conscious
consumers, an incontrovertible change in a global and digital world.
Deforested areas
in the Brazilian Amazon have reached nearly 800 thousand km2, but with an
average agricultural productivity of no more than 30% of agriculture in the
State of São Paulo, for example. Recent studies show it is possible to meet the
demand for agricultural products with no additional deforestation – not
only in the Amazon, but in all Brazilian biomes – by increasing
productivity, particularly in grazing areas.
Illegal
deforestation must be harshly and relentlessly opposed, and the protected areas
network must be strengthened. Even if the current recession scenario may impose
hardships for initiatives that depend on public budgets, we live in a unique
moment in our history, when the population expects Brazil to finally join the
ranks of Democratic Lawful States. One of the direct consequences will be
maintaining the Amazon forest without diminishing our potential as a great
producer of food. Only a collection of integrated actions directed at both
public and private areas will be able to control and ideally to nullify the
deforestation and degradation of the Amazon and other biomes.
*Carlos A.
Nobre, INPE Graduate Professor, CEMADEN collaborating researcher, member of the
Brazilian Academy of Science and the Nature Preservation Experts Network
Ana Paula de
Aguiar Dutra, INPE researcher