The world’s largest rainforest has been burning for almost 20 days. The situation has created shock and indignation for people around the world, but the real problem has been slowly increasing for the past 30 years due to a long and fast-moving deforestation phenomenon.
Although there are still no figures of the magnitude of the damage, NASA’s Aqua satelliteindicates that there are 63,000 active heat points in the Amazon, particularly in the most deforested municipalities. Since President Bolsonaro came to power in January 2019, the discourse has been explicitly oriented towards a radical U-turn in environmental policy. The direction taken promotes the exploitation of the rainforest, the legalization of mining in indigenous reserves and the reduction of controls in protected areas.
An alarming report published by the Space Research Institute of Brazil (INPE)has revealed that deforestation in the country’s forests climbed 80 percent in June compared to the same date last year with more than 7,536 square km devastated since August 2018. More than 3,000 km² were destroyed since the election of president Jair Bolsonaro, an area almost equivalent to Luxemburg and Andorra together.
The Greenpeace report Amazon Cattle Footprint, indicates that Brazil is the world’s leading exporter of coffee, sugar, soybeans and beef. Cattle occupy more than 60 percent of the deforested areas. The number of cattle in the Brazilian Amazon is growing extremely quickly: the bovine herd has more than doubled, going from 26.6 million to 64 million in the past 10 years. Such growth intensifies destruction of the Amazon forest, which is being replaced by new pasture areas.
In words of Marcio Astrini, Greenpeace Public Policy Coordinator: “The numbers of the destruction, that were already high and unacceptable, got even worse. Most of the answers that explain this increase are political. It’s from the center of the Brazilian power that comes the constant stimulus to the environmental crime in the Amazon”.
According to professor Germán Povedafrom National University in Medellin, Colombia the affirmation made by Bolsonaro that “the Amazon belongs to Brazil”, is not accurate. The Amazon rainforest belongs to nine countries, and what happens to the Amazon in Brazil affects the entire continent and the world. In his studies about the “Role of the Amazon in the Global and Continental Climate: impacts of Climate change and deforestation” professor Poveda shows how water vapor that evaporates in the Amazon forest is travels to the Andes mountain range, and goes back down the Amazonian foothills to the La Plata river among others, in southern America. Glaciers also feed on Amazonian waters that are already disappearing due to the warming of the atmosphere, and if you remove another source of moisture, defrosting is accelerated. If deforestation continues, the water cycle will be completely altered. Cities like Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and even Bogotá would suffer from water shortages. Further, not only does the flow down the river decrease, but the amount of sediment with which the Andean rivers feed the Amazonian rivers would be reduced too -The same sediments that make the incredible biodiversity of the Amazon possible.
Now the big questions arise: How far would Governments and the international organizations go to prevent and act against this irreversible environmental damage? Is assistance made by Norway enough to protect the Amazon? Is the whole world willing to pay for the ecosystem services the Amazon provide?
The importance of the ecosystem services the Amazon provides to the world has been already measured. The most recent research published in the journal Nature Sustainabilityestablishes that the monetary value of the ecosystem services provided by the rainforest is about USD$8.2 billion to Brazil´s economy per year. Another USD$ 3.3 billion of that totals is generated from private owned forest areas, while areas under protection and indigenous reserves contribute USD$3 billion. These findings should help to reconsider the way in which we understand the tropical forest impact and the importance of its conservation, such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES)schemes that allow not only the conservation of biodiversity, but the sustainability of agricultural production in the Amazon region.
For ten years, Norway and Germany have supported Brazil in the protection of the Amazon rainforest with more than 800 million Euros. Norway country is the one that has disbursed the most money since the creation of the Amazon Fund with Brazil in 2008. But in June 2019, the government broke that agreement by ending the Amazon Fund meetings. President Bolsonaro has alleged that Brazil does not need these founds accusing the two countries of having dark interests in the wealth of the rainforest. He’s affirmed that the Amazon “is a Brazilian issue in which the other countries have nothing to do with it”. In response, Ola Elvestuen, his Norwegian counterpart, said an expected payment of about $33.27m (£27.36m) would not take place as Brazil had, in effect, broken the terms of its deal.
The solutions go beyond stopping the fires now and receiving founds from one or two countries; the world must start thinking about a long-term solution that restores the damage done in the past 100 years. By stablishing a worldwide mechanism to protect the amazon, governments will understand how a sustainable forest is much more valuable than the private business around it.
The application of international environmental law must overcome its weak enforcement to protect vital ecosystems from human threats. If political agendas are not oriented to comply with the environmental rule of law, devastation of Amazon rainforest will embody the outcome of a well-planned strategy to deconstruct the environmental structure in the country, banning environmental and oversight bodies, and weakening public policies that fight deforestation.
It is clear that the Brazilian government’s actions and omissions are violating the “duty to protect”(doctrine recognized by all member states of the United Nations).As a result, the international community and its environmental organs have the duty to act and initiate humanitarian intervention, economic sanctions or any other measures available to defend the rainforest from a government which is unwilling to protect such a vital ecosystem.
Meanwhile, what we have now is a setback in environmental management, a clearing of those policies and the loss of the most important ecosystem in the planet. Even though the Brazilian Amazon is as important as ever to cope with the climate crisis, the fires and devastation are just the beginning. So long as Bolsonaro’s government remains in power and the international community remains unresponsive to assume its role in the solution, the impact will be much worse.
