*[Enwl-eng] Cattle, Soy,Hydro Cause Increase In Deforestation Across the Amazon

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Mar 10, 2013, 5:15:39 PM3/10/13
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*Amazon Deforestation on the Rise*

Air Date: Week of March 1, 2013

Illustration Omitted:
Amazon landowners must keep forest on 80% of their land. (Photo:
Bobby Bascomb)

After more than 6 years of steady declines the deforestation rate in the
Brazilian Amazon has more than doubled in the last six months. Observers
blame the deforestation in part on changes that weakened Brazil's Forest
Code. Living on Earth's Bobby Bascomb reports on that, and new citizen
initiatives to monitor what's happening in the Amazon region.

Transcript

CURWOOD: Tropical forests are vital lungs for the planet, but always at
risk from deforestation and development. Brazil, though, has
dramatically reduced deforestation; from 2005 to 2011 rates of
destruction in the Brazilian Amazon dropped some 80 percent. But in the
last half of 2012 the pace of deforestation more than doubled. Paulo
Barreto is a Senior Researcher at the non-profit research institute Imazon.

BARRETO: Imazon uses satellite images to evaluate monthly the
deforestation. From August 2012 up to January we have seen an increase
in deforestation. It's about 120 percent higher than the same period in
the previous year.

CURWOOD: Now there are several possible reasons for the rise in
deforestation and one principal factor relates to changes in Brazil's
Forest Code, which protects the rainforest by limiting how much land can
be cleared and developed. In May of 2012 the Brazilian Congress proposed
changes to the law that had been protecting the Amazon for more than 50
years, and Living on Earth's Bobby Bascomb brought us that story.

Illustration Omitted:
Cattle and soybeans are by far the largest drivers of
deforestation in the Amazon (Photo: Bobby Bascomb)

BASCOMB: In the 1950s and 60s the Brazilian government encouraged people
to go to the Amazon and make it productive, grow food to feed an
impoverished country.

[ARCHIVE DOCUMENTARY MUSIC UP THEN UNDER]

DOCUMENTARY: It is not enough to build roads. We must colonize for
agriculture or for cattle. The land is good. There are green pastures in
the forest made of milk and honey.

[AMBIANCE BIRDS, ROOSTER]

BASCOMB: 92-year-old Jospe Perrer de Brito was one of those early settlers.

Jospe Perrer de Brito and his wife inside their home. Jospe paddled here
in a canoe to work in agriculture in 1958. (Photo: Bruce Gellerman)

DE BRITO: When I first came here I came by paddle in 1958. There were
only wild Indians living here.

[AMBIANCE, PADDLING]

BASCOMB: De Brito paddled up the Rio des Mortes, in a dug out canoe. He
came to farm and raise cows.

DE BRITO: When I first came here, there was a lot of free land. Now
every piece of land has been grabbed up by people. There was a lot of
forest, very big. Not anymore. The people chopped it down. I think
things will be worse if they chop down all of the forest.

Illustration Omitted:
Since the government started collecting data in the 1970s an area
of rainforest nearly the size of France has been deforested to make way
for agricultural production. (Photo: Bobby Bascomb)

BASCOMB: Today, half a century since De Brito paddled up the river, 150
million acres of forest has been chopped down, in spite of the Forest
Code that requires land owners to keep 80 percent of their property
forested. It's called the Legal Reserve and people that cut down their
Legal Reserve must reforest it and pay fines. Yet 4.6 million
agricultural producers are in violation of the law.

RIEDEL: It's a very complex situation where it made 90 percent of the
producers outlaws.

BASCOMB: Eduardo Riedel represents those producers as Vice President of
the National Federation of Agriculture and Livestock. He says Brazil
needs the new Forest Code Congress just passed because the current law
is out of step with reality. The new code would create an amnesty for
people that illegally deforested before 2008. People will not have to
pay the fines as long as they reforest the degraded land.

RIEDEL: We think it's much better for the environment if you reforest
than you pay the fines. It's not an amnesty, that you don't need anymore
to pay the fine. It's not that. You don't pay the fine if you reforest.

Roads cut through the forest bring settlers to the Amazon and
agricultural products out to ports. (Photo: Bobby Bascomb)

BASCOMB: But environmentalists and scientists see two problems with that
rationale. First is the problem of enforcement. The Brazilian Amazon is
roughly half the size of the continental United States, yet has just 400
environmental police to patrol the region and enforce laws. A second
concern is that the amnesty clause could actually spur more
deforestation. Daniel Brindis is a forests campaigner for Greenpeace,
based in Brazil.

BRINDIS: The message is that you can violate the law with impunity.
There might be another round of amnesty on the way or you don't need to
take the code seriously.

BASCOMB: A piece of land cleared and ready to grow soybeans or graze
cows is far more valuable than the same piece of land with trees on it.
So Brindis says that farmers and ranchers are choosing to deforest now,
assuming another pardon will come along later.

BRINDIS: We've actually seen this response in a rise in deforestation
rates. Over the first quarter, the first three months of the year,
deforestation was triple that of the same three months from the year before.

Illustration Omitted:
Philip Fearnside is a research professor with the National
Institute for Research in the Amazon. (Photo: Bobby Bascomb)

BASCOMB: Another change in the law directly encourages deforestation by
allowing land owners to cut down trees closer to river banks. The Amazon
Basin is full of meandering rivers with broad bands of dark green forest
along them. The new code requires a narrower forest buffer along the
rivers. That troubles Philip Fearnside, a research professor at the
National Institute for Research in the Amazon.

FEARNSIDE: Those riverside forests are very important in terms of
avoiding flooding and so forth and they're also very important for
biodiversity because those are the corridors that allow animals and
plants to move between the different patches that are left after
deforestation has advanced.

Illustration Omitted:
Strips of forest follow the same meandering pattern as rivers.
They are called permanent protection areas.(Photo: Bobby Bascomb)

What keeps biodiversity viable is having some connection between those
little patches that are left. By eliminating these areas of permanent
protection you have a much greater impact on biodiversity than cutting
the same area of forest somewhere else. It's the worst place to have
that extra clearing to be allowed.

BASCOMB: Most scientists agree that the new Forest Code will increase
deforestation and reduce biodiversity. And Fearnside says the majority
of the Brazilian public are against the changes as well.

FEARNSIDE: Brazil is now over 80 percent urban so most of the population
has no direct economic stake in being allowed to deforest more. Opinion
polls show most Brazilians are against this legislation but the lower
house of Congress passed last May by a margin of 7 to 1 for something
that's basically against the interest of the majority of the Brazilian
population.

Property owners are allowed to develop some land and must keep some as
forest. From the sky the north of Brazil looks like a patchwork of
forest and agricultural land. (Photo: Bobby Bascomb)

BASCOMB: Why was the Congress so overwhelmingly in support of a forest
bill if the Brazilian people are not in support of it?

FEARNSIDE: That's a good question. You have a very powerful ruralist
lobby that has a tremendous amount of money. Big soy bean planters and
ranchers contribute to this. It's presented as favoring small farmers
but money and influence comes from wealthy land owners. It shows very
much the balance of power, which has shifted to be very
anti-environmentalist.

BASCOMB: The fate of the new forest code rests on the pen of Brazilian
President Dilma Rousseff. When she campaigned for the job she promised
to balance economic development with environmental conservation. She has
continued to say that she would veto any provision that allowed amnesty
for illegal deforestation. The Brazilian public is holding her to that
promise with a widespread campaign known as "Veta Dilma" -- "Veto the
forest code President Dilma".

President Dilma Rousseff has the power to veto the new forest code but
congress could overturn her veto. (Wikimedia Commons)

The slogan even made its way to an awards ceremony for the former
president Lula, hosted by a famous Brazilian actress Camila Pitanga.

[PORTUGUESE THEN ENGLISH]

PITANGA: Mr. President I will break protocol for a moment, only to ask
you one thing...Veta Dilma.

[CROUD ERUPTS WITH CLAPPING AND CHEERING]

CURWOOD: That's Bobby Bascomb's report from May of last year. And Bobby
joins me in the studio now to talk about what's happened since then. Hi,
Bobby.

BASCOMB: Hi Steve.

CURWOOD: So, what did president Dilma Rousseff decide in the end?

BASCOMB: Well, she used her line item veto to strike down 12 provisions
proposed by Congress. That achieved more protection for the forest than
the Congress wanted but far less than what the original law provided.
And now, as predicted, deforestation is suddenly rising after years of
decline. Paulo Barreto from Imazon says weakening the forest code is one
of the principle reasons.

BARRETO: The National Congress, they changed the Forest Code last year
to give an amnesty to some illegal deforestation. So, this gives a sign
that Congress then can validate illegal operation, illegal logging,
illegal deforestation. So, that's a bad sign that people get in the
field and they get more confident to deforest.

BASCOMB: On top of that there's also been a rise in the market price of
agricultural commodities like soy and cattle, which are the biggest
drivers of deforestation in the Amazon. And then there's another factor,
hydroelectric dams...

CURWOOD: Dams?

BASCOMB: Yeah, there are about 60 hydroelectric dams in the works and
the government has removed protection from the parts of the forest where
they're planned. It's not that much forest but the bigger issue is that
farmers see the government developing in protected areas and think, why
can't I?

CURWOOD: So, all these factors together are causing deforestation rates
in the Brazilian Amazon to double?

BASCOMB: Exactly, but it's important to note that the deforestation data
has not been confirmed by the government - officials stopped releasing
monthly data a couple of months after the rate of deforestation started
to increase. Observers I talked to think the decision to suddenly stop
reporting that information is political. One of them is Gustavo
Faleiros, he's a Knight International Journalism Fellow.

FALEIROS: We start realizing that the Brazilian government is delaying a
lot the release of new data on deforestation. And we realized that
deforestation was increasing. So, it was impossible not to ask yourself
why the government was delaying so much this data.

BASCOMB: Gustavo's set up a website, called InfoAmazonia to get the
information out.

CURWOOD: And how does that work?

BASCOMB: Well, the website collects data from satellites and other
sources and compiles it in one place where you can build your own maps
of the Amazon, all nine countries. And there are layers of real time
data on mining, oil concessions, cattle ranching, hydroelectric dams...
all the biggest drivers of deforestation. And the results can be really
powerful. When you overlay cattle ranching with deforestation, for
instance, it becomes pretty obvious that there's a close relationship there.

CURWOOD: So, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts here.

BASCOMB: Yes, but there's one more really cool thing. There's another
map layer and that's journalists' stories from the Amazon.
So let's say you're looking at a map of gold mining in Peru, you can
then click on icons that will take you to stories about Peruvian gold
mining, and later this year InfoAmazonia plans to incorporate data
collected by citizens. So, small NGO's, scientists, or indigenous groups
can collect data on water quality or wildlife for example and upload it
to the website. Gustavo thinks this kind of information is important to
the world, not just Amazonian countries.

FALEIROS: Well, the Amazon is for sure like the mirror of humanity in a
way. A lot of people are looking, what are we going to do with the last
pristine area in the world. Everyone wants to see if we're going to be
able to hold that thing for the future.

BASCOMB: That's Gustavo Faleiros. There's a link to his website,
InfoAmazonia at our website, LOE.org.

CURWOOD: That's Living on Earth's Bobby Bascomb. Thanks, Bobby.

BASCOMB: You're welcome.



http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=13-P13-00009&segmentID=3


** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational
purposes only. ***



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