the deforestation of the amazon case study answers

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Case Study: The Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon in context

Tropical rainforests are often considered to be the “cradles of biodiversity.” Though they cover only about 6% of the Earth’s land surface, they are home to over 50% of global biodiversity. Rainforests also take in massive amounts of carbon dioxide and release oxygen through photosynthesis, which has also given them the nickname “lungs of the planet.” They also store very large amounts of carbon, and so cutting and burning their biomass contributes to global climate change. Many modern medicines are derived from rainforest plants, and several very important food crops originated in the rainforest, including bananas, mangos, chocolate, coffee, and sugar cane.

In order to qualify as a tropical rainforest, an area must receive over 250 centimeters of rainfall each year and have an average temperature above 24 degrees centigrade, as well as never experience frosts. The Amazon rainforest in South America is the largest in the world. The second largest is the Congo in central Africa, and other important rainforests can be found in Central America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. Brazil contains about 40% of the world’s remaining tropical rainforest. Its rainforest covers an area of land about 2/3 the size of the continental United States.

There are countless reasons, both anthropocentric and ecocentric, to value rainforests. But they are one of the most threatened types of ecosystems in the world today. It’s somewhat difficult to estimate how quickly rainforests are being cut down, but estimates range from between 50,000 and 170,000 square kilometers per year. Even the most conservative estimates project that if we keep cutting down rainforests as we are today, within about 100 years there will be none left.

How does a rainforest work?

Rainforests are incredibly complex ecosystems, but understanding a few basics about their ecology will help us understand why clear-cutting and fragmentation are such destructive activities for rainforest biodiversity.

High biodiversity in tropical rainforests means that the interrelationships between organisms are very complex. A single tree may house more than 40 different ant species, each of which has a different ecological function and may alter the habitat in distinct and important ways. Ecologists debate about whether systems that have high biodiversity are stable and resilient, like a spider web composed of many strong individual strands, or fragile, like a house of cards. Both metaphors are likely appropriate in some cases. One thing we can be certain of is that it is very difficult in a rainforest system, as in most other ecosystems, to affect just one type of organism. Also, clear cutting one small area may damage hundreds or thousands of established species interactions that reach beyond the cleared area.

Pollination is a challenge for rainforest trees because there are so many different species, unlike forests in the temperate regions that are often dominated by less than a dozen tree species. One solution is for individual trees to grow close together, making pollination simpler, but this can make that species vulnerable to extinction if the one area where it lives is clear cut. Another strategy is to develop a mutualistic relationship with a long-distance pollinator, like a specific bee or hummingbird species. These pollinators develop mental maps of where each tree of a particular species is located and then travel between them on a sort of “trap-line” that allows trees to pollinate each other. One problem is that if a forest is fragmented then these trap-line connections can be disrupted, and so trees can fail to be pollinated and reproduce even if they haven’t been cut.

The quality of rainforest soils is perhaps the most surprising aspect of their ecology. We might expect a lush rainforest to grow from incredibly rich, fertile soils, but actually, the opposite is true. While some rainforest soils that are derived from volcanic ash or from river deposits can be quite fertile, generally rainforest soils are very poor in nutrients and organic matter. Rainforests hold most of their nutrients in their live vegetation, not in the soil. Their soils do not maintain nutrients very well either, which means that existing nutrients quickly “leech” out, being carried away by water as it percolates through the soil. Also, soils in rainforests tend to be acidic, which means that it’s difficult for plants to access even the few existing nutrients. The section on slash and burn agriculture in the previous module describes some of the challenges that farmers face when they attempt to grow crops on tropical rainforest soils, but perhaps the most important lesson is that once a rainforest is cut down and cleared away, very little fertility is left to help a forest regrow.

What is driving deforestation in the Amazon?

Many factors contribute to tropical deforestation, but consider this typical set of circumstances and processes that result in rapid and unsustainable rates of deforestation. This story fits well with the historical experience of Brazil and other countries with territory in the Amazon Basin.

Population growth and poverty encourage poor farmers to clear new areas of rainforest, and their efforts are further exacerbated by government policies that permit landless peasants to establish legal title to land that they have cleared.

At the same time, international lending institutions like the World Bank provide money to the national government for large-scale projects like mining, construction of dams, new roads, and other infrastructure that directly reduces the forest or makes it easier for farmers to access new areas to clear.

The activities most often encouraging new road development are timber harvesting and mining. Loggers cut out the best timber for domestic use or export, and in the process knock over many other less valuable trees. Those trees are eventually cleared and used for wood pulp, or burned, and the area is converted into cattle pastures. After a few years, the vegetation is sufficiently degraded to make it not profitable to raise cattle, and the land is sold to poor farmers seeking out a subsistence living.

Regardless of how poor farmers get their land, they often are only able to gain a few years of decent crop yields before the poor quality of the soil overwhelms their efforts, and then they are forced to move on to another plot of land. Small-scale farmers also hunt for meat in the remaining fragmented forest areas, which reduces the biodiversity in those areas as well.

Another important factor not mentioned in the scenario above is the clearing of rainforest for industrial agriculture plantations of bananas, pineapples, and sugar cane. These crops are primarily grown for export, and so an additional driver to consider is consumer demand for these crops in countries like the United States.

These cycles of land use, which are driven by poverty and population growth as well as government policies, have led to the rapid loss of tropical rainforests. What is lost in many cases is not simply biodiversity, but also valuable renewable resources that could sustain many generations of humans to come. Efforts to protect rainforests and other areas of high biodiversity is the topic of the next section.

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September 7, 2021 | Combined Reports - UConn Communications

Study Shows the Impacts of Deforestation and Forest Burning on Biodiversity in the Amazon

Since 2001, between 40,000 and 73,400 square miles of Amazon rainforest have been impacted by fires

Ring of fire: Smoke rises through the understory of a forest in the Amazon region. Plants and animals in the Amazonian rainforest evolved largely without fire, so they lack the adaptations necessary to cope with it. (Credit: Paulo Brando)

A new study, co-authored by a team of researchers including UConn Ecology and Evolutionary Biology researcher Cory Merow provides the first quantitative assessment of how environmental policies on deforestation, along with forest fires and drought, have impacted the diversity of plants and animals in the Amazon. The findings were published in the Sept. 1 issue of Nature .

Researchers used records of more than 14,500 plant and vertebrate species to create biodiversity maps of the Amazon region. Overlaying the maps with historical and current observations of forest fires and deforestation over the last two decades allowed the team to quantify the cumulative impacts on the region’s species.

They found that since 2001, between 40,000 and 73,400 square miles of Amazon rainforest have been impacted by fires, affecting 95% of all Amazonian species and as many as 85% of species that are listed as threatened in this region. While forest management policies enacted in Brazil during the mid-2000s slowed the rate of habitat destruction, relaxed enforcement of these policies coinciding with a change in government in 2019 has seemingly begun to reverse this trend, the authors write. With fires impacting 1,640 to 4,000 square miles of forest, 2019 stands out as one of the most extreme years for biodiversity impacts since 2009, when regulations limiting deforestation were enforced.

“Perhaps most compelling is the role that public pressure played in curbing forest loss in 2019,” Merow says. “When the Brazilian government stopped enforced forest regulations in 2019, each month between January and August 2019 was the worse month on record (e.g. comparing January 2019 to previous January’s) for forest loss in the 20-year history of available data. However, based on international pressure, forest regulation resumed in September 2019, and forest loss declined significantly for the rest of the year, resulting in 2019 looking like an average year compared to the 20-year history.  This was big: active media coverage and public support for policy changes were effective at curbing biodiversity loss on a very rapid time scale.”

The findings are especially critical in light of the fact that at no point in time did the Amazon get a break from those increasing impacts, which would have allowed for some recovery, says senior study author Brian Enquist, a professor in UArizona’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology .

“Even with policies in place, which you can think of as a brake slowing the rate of deforestation, it’s like a car that keeps moving forward, just at a slower speed,” Enquist says. “But in 2019, it’s like the foot was let off the brake, causing it to accelerate again.”

Known mostly for its dense rainforests, the Amazon basin supports around 40% of the world’s remaining tropical forests. It is of global importance as a provider of ecosystem services such as scrubbing and storing carbon from the atmosphere, and it plays a vital role in regulating Earth’s climate. The area also is an enormous reservoir of the planet’s biodiversity, providing habitats for one out of every 10 of the planet’s known species. It has been estimated that in the Amazon, 1,000 tree species can populate an area smaller than a half square mile.

“Fire is not a part of the natural cycle in the rainforest,” says study co-author Crystal N. H. McMichael at the University of Amsterdam. “Native species lack the adaptations that would allow them to cope with it, unlike the forest communities in temperate areas. Repeated burning can cause massive changes in species composition and likely devastating consequences for the entire ecosystem.”

Since the 1960s, the Amazon has lost about 20% of its forest cover to deforestation and fires. While fires and deforestation often go hand in hand, that has not always been the case, Enquist says. As climate change brings more frequent and more severe drought conditions to the region, and fire is often used to clear large areas of rainforest for the agricultural industry, deforestation has spillover effects by increasing the chances of wildfires. Forest loss is predicted reach 21 to 40% by 2050, and such habitat loss will have large impacts on the region’s biodiversity, according to the authors.

“Since the majority of fires in the Amazon are intentionally set by people, preventing them is largely within our control,” says study co-author Patrick Roehrdanz, senior manager of climate change and biodiversity at Conservation International. “One way is to recommit to strong antideforestation policies in Brazil, combined with incentives for a forest economy, and replicate them in other Amazonian countries.”

Policies to protect Amazonian biodiversity should include the formal recognition of Indigenous lands, which encompass more than one-third of the Amazon region, the authors write, pointing to previous research showing that lands owned, used or occupied by Indigenous peoples have less species decline, less pollution and better-managed natural resources.

The authors say their study underscores the dangers of continuing lax policy enforcement. As fires encroach on the heart of the Amazon basin, where biodiversity is greatest, their impacts will have more dire effects, even if the rate of forest burning remains unchanged.

The research was made possible by strategic investment funds allocated by the Arizona Institutes for Resilience at UArizona and the university’s Bridging Biodiversity and Conservation Science group. Additional support came from the National Science Foundation’s Harnessing the Data Revolution program . Data and computation were provided through the Botanical Information and Ecology Network , which is supported by CyVerse , the NSF’s data management platform led by UArizona.

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The Deforestation of the Amazon

A Case Study in Understanding Ecosystems and Their Value

By Philip Camill

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In this case study, students examine tropical deforestation in the Amazon from the perspective of three dominant stakeholders in the region: a peasant farmer, logger, and environmentalist. As part of the exercise, students perform a cost-benefit analysis of clearing a plot of tropical forest in the Amazon from the perspective of one of these stakeholder groups. Developed for a course in global change biology, this case could also be used in courses in general ecology, environmental science, environmental ethics, environmental policy, and environmental/ecological economics.

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• Understand the political, cultural, and economic history leading to tropical deforestation in Amazonia. Understand issues facing the major stakeholders in the Amazon.
• Understand the concern for such a large loss in biodiversity.
• Understand the concepts of market and non-market valuation of ecosystems, benefit-cost analysis, and opportunity cost.
• Perform a cost-benefit analysis of clearing a plot of tropical forest in the Amazon, from the perspective of a peasant farmer, logger, and environmentalist.
• Critically evaluate economic vs. ethical valuation of ecosystems.
• Appreciate the political, social, economic, and ecological complexity of tropical deforestation.
• Appreciate how difficult decisions must me made in the face of limited or nonexistent data.

Deforestation; Amazon; tropical forest; rainforest; ecosystem; biodiversity; bioprospecting; ecotourism; ecological economics; cost-benefit analysis; tropics; developing world; South America

Subject Headings

EDUCATIONAL LEVEL

High school, Undergraduate lower division, Undergraduate upper division

TOPICAL AREAS

Ethics, Policy issues, Social issues, Social justice issues

TYPE/METHODS

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Case Study: Deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest

Deforestation in the amazon rainforest.

The Amazon rainforest area spans about 8,200,000km 2 across 9 countries, making it the largest rainforest in the world. The tree coverage in 1970 was 4.1m km 2 . In 2018, it was 3.3m km 2 . Between 2001 and 2013, the causes of Amazonian deforestation were:

Pasture and cattle ranching = 63%

Small-scale, subsistence farmers = 12%

Commercial crop farming = 7%

Tree felling and logging = 6%

Other activities = 3%

• E.g. plantations, mining, road-building, and construction.

Impacts of Deforestation in the Amazon

Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has the following environmental and economic impacts:

Environmental impact of Amazonian deforestation

• Photosynthesis by trees in the Amazon absorbs 5% of the world's carbon emissions each year (2bn tons of CO2).
• 100 billion tonnes of carbon are stored in the wood of the trees in the Amazon.
• If the Amazon were completely deforested, it would release the 100bn tonnes and also reduce the amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere by 2bn tons each year.
• Trees anchor soil in the ground, bound to their roots. Deforestation damages the topsoil and once this has happened, the fertility of the ground is seriously damaged.

Economic impact of Amazonian deforestation

• Deforestation has fuelled the economic development of poor countries.
• In 2018, Brazil exported $28bn worth of metals. The mining industry creates jobs, exports and helps increase Brazilian people's standard of living.
• Similarly, hydroelectric power plants and cattle farms help to create jobs.
• In 2018, Brazil became the world's largest exporter of beef.
• Rio Tinto, an iron ore mining company employs 47,000 people globally and thousands of these are in Brazil.

The rate of deforestation in the Amazon

• In 2015, the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff claimed that the rate of deforestation had fallen by 83% and that actually Brazil was going to reforest the Amazon.
• However, the policies under President Temer and President Bolsonaro has reversed Rousseff's plan. In 2019, under Bolsonaro, the rate of deforestation was increasing again.

1 The Challenge of Natural Hazards

1.1 Natural Hazards

1.1.1 Types of Natural Hazards

1.1.2 Hazard Risk

1.1.3 Consequences of Natural Hazards

1.1.4 End of Topic Test - Natural Hazards

1.1.5 Exam-Style Questions - Natural Hazards

1.2 Tectonic Hazards

1.2.1 Tectonic Plates

1.2.2 Tectonic Plates & Convection Currents

1.2.3 Plate Margins

1.2.4 Volcanoes

1.2.5 Effects of Volcanoes

1.2.6 Responses to Volcanic Eruptions

1.2.7 Earthquakes

1.2.8 Earthquakes 2

1.2.9 Responses to Earthquakes

1.2.10 Case Studies: The L'Aquila & Kashmir Earthquakes

1.2.11 Earthquake Case Study: Chile 2010

1.2.12 Earthquake Case Study: Nepal 2015

1.2.13 Living with Tectonic Hazards 1

1.2.14 Living with Tectonic Hazards 2

1.2.15 End of Topic Test - Tectonic Hazards

1.2.16 Exam-Style Questions - Tectonic Hazards

1.2.17 Tectonic Hazards - Statistical Skills

1.3 Weather Hazards

1.3.1 Global Atmospheric Circulation

1.3.2 Surface Winds

1.3.3 UK Weather Hazards

1.3.4 Tropical Storms

1.3.5 Features of Tropical Storms

1.3.6 Impact of Tropical Storms 1

1.3.7 Impact of Tropical Storms 2

1.3.8 Tropical Storms Case Study: Katrina

1.3.9 Tropical Storms Case Study: Haiyan

1.3.10 UK Weather Hazards Case Study: Somerset 2014

1.3.11 End of Topic Test - Weather Hazards

1.3.12 Exam-Style Questions - Weather Hazards

1.3.13 Weather Hazards - Statistical Skills

1.4 Climate Change

1.4.1 Evidence for Climate Change

1.4.2 Causes of Climate Change

1.4.3 Effects of Climate Change

1.4.4 Managing Climate Change

1.4.5 End of Topic Test - Climate Change

1.4.6 Exam-Style Questions - Climate Change

1.4.7 Climate Change - Statistical Skills

2 The Living World

2.1 Ecosystems

2.1.1 Ecosystems

2.1.2 Ecosystem Cascades & Global Ecosystems

2.1.3 Ecosystem Case Study: Freshwater Ponds

2.2 Tropical Rainforests

2.2.1 Tropical Rainforests - Intro & Interdependence

2.2.2 Adaptations

2.2.3 Biodiversity of Tropical Rainforests

2.2.4 Deforestation

2.2.5 Case Study: Deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest

2.2.6 Sustainable Management of Rainforests

2.2.7 Case Study: Malaysian Rainforest

2.2.8 End of Topic Test - Tropical Rainforests

2.2.9 Exam-Style Questions - Tropical Rainforests

2.2.10 Deforestation - Statistical Skills

2.3 Hot Deserts

2.3.1 Overview of Hot Deserts

2.3.2 Biodiversity & Adaptation to Hot Deserts

2.3.3 Case Study: Sahara Desert

2.3.4 Desertification

2.3.5 Case Study: Thar Desert

2.3.6 End of Topic Test - Hot Deserts

2.3.7 Exam-Style Questions - Hot Deserts

2.4 Tundra & Polar Environments

2.4.1 Overview of Cold Environments

2.4.2 Adaptations in Cold Environments

2.4.3 Biodiversity in Cold Environments

2.4.4 Case Study: Alaska

2.4.5 Sustainable Management

2.4.6 Case Study: Svalbard

2.4.7 End of Topic Test - Tundra & Polar Environments

2.4.8 Exam-Style Questions - Cold Environments

3 Physical Landscapes in the UK

3.1 The UK Physical Landscape

3.1.1 The UK Physical Landscape

3.2 Coastal Landscapes in the UK

3.2.1 Types of Wave

3.2.2 Weathering & Mass Movement

3.2.3 Processes of Erosion & Wave-Cut Platforms

3.2.4 Headlands, Bays, Caves, Arches & Stacks

3.2.5 Transportation

3.2.6 Deposition

3.2.7 Spits, Bars & Sand Dunes

3.2.8 Case Study: Landforms on the Dorset Coast

3.2.9 Types of Coastal Management 1

3.2.10 Types of Coastal Management 2

3.2.11 Coastal Management Case Study - Holderness

3.2.12 Coastal Management Case Study: Swanage

3.2.13 Coastal Management Case Study - Lyme Regis

3.2.14 End of Topic Test - Coastal Landscapes in the UK

3.2.15 Exam-Style Questions - Coasts

3.3 River Landscapes in the UK

3.3.1 The River Valley

3.3.2 River Valley Case Study - River Tees

3.3.3 Erosion

3.3.4 Transportation & Deposition

3.3.5 Waterfalls, Gorges & Interlocking Spurs

3.3.6 Meanders & Oxbow Lakes

3.3.7 Floodplains & Levees

3.3.8 Estuaries

3.3.9 Case Study: The River Clyde

3.3.10 River Management

3.3.11 Hard & Soft Flood Defences

3.3.12 River Management Case Study - Boscastle

3.3.13 River Management Case Study - Banbury

3.3.14 End of Topic Test - River Landscapes in the UK

3.3.15 Exam-Style Questions - Rivers

3.4 Glacial Landscapes in the UK

3.4.1 Erosion

3.4.2 Landforms Caused by Erosion

3.4.3 Landforms Caused by Transportation & Deposition

3.4.4 Snowdonia

3.4.5 Land Use in Glaciated Areas

3.4.6 Tourism in Glacial Landscapes

3.4.7 Case Study - Lake District

3.4.8 End of Topic Test - Glacial Landscapes in the UK

3.4.9 Exam-Style Questions - Glacial Landscapes

4 Urban Issues & Challenges

4.1 Urban Issues & Challenges

4.1.1 Urbanisation

4.1.2 Urbanisation Case Study: Lagos

4.1.3 Urbanisation Case Study: Rio de Janeiro

4.1.4 UK Cities

4.1.5 Case Study: Urban Regen Projects - Manchester

4.1.6 Case Study: Urban Change in Liverpool

4.1.7 Case Study: Urban Change in Bristol

4.1.8 Sustainable Urban Life

4.1.9 End of Topic Test - Urban Issues & Challenges

4.1.10 Exam-Style Questions - Urban Issues & Challenges

4.1.11 Urban Issues -Statistical Skills

5 The Changing Economic World

5.1 The Changing Economic World

5.1.1 Measuring Development

5.1.2 Classifying Countries Based on Wealth

5.1.3 The Demographic Transition Model

5.1.4 Physical & Historical Causes of Uneven Development

5.1.5 Economic Causes of Uneven Development

5.1.6 How Can We Reduce the Global Development Gap?

5.1.7 Case Study: Tourism in Kenya

5.1.8 Case Study: Tourism in Jamaica

5.1.9 Case Study: Economic Development in India

5.1.10 Case Study: Aid & Development in India

5.1.11 Case Study: Economic Development in Nigeria

5.1.12 Case Study: Aid & Development in Nigeria

5.1.13 Economic Development in the UK

5.1.14 Economic Development UK: Industry & Rural

5.1.15 Economic Development UK: Transport & North-South

5.1.16 Economic Development UK: Regional & Global

5.1.17 End of Topic Test - The Changing Economic World

5.1.18 Exam-Style Questions - The Changing Economic World

5.1.19 Changing Economic World - Statistical Skills

6 The Challenge of Resource Management

6.1 Resource Management

6.1.1 Global Distribution of Resources

6.1.2 Food in the UK

6.1.3 Water in the UK 1

6.1.4 Water in the UK 2

6.1.5 Energy in the UK

6.1.6 Resource Management - Statistical Skills

6.2.1 Areas of Food Surplus & Food Deficit

6.2.2 Food Supply & Food Insecurity

6.2.3 Increasing Food Supply

6.2.4 Case Study: Thanet Earth

6.2.5 Creating a Sustainable Food Supply

6.2.6 Case Study: Agroforestry in Mali

6.2.7 End of Topic Test - Food

6.2.8 Exam-Style Questions - Food

6.2.9 Food - Statistical Skills

6.3.1 The Global Demand for Water

6.3.2 What Affects the Availability of Water?

6.3.3 Increasing Water Supplies

6.3.4 Case Study: Water Transfer in China

6.3.5 Sustainable Water Supply

6.3.6 Case Study: Kenya's Sand Dams

6.3.7 Case Study: Lesotho Highland Water Project

6.3.8 Case Study: Wakel River Basin Project

6.3.9 Exam-Style Questions - Water

6.3.10 Water - Statistical Skills

6.4.1 Global Demand for Energy

6.4.2 Factors Affecting Energy Supply

6.4.3 Increasing Energy Supply: Renewables

6.4.4 Increasing Energy Supply: Non-Renewables

6.4.5 Carbon Footprints & Energy Conservation

6.4.6 Case Study: Rice Husks in Bihar

6.4.7 Exam-Style Questions - Energy

6.4.8 Energy - Statistical Skills

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Article contents

Deforestation of the brazilian amazon.

• Phillip Fearnside Phillip Fearnside Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389414.013.102
• Published online: 26 September 2017

Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia destroys environmental services that are important for the whole world, and especially for Brazil itself. These services include maintaining biodiversity, avoiding global warming, and recycling water that provides rainfall to Amazonia, to other parts of Brazil, such as São Paulo, and to neighboring countries, such as Argentina. The forest also maintains the human populations and cultures that depend on it. Deforestation rates have gone up and down over the years with major economic cycles. A peak of 27,772 km2/year was reached in 2004, followed by a major decline to 4571 km2/year in 2012, after which the rate trended upward, reaching 7989 km2/year in 2016 (equivalent to about 1.5 hectares per minute). Most (70%) of the decline occurred by 2007, and the slowing in this period is almost entirely explained by declining prices of export commodities such as soy and beef. Government repression measures explain the continued decline from 2008 to 2012, but an important part of the effect of the repression program hinges on a fragile base: a 2008 decision that makes the absence of pending fines a prerequisite for obtaining credit for agriculture and ranching. This could be reversed at the stroke of a pen, and this is a priority for the powerful “ruralist” voting bloc in the National Congress. Massive plans for highways, dams, and other infrastructure in Amazonia, if carried out, will add to forces in the direction of increased deforestation.

Deforestation occurs for a wide variety of reasons that vary in different historical periods, in different locations, and in different phases of the process at any given location. Economic cycles, such as recessions and the ups and downs of commodity markets, are one influence. The traditional economic logic, where people deforest to make a profit by producing products from agriculture and ranching, is important but only a part of the story. Ulterior motives also drive deforestation. Land speculation is critical in many circumstances, where the increase in land values (bid up, for example, as a safe haven to protect money from hyperinflation) can yield much higher returns than anything produced by the land. Even without the hyperinflation that came under control in 1994, highway projects can yield speculative fortunes to those who are lucky or shrewd enough to have holdings along the highway route. The practical way to secure land holdings is to deforest for cattle pasture. This is also critical to obtaining and defending legal title to the land. In the past, it has also been the key to large ranches gaining generous fiscal incentives from the government. Money laundering also makes deforestation attractive, allowing funds from drug trafficking, tax evasion, and corruption to be converted to “legal” money. Deforestation receives impulses from logging, mining, and, especially, road construction. Soybeans and cattle ranching are the main replacements for forest, and recently expanded export markets are giving strength to these drivers. Population growth and household dynamics are important for areas dominated by small farmers. Extreme degradation, where tree mortality from logging and successive droughts and forest fires replace forest with open nonforest vegetation, is increasing as a kind of deforestation, and is likely to increase much more in the future.

Controlling deforestation requires addressing its multiple causes. Repression through fines and other command-and-control measures is essential to avoid a presumption of impunity, but these controls must be part of a broader program that addresses underlying causes. The many forms of government subsidies for deforestation must be removed or redirected, and the various ulterior motives must be combated. Industry agreements restricting commodity purchases from properties with illegal deforestation (or from areas cleared after a specified cutoff) have a place in efforts to contain forest loss, despite some problems. A “soy moratorium” has been in effect since 2006, and a “cattle agreement” since 2009. Creation and defense of protected areas is an important part of deforestation control, including both indigenous lands and a variety of kinds of “conservation units.” Containing infrastructure projects is essential if deforestation is to be held in check: once roads are built, much of what happens is outside the government’s control. The notion that the 2005–2012 deforestation slowdown means that the process is under control and that infrastructure projects can be built at will is extremely dangerous. One must also abandon myths that divert efforts to contain deforestation; these include “sustainable logging” and the use of “green” funds for expensive programs to reforest degraded lands rather than retain areas of remaining natural forests. Finally, one must provide alternatives to support the rural population of small farmers. Large investors, on the other hand, can fend for themselves. Tapping the value of the environmental services of the forest has been proposed as an alternative basis for sustaining both the rural population and the forest. Despite some progress, a variety of challenges remain. One thing is clear: most of Brazil’s Amazonian deforestation is not “development.” Trading the forest for a vast expanse of extensive cattle pasture does little to secure the well-being of the region’s rural population, is not sustainable, and sacrifices Amazonia’s most valuable resources.

• deforestation
• development
• tropical forest
• economic development
• environmental services
• ecosystem services

What Is Deforestation?

“Deforestation” refers to converting forest into nonforest, and the meaning of the term therefore hinges on what is considered to be a “forest.” Semantic distinctions often confuse discussions of deforestation. In official Brazilian data, such as those from Project for Monitoring the Brazilian Amazon Forest by Satellite (PRODES), run by the National Institute for Space Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais [INPE]), deforestation refers to the clearing of primary or old-growth forest, not to the clearing of secondary forests. Secondary forests refer to succession in previously clear-cut areas (as distinct from the usage of this term in Southeast Asia to refer to logged forests). The PRODES surveys define forest-based on vegetation types classified by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, 2012 ), rather than by percentage cover (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais [INPE], 2013 ). The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), better known as the “Climate Convention,” defines “forest” as having at least 10% cover (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2006 , p. 4.74), allowing many types of cerrado (central Brazilian savanna) to be considered forest, and its clearing as “deforestation.” Note also that the Climate Convention definition, which is based on the definition used by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations ( 2012 , p. 3), includes “temporarily unstocked” areas that have been completely clear-cut but are intended to be allowed to regenerate, thus opening a loophole by making the definition of forest, and therefore of deforestation, dependent on knowledge of intent rather than being based solely on objective measurements verifiable by satellite.

An important distinction is between net versus gross deforestation (e.g., Brown & Zarin, 2013 ). “Net” deforestation subtracts areas that are regenerating as secondary forests. Some interpretations also include silvicultural plantations, such as of Eucalyptus , as counting toward reducing net deforestation, including Brazil’s 2008 National Plan for Climate Change. This plan promised to end net deforestation by 2015 (Comitê Interministerial sobre Mudança do Clima, 2008 , p. 12), an objective that was not met. A target of zero or reduced “net” deforestation carries a danger, as each hectare of plantation or regenerating trees effectively creates a license to clear a hectare of mature or primary forest elsewhere.

Brazil’s commitment part of the 2015 Paris accords refers to reaching zero “illegal” deforestation by 2030 (Republic of Brazil, 2015 , p. 3). This far from means the end of deforestation, because forest clearing can continue as long it is “legal.” With advance of the Rural Environmental Register, all properties in the country should be registered long before 2030 , making it easy to obtain permission for “legal” deforestation up to the limits specified by Brazil’s Forest Code (20% in Amazonia). But because in the early 21st century , many present and future properties in Amazon forest areas have little clearing, large amounts of “legal” deforestation can continue (Nunes, Gardner, Barlow, Martins, Salomão, & Souza, 2016 ).

Why Is Deforestation Important?

Brazil’s Amazonian deforestation is important to life throughout the world, both human and nonhuman. the impacts of deforestation include losses of environmental services that though they affect whole world, affect Brazil the most (e.g., Fearnside, 1997a , 2008a ). The environmental services of Amazonian forest include its role in storing carbon and thus avoiding global warming (e.g., Fearnside, 2000 , 2016a ; Nogueira, Yanai, Fonseca, & Fearnside, 2015 ), in recycling water provides atmospheric water vapor that is important for rainfall not only in Amazonia but also in non-Amazonian areas such as São Paulo (e.g., Arraut, Nobre, Barbosa, Obregon, & Marengo, 2012 ), and in maintaining biodiversity (e.g., Fearnside, 1999 ). In addition, Amazonian forests provide a variety of material products, such as timber, rubber, and Brazil nuts; these provisioning functions currently support local populations and also represent lost opportunities for sustainable use when areas are deforested.

The vast size of Brazilian Amazonia (Figure 1 ) gives special importance to deforestation processes in this region. In many parts of the world that were originally covered by tropical forests, deforestation has proceeded to the point where only tiny remnants remain. In these areas, the clearing of the last hectares of remaining forest represents a tragedy for biodiversity. In Amazonia, despite the large area of remaining forest, deforestation has a significant impact on biodiversity because the distribution of species is not uniform. The ranges of many species have been restricted to parts of the region where forest has already been reduced to small fragments (e.g., Hubbell, He, Condit, Borda-de-Água, Kellnert, & ter Steege, 2008 ; Michalski & Peres, 2005 ). The disappearance of species that were endemic to heavily deforested areas in eastern and southern Amazonia is already widespread (e.g., Moura, Lees, Aleixo, Barlow, Dantas, Ferreira, et al., 2014 ).

Figure 1. Brazil’s Legal Amazon region and locations mentioned in the text.

The elimination of forest has different implications for biodiversity and for climate. Fighting to save the last remnants of forest in heavily deforested areas is essential for biodiversity, but from the point of view of climate, the dwindling area of remaining forest limits the potential impact of future deforestation. Although the impact on global warming is the same when a hectare of forest is cleared in any part of the world, assuming that forest biomass per hectare and other relevant parameters are the same, the equivalence is restricted to the emission from one year to the next. In the case of Amazonia, in addition to the yearly impact, the vast extent of remaining forest gives additional importance to deforestation processes because they can result in much greater future emissions. In countries where little forest remains, deforestation will diminish and end soon regardless of policy changes, any change in public policies in Brazil has a much greater potential impact, positive or negative, compared to other tropical countries. The various ways that Amazonian forest can be destroyed other than by deliberate human action give the region additional importance for global climate.

How Fast Has Deforestation Occurred?

Brazil’s Amazonian deforestation rates have varied widely the over the decades since construction on the Transamazon Highway (BR-230) began, in 1970 , initiating the “modern” era of deforestation. Between 1978 (the year of images for the first LANDSAT satellite survey) and 1988 (the next complete survey), deforestation averaged 21,050 km 2 /year (Fearnside, 1990 ). Since then, annual coverage figures have been available, with the single exception of 1993 (INPE, 2017a ). A long history of political interference with the monitoring program (Fearnside, 1997d ) has largely been overcome, and the PRODES program currently has much greater transparency. Some discrepancies with other satellite estimates still remain open questions (Fearnside & Barbosa, 2004 ), whereas other LANDSAT estimates are highly consistent (Souza, Siqueira, Sales, Fonseca, Ribeiro, Numata, et al., 2013 ). Deforestation rates have undergone major oscillations (Figure 2 ), mostly as a result of macroeconomic shifts (Fearnside, 2005a ).

Figure 2. Deforestation rates in the originally forested portion of Legal Amazonia. Data from Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais ( 2017a ).

PRODES uses Landsat-TM satellite imagery (or the equivalent) with 30-m resolution (INPE, 2017a ). The imagery is freely available on the INPE website, degraded to 60-m resolution. Images are taken in the dry season (August in all but the extreme north of the region), and the “year” of the data refers approximately to the deforestation between August 1 of the previous year and July 31 of the nominal year. The lower limit for detection of clearings is 6.25 ha.

The INPE also has a program called DETER (Detection of Deforestation in Real Time), which produces monthly data from MODIS imagery with maximum resolution of 250 m (Diniz, Souza, Santos, Dias, da Luz, de Moraes et al., 2015 ; INPE, 2017b ). This only detects clearings of 25 ha or larger. A similar MODIS-based monitoring program called SAD (Deforestation Alert Service) is run by the Institute for Man and the Environment in Amazonia (Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia [IMAZON]), a nongovernmental organization (NGO). The SAD data are released more quickly than the DETER data and are accompanied by more information on the deforestation processes in course (Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia, 2017 ). The results of the DETER program at INPE and the SAD program at IMAZON match well. Care is needed in drawing conclusions from the monthly data. These data are more readily affected by having significant areas covered by clouds than are PRODES data, despite the much more frequent satellite passes by MODIS compared to LANDSAT. More importantly, frequent headlines proclaiming that deforestation in a given month is several hundred percentage points higher or lower than in the same month in the previous year can often be misleading. If the month in question is in the dry season, this can be very significant, but if it is in the wet season, then large variation from a number near zero has little import, and the clearing detected is likely to be an insignificant portion of the annual total deforestation.

An important limitation of deforestation data is that forest degradation, such as by logging and by tree mortality from droughts and fire, is not detected or counted unless the forest has reached the extreme condition of being an open area with only a few scattered trees remaining, thus appearing as cleared on the satellite image. Extreme degradation of this type is counted as deforestation by all the programs mentionedin the preceding paragraph. There has been a long-standing struggle over this issue between the INPE and the state government of Mato Grosso, which insists that these areas are not “deforestation” areas because they were not deliberately clear-cut. This is likely to become even more critical if a proposed law (PL4508/2016) is implemented to allow “sustainable” cattle ranching in legal reserves (Canal Rural, 2017 ). Degradation is monitored by IMAZON (Cardoso, Ribeiro, Salomão, Fonseca, & Souza, 2017 ) and was monitored from 2007 to 2013 by the DEGRAD program at the INPE (INPE, 2014a ).

Why Is Deforestation Happening?

Economic cycles and land speculation.

From 1988 to 1991 deforestation declined by half, during a time of a deepening economic recession under president Fernando Collor that culminated with the government ceasing deposits in bank accounts in 1990 , meaning that funds were no longer available for investment in deforestation (among other effects). Deforestation rose in the subsequent years as the economy recovered, reaching a record rate of 29,100 km 2 /year in 1995 , as a consequence of the June 1994 Real Plan, a package of economic reforms that ended hyperinflation. Money that had been invested in the “overnight” (a 24-hour money market that could protect money from inflation) was suddenly available, and it was invested in deforestation, and not, for example, in recuperating degraded pastureland. Deforestation fell dramatically during the next two years, another consequence of the Real Plan. Because the plan had essentially halted inflation, generalized land speculation became unprofitable (though land purchases in areas where roads would be built or upgraded could still yield quick fortunes). Even under the inflation regime that has prevailed since the 1994 Real Plan, with much lower rates than those before this plan, clearing behavior is also frequently explained by speculative returns instead of solely by beef production (Carrero & Fearnside, 2011 ; Razera, 2005 ).

Land speculation is an important force in deforestation because the practical way to secure land holdings is to deforest to create cattle pasture. Under hyperinflation, land values in Amazonia increased faster than the rates inflation, and the increase in land value could yield much more profit than could raising cattle or other activities undertaken while they are in possession (either legally or illegally) of the land (Hecht, 1985 , 1993 ; Hecht, Norgaard, & Possio, 1988 ). Land values in Amazonia and deforestation rates both fell by half after the implementation of Real Plan, an indication of how strong speculation had been as a driver. However, land speculation continues to be an important component in the profitability of extensive ranching (Bowman, Soares-Filho, Merry, Nepstad, Rodrigues, & Almeida, 2012 ). Following the decline after the 1995 peak, deforestation rates increased to a new peak of 27,772 km 2 /year in 2004 , thanks to a strengthening economy and rising commodity prices. Beginning in 2005 , there was a major decline in deforestation rates until 2012 , after which the rate increased (with oscillations), reaching 7989 km 2 /year in 2016 (INPE, 2017a ).

Commodities and Governance

Understanding the causes of the 2005–2012 decline in deforestation rates is essential to the policy lessons that can be derived from this experience. The Brazilian government has repeatedly claimed that the decline was the result of government actions, particularly the increases in inspections and fines for those who deforest illegally. In fact, the decline was brought about by a variety of factors, including governance measures, and it is these other factors that explain most of the decline. The decline occurred in two phases, the first from 2005 to 2007 , and the second from 2008 to 2012 . During the period up to 2007 , deforestation rates tracked the prices of export commodities, such as soybeans and beef, making these the primary drivers during this period (Assunção, Gandour, & Rocha, 2015 ; see also Arima, Barreto, Araujo, & Soares-Filho, 2014 ; Hargrave & Kis-Katos, 2013 ). For the 1995–2007 period, more than 75% of the deforestation is explained by lagged prices of soy and beef (Arima et al., 2014 ). Most (70%) of the total 2005–2012 decline had occurred by 2007 . From 2008 onward, commodity prices recovered, though deforestation continued to decline to 2012 , indicating that something had changed. An event in 2008 that coincides with the change is a resolution of the Brazilian Central Bank (BACEN 3545/ 2008 ), which blocks loans from government banks for agriculture and ranching in properties with fines pending in the environmental agencies (Börner, Kis-Katos, Hargrave & König, 2015 ; Fearnside, 2015e ). The fines themselves have little effect, since they can be appealed almost indefinitely and are rarely paid (e.g., Lima, Capobianco, & Moutinho, 2009 ). In contrast, the block on loans has immediate effect and there is no chance of appeal; it also has its greatest impact on the largest actors. Another key event in 2008 was that the federal environmental agency, the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) initiated a blacklist of municipalities with high deforestation. The blacklisted municipalities had a significantly greater reduction in deforestation as compared to non-blacklisted municipalities over the 2009–2011 period (Arima et al., 2014 ), a trend that continued through 2012 (Cisneros, Zhou, & Börner, 2015 ). Blacklisted municipalities had additional requirements for obtaining licenses for legal deforestation, had more inspection effort focused on them by IBAMA, suffered restrictions on agricultural credit, and had additional impetus to hasten implantation of the Rural Environmental Register due to increased assistance from NGOs in registering properties and because of local desire to avoid reputational costs (Cisneros et al., 2015 ).

The strength of governance measures varies with election cycles, and there is a tendency to relax enforcement of environmental regulations prior to major elections, producing a significant relation between deforestation rates and elections (Rodrigues-Filho, Verburg, Bursztyn, Lindoso, Debortoli, & Vilhena, 2015 ). The mere anticipation of such relaxation can stimulate clearing, as was suggested by a dramatic surge in deforestation in Mato Grosso, in 2002 , in the months prior to election of Brazil’s largest soybean producer as governor of the state, thus curtailing the state government’s deforestation control program (e.g., Fearnside, 2005b ).

Fiscal Incentives

In the 1970s and 1980s, fiscal incentives offered by the Brazilian government were a major factor motivating deforestation by large ranchers (Binswanger, 1991 ; Mahar, 1979 ). Incentives included the right to invest in approved Amazonian ranches funds that would otherwise have been paid as taxes on the profits of enterprises elsewhere in the country, generous loans at interest rates far below the rate of inflation, and tax exemptions on the Amazonian income. Clearing forest was primarily a means of gaining access to these subsidies, rather than of earning income from beef production. The effect of incentives continued long after official discourse stressed that the incentive program had been ended. A 1991 decree halted approvals of new projects, but the already approved projects continue to receive the tax incentives (Fearnside, 2005a ). Natural attrition, such as by bankruptcy, has reduced the impact of the incentives by reducing the number of eligible ranches.

Land Tenure

One of the most pervasive motives for deforestation is the establishment and maintenance of land tenure (Fearnside, 1979 , 2001b ). Much of the land in Brazilian Amazonia is in the public domain. Aside from occasional land distributions to small farmers in official settlement programs (such as those on the Transamazon Highway) and to large ranchers in areas that are sold through bidding (such as the Agriculture and Ranching District of the Manaus Free Trade Zone [SUFRAMA]), land enters the private domain by first being illegally invaded either by small squatters or by large grileiros (land thieves or “land grabbers”), and eventually the government recognizes the claims and grants title. The key to gaining title is showing “improvement” ( benfeitoria ) on the land, which means deforesting and planting something, cattle pasture being the cheapest option per hectare. But even if one has title to land, if it is left in forest, the owner can eventually expect to lose it, either through invasion by squatters or grileiros or by expropriation for a government settlement project.

The question of who is deforesting is essential to formulating policies that will be effective in containing the process. Deforestation is done for different reasons and by different actors in different parts of the region and in different historical periods in any given location. For example, land along the Belém-Brasília Highway (BR-010), built in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was first occupied by small squatters, who were later expelled (often violently) and replaced by large ranchers (Foweraker, 1981 ; Valverde & Dias, 1967 ). Similar patterns unfolded in much of southern Pará beginning in the 1970s (Schmink & Wood, 1992 ). The Transamazon Highway (BR-230), built in the early 1970s, was settled through government colonization projects in which small farmers received 100-ha lots (e.g., Moran, 1981 ; Smith, 1982 ). Many of these lots were later acquired by wealthier actors, who then proceed to use them as medium to large ranches (e.g., Fearnside, 1986b ). A similar process took place along the Cuiabá-Porto Velho (BR-364) Highway in Rondônia (Fearnside, 1984 ). In Amazonia as a whole, large (officially defined in Brazilian Amazonia as > 1000 ha) and medium-sized (101–1000 ha) actors have traditionally predominated in deforestation (Fearnside, 1993 , 2008b ); but the relative importance of small (≤ 100 ha) farmers has been increasing, as indicated by the decreasing average size of new clearings (Rosa, Souza, & Ewers, 2012 ), and the deforestation slowdown since 2005 has disproportionately affected the larger actors (Godar, Gardner, Tizado, & Pacheco, 2014 ). However, small farmers have demonstrated greater potential to stabilize their land use in a mosaic of agriculture, pasture, and natural forest, and avoiding the consolidation of small properties into large ranches represents a beneficial measure from the point of view of minimizing deforestation (Campos & Nepstad, 2006 ; Godar, Tizado, & Pokorny, 2012 ).

Money Laundering

Money from such sources as drug trafficking, truck hijacking, government corruption, and income sources not declared to tax authorities can be invested in Amazonian deforestation with minimal risk. If the same funds were invested in the stock market or urban real estate, the inconsistency in declared income would soon be discovered by tax authorities. Illegal money forms a sort of cloud over Amazonia that affects what happens on the ground, often defying traditional economic logic. The terra do meio , an area in Pará the size of Switzerland, has for many years been essentially outside of the control of the Brazilian government (Greenpeace, 2003 ; Taravella, 2008 ). The area has been dominated by drug traffickers, grileiros , and other illegal actors (Escada, Vieira, Amaral, Araújo, da Veiga, Aguiar et al., 2005 ; Fearnside, 2008b ; Greenpeace, 2003 ; Instituto Socioambiental, 2016 ; Schönenberg, 2002 ). In 2005 , following the assassination of Dorothy Stang (a defender of Amazonian social and environmental causes), a group contiguous of protected areas (known in Brazil as a “mosaic”) was created in the terra do meio , but the environmental agencies have yet to establish a physical base in the area, something that has been planned since 2002 . An example of deforestation that is inexplicable by traditional economic logic is provided by a 6239-ha clearing (known as the “revolver” because of its shape) that suddenly appeared, in 2003 , in the terra do meio (Venturieri, Aguiar, Monteiro, Carneiro, Alves, Câmara et al., 2004 ). The location was far from any roads and had been classified as one of the least-promising locations for profitable ranching in all of Amazonia, based on the calculated farm-gate price of beef (Arima, Barreto, & Brito, 2005 , p. 50).

Logging is an important driver of deforestation, though its effect is delayed and hard to show statistically because in areas with active logging there is little deforestation, whereas in those where deforestation is in full swing, timber is no longer available for logging. Logging facilitates deforestation by providing clandestine “endogenous” roads that are subsequently used for entry of deforesters (Arima, Walker, Perz, & Caldas, 2005 ). It also provides much of the money that pays for the felling itself, in the cases of both large actors and small ones (Veríssimo, Uhl, Mattos, Brandino, & Vieira, 2002 ).

Mining is another driver of deforestation. Gold miners ( garimpeiros ), who are attracted to areas with alluvial deposits, can stay on later as squatters or invest proceeds in land or in clearing (MacMillan, 1995 ). Iron mining in the Carajás area justified a major government program to promote agriculture and ranching in the region and also feeds pig-iron smelters who draw wood from the surrounding region for charcoal (Fearnside, 1986a , 1989a ). Bauxite mining, aside from the mine sites themselves, feeds an aluminum smelting industry that drives massive impacts from the hydroelectric dams that are built to supply the smelters (Fearnside, 2016d ). The areas surrounding dams are associated with increased deforestation (Barreto, Brandão, Martins, Silva, Souza, Sales et al., 2011 ; Baretto, Brandão, Silva, & Souza, 2014 ; Fearnside, 2014a , 2014b ).

Roads are the most powerful driver of deforestation (Kirby, Laurance, Albernaz, Schroth, Fearnside, Bergen et al., 2006 ; Laurance, Cochrane, Bergen, Fearnside, Delamônica, Barber et al., 2001 ; Pfaff, 1999 ; Pfaff, Robalino, Walker, Aldrich, Reis, Perz et al., 2007 ; Soares-Filho, Nepstad, Curran, Cerqueira, Garcia, Ramos et al., 2006 ). The construction or upgrading of a road increases migration to the area it accesses; increases the profitability of agriculture and ranching; and greatly increases land values, with consequent speculative deforestation and a turnover of landowners in favor of wealthier actors who deforest faster than the previous owners (Fearnside, 1987a , 1987b ). Deforestation follows roads, and the presence of deforestation has a contagious effect, leading to further acceleration of deforestation along these routes (Rosa, Purves, Carreiras, & Ewers, 2014 ; Rosa, Purves, Souza, & Ewers, 2013 ). Roughly 80% of the forest loss in Brazilian Amazonia has been in the “arc of deforestation,” a crescent-shaped strip along the southern and eastern edges of the forest (Figure 3 ). New highways are bringing deforestation activity into the heart of the Amazon. The most critical case is the planned reconstruction of the abandoned Manaus-Porto Velho (BR-319) Highway, which would connect the arc of deforestation with central Amazonia, bringing the actors and processes from Rondônia to large areas in Amazonas and Roraima that have road access from Manaus, and open the large block of intact forest in the western portion of the state of Amazonas through planned side roads (Fearnside & Graça, 2006 ). The environmental impact statement for this planned highway presented Yellowstone National Park as the expected deforestation scenario, envisioning tourists driving through the area on a “park-highway” without cutting a single tree (see Fearnside, 2015d ; Fearnside & Graça, 2009 ). The unreality of this portrayal of an Amazon frontier would be hard to exaggerate. Unrealistic “governance scenarios” like this are simply excuses that serve to justify the licensing of highways, which imply very real impacts.

Figure 3. Deforestation through 2015 in Legal Amazonia and the Amazonia biome. The “arc of deforestation” is the heavily impacted crescent-shaped area along the eastern and southern edges of the forest (deforestation shown in red). Data from Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais ( 2017a ).

Soybeans have been a major force behind deforestation in Mato Grosso, and there have also been advances in some parts of Pará, particularly the Santarém area (Barona, Ramankutty, Hyman, & Coomes, 2010 ; Fearnside, 2001c ; Morton, DeFries, Shimabukuro, Anderson, Arai, del Bon Espirito-Santo et al., 2006 ). Besides the direct conversion of forest for soy, the crop has a very important indirect impact. Soy advance into pasture in the cerrado (as well as into forest areas in northern Mato Grosso) has a prominent role in driving increased investment in clearing for ranches in Amazon rainforest areas in Pará (Arima, Richards, Walker, & Caldas, 2011 ; Richards, Walker, & Arima, 2014 ). The Chinese have played a key role in driving the conversion of forest and cerrado (Fearnside, Figueiredo, & Bonjour, 2013 ). This has primarily been through exports, but it has also been through land purchases and the financing of transport infrastructure. Transport infrastructure is the main limitation on the spread of soybeans from the most profitable areas in Mato Grosso, particularly to the west in Rondônia and Acre, as well as in the portions of northern Mato Grosso still dominated by pasture (Vera-Diaz, Kaufmann, Nepstad, & Schlesinger, 2008 ).

International finance has played a significant role in speeding the advance of soy. In 2002 and 2003 the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the arm of the World Bank that finances private companies, granted Grupo André Maggi (Brazil’s largest soy company) two US$30 million loans. The IFC classified the loans as Category B (low environmental risk), thus not requiring any environmental-impact assessment or subsequent monitoring of impacts. This IFC classification allowed Rabobank (of the Netherlands) to grant Maggi two loans totaling US$330 million (Greenpeace, 2006 , p. 18). Financing from the Brazilian government’s National Bank for Social and Economic Development (BNDES) has also been a major force in the advance of soy (Greenpeace, 2006 ).

It should be noted that gross domestic product (GDP) is not a good predictor of deforestation. Statements associating GDP with clearing give the false impression that deforestation is an inevitable consequence of economic progress. The fraction of Brazil’s economy contributed by new clearing on the Amazon frontier is minimal, although the large areas of soybeans in previously cleared areas are a significant contributor. The questionable nature of a link to GDP is shown by “decoupling” of deforestation rates from agricultural production during the 2005–2012 deforestation slowdown (Lapola, Martinelli, Peres, Ometto, Ferreira, Nobre et al., 2014 ; Nepstad, Irawau, Bezerra, Boyd, Stickler, Shimada et al., 2013 ; Nepstad, McGrath, Stickler, Alencar, Azevedo, Swette et al., 2014 ).

Cattle Ranching

Cattle production (as opposed to ulterior motives) is becoming more prominent in the mix of deforestation motives in Amazonia. This is behavior that following the traditional economic logic, in which actors deforest to earn profits from the sale of products from agriculture and ranching (Faminow, 1998 ; Margulis, 2004 ; Mattos & Uhl, 1994 ; Mertens, Poccard-Chapuis, Piketty, Laques, & Venturieri, 2002 ). Forest conservation ultimately requires addressing the “underpinnings of the cattle economy itself” (Walker, Moran, & Anselin, 2000 ). Cattle ranching is even accelerating in the extractive reserves, created to maintain forests by supporting traditional populations of rubber tappers and Brazil-nut gatherers; ranching has proliferated in these areas and is replacing the economy based on nontimber forest products (Salisbury & Schmink, 2007 ). Rubber extraction is not economically viable without subsidies (Jaramillo-Giraldo, Soares Filho, Ribeiro, & Gonçalves, 2017 ).

Export in general has become a more prominent predictor of deforestation at the municipality (county) level (Faria & Almeida, 2016 ). The increase in beef exports is especially significant because of the great potential for expansion (McAlpine, Etter, Fearnside, Seabrook, & Laurance, 2009 ). Brazilian exports of frozen beef were barred from virtually all international markets because of the presence of foot-and-mouth disease (Fearnside, 1987a ). Brazilian Amazonia was thereby protected from the “hamburger connection” (Myers, 1981 ) that has driven much of the deforestation in Central America, an area that is free of the disease. Beginning in 1998 , states in Brazil were successively certified as free of foot-and-mouth disease, starting with the non-Amazonian states in the south (Kaimowitz, Mertens, Wunder, & Pacheco, 2004 ). This had an indirect impact on Amazonia in that beef produced in southern Brazil could be exported; whereas people in São Paulo, for example, could eat beef from Pará. All nine states in Brazilian Amazonia have, since 2015 , been classified as having, at most, a medium risk, in addition to being without clinical cases of the disease; but Amazonas, Roraima, and Amapá have not been classified as “disease free,” which would allow direct exports from these states (Pithan e Silva, 2016 ). Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of beef, some of which is even exported as live cattle. In 2015 and 2016 , accords with Russia, the United States, and China opened these markets to Brazilian beef. The full opening of the Chinese market is particularly significant, since its potential scale is essentially infinite from the perspective of Brazilian producers. In addition to dominating beef exports to China, Brazil is also China’s main supplier of leather. China is the world’s largest manufacturer of shoes. In 2008 , the value of Brazil’s leather exports totaled US$1.9 billion, as compared to US$5.1 billion for beef (Greenpeace, 2009 , p. 61).

The Brazilian government’s generous subsidies for ranching in the 1970s and 1980s came during the “economic miracle” period, and their later curtailment was coincident with a severe recession. As in the case of soybeans, international finance has contributed to speeding up of the current “modern” period of livestock production and processing. In March 2007 , the IFC made a US$90 million loan to Bertin (Brazil’s largest slaughterhouse company at the time), which supplied beef to Burger King, among many other outlets (Greenpeace, 2009 ; Rich, 2013 ). Brazilian government financing from BNDES has also been important in advancing the modern livestock industry in Amazonia.

Population Growth

Increasing population has a significant effect on Brazil’s Amazonian deforestation (Laurance, Albernaz, Schroth, Fearnside, Bergen, Venticinque et al,, 2002 ). However, interpreting the relationship is more complicated than might be thought. Studies that look at political units, such as countries, states, or municipalities, or at arbitrary geographic units, such as grid cells, will find results on population change and deforestation rate that go in both directions and will conclude that there is no relationship between these two variables. The first step to make sense of such data is removing the urban population from the analysis. While the urban population has an effect, it is very distinct from the effect of the direct deforestation actors. Then, there must be a breakdown by the different rural actors who are present before and after the land-use transformation under study, such as deforestation in a given period. These data do not exist for Brazil. The only solution is to obtain detailed information from case studies in specific locations. It is important that the locations chosen be “typical” of large areas of deforestation. The places being converted to cattle pastures in Brazilian Amazonia represent an obvious priority.

Two key questions affecting the relationship of population and deforestation are (a) who are the actors, such as ranchers versus small farmers, and (b) what population and land use is being replaced. If the situation is one of small farmers replacing “unoccupied” forest, then a greater population (of small farmers) translates into more deforestation. If it is ranchers who are replacing “unoccupied” forest, then the same relationship applies, although the number of people will be lower and the amount of deforestation per capita will be much greater. If the situation is one of ranchers replacing small farmers, then the human population will decrease and the rate of deforestation per capita will increase, resulting in a negative relationship between population change and deforestation rate.

One theory regarding population is that increasing rural-urban migration will result in the abandonment of large areas that are currently used for agriculture and ranching, leading to the establishment of secondary forests and a recovery of biodiversity (Wright & Muller-Landau, 2006 ). Unfortunately, other than existence of significant rural-urban migration (Parry, Day, Amaral, & Peres, 2010 ), this theory bears little resemblance to events in Amazonia (Fearnside, 2008c ). Those who migrate to cities are usually riverside inhabitants, who do very little deforestation. Were larger actors to give up their operations and move to cities, their land would be sold to others who would continue to use the cleared areas (sometimes with intervals under secondary succession). Cattle pasture requires very little labor once established, and a small population can occupy a very large area.

Household Dynamics

Household processes among small farmers can result in deforestation that is independent of the profit-seeking motive, which can be used as a lever by incentive programs to change clearing behavior. These include household demographic changes and the economic circumstances of each family (Caldas, Walker, Arima, Perz, Aldrich, & Simmons, 2007 ). At the stage in the household life cycle when both labor capability and the demand for consumption to support dependents are at a maximum, deforestation advances at maximum speed and is unlikely to be influenced by outside policy interventions. Minimizing risks takes precedence over maximizing profits (Walker, Perz, Caldas, & Silva, 2002 ).

Extreme Degradation

Forest can be converted to nonforest (i.e., deforested) by extreme degradation rather than by clear-cutting. Degradation is becoming increasingly prevalent in Brazilian Amazonia and has not been affected by the forces that shifted deforestation rates to a lower plateau after 2004 (Souza et al., 2013 ). Logging is a major factor that even prior to the deforestation “slowdown” affected a larger area each year than the annual clear-cut (Asner, Knapp, Broadbent, Oliveira, Keller, & Silva, 2005 ). Logging has increased since the slowdown began, rather than decreasing in parallel with the deforestation (e.g., Silvestrini, Soares-Filho, Nepstad, Coe, Rodrigues, & Assunção, 2011 ), making the post-slowdown area that is subjected to logging each year far greater than the area that is deforested outright. Logging makes forests more susceptible to entry of fire because it leaves slash and unintentionally killed trees in the forest that can act as fuel, and also opens canopy gaps that allow sunlight and wind to enter, hastening the drying of the fuel bed (Cochrane, Alencar, Schulze, Souza, Nepstad, Lefebvre et al., 1999 ; Nepstad, Verissimo, Alencar, Nobre, Lima, Lefebvre et al., 1999 ; Uhl & Buschbacher, 1985 ). This sets in motion a positive-feedback process that successively degrades the forest by the repeated entry of fire (Barlow & Peres, 2006 ; Nepstad, Carvalho, Barros, Alencar, Capobianco, Bishop et al., 2001 ). Droughts are major factors in facilitating Amazonian forest fires, with or without logging (Alencar, Nepstad, & Diaz, 2006 ; Aragão & Shimabukuro, 2010 ; Barbosa & Fearnside, 1999 ; Barlow & Peres, 2008 ; Barlow, Peres, Lagan, & Haugaasen, 2003 ; Berenguer, Ferreira, Gardner, Aragão, de Camargo, Cerri et al., 2014 ; Vasconcelos, Fearnside, Graça, Nogueira, de Oliveira, & Figueiredo, 2013 ). Droughts also degrade forest by killing trees for lack of water, even in the absence of fire (Lewis et al., 2011 ; Nepstad, Tohver, Ray, Moutinho, & Cardinot, 2007 ; Phillips, Aragão, Fisher, Lloyd, Lopez-Gonzalez et al., 2009 ). Severe droughts are becoming more frequent in Amazonia, for various reasons (Marengo & Espinoza, 2016 ), and climate-change projections indicate the likelihood of substantial future increases in these events (e.g., Malhi, Roberts, Betts, Killeen, Li, & Nobre, 2008 ). Loss of biodiversity caused by anthropogenic disturbances may even double the losses caused by the deforestation itself, as shown by study in Pará that found median losses from perturbation to be larger than those from deforestation in three of the five areas of endemism in this state (Barlow, Lennox, Ferreira, Berenguer, Lees, MacNally et al., 2016 ). In addition to degradation from logging and fire, hunting threatens wildlife (Antunes, Fewster, Venticinque, Peres, Levi, Rohe et al., 2016 ) and removes animals essential for the reproduction and dispersal of trees (Peres, Emilio, Schietti, Desmoulière, & Levi, 2016 ).

The Post-slowdown Deforestation Surge

Following the 27,772-km 2 /year peak of deforestation in 2004 , rates fell by 84% to 4571 km 2 /year in 2012 . This engendered a dangerous illusion in Brasília that deforestation was under control and that the government could therefore build roads, dams, and other infrastructure without putting the forest at risk. Unfortunately, this was never the case. Deforestation rates have trended upward since 2012 , and jumped by 29% in 2016 . The underlying forces behind deforestation have increased each year, with ever more population, investment, and roads that give deforesters access to the forest. More international markets were opening for Brazilian beef during this period, and exports were expanding. The reversal of the deforestation decline in 2012 coincided with the enactment of a major weakening of Brazil’s Forest Code, reducing restrictions on clearing near rivers and on steep hillsides and pardoning vast areas of illegal clearing done by 2008 , with significant environmental and social consequences (Metzger, Lewinsohn, Joly, Verdade, & Rodrigues, 2010 ; Soares-Filho, Rajão, Macedo, Carneiro, Costa, Coe et al., 2014 ). Most importantly, this demonstrated the extraordinary influence of the “ruralist” bloc (representatives of large landholders) and created an anticipation of future “amnesties.”

The 1965 Forest Code (Law 4771/ 1965 ), a package of regulations governing deforestation, was replaced by Law 12,651/ 2012 . In 2011 , the initial vote in the House of Deputies, where representation is proportional to population, approved the revision by a ratio of 7:1. Since 85% of Brazil’s population is urban, the vast majority of the electorate has no financial stake in being allowed to deforest more, especially in risk-prone locations. Opinion polls showed 80% of Brazil’s population opposing any changes in the Forest Code (Lopes, 2011 ). The power of money from soy and other agribusiness interests is believed to be the most logical explanation for the outcome (Fearnside & Figueiredo, 2016 ).

The most noteworthy at the time of the deforestation surge in 2016 was the political uncertainty during and after the trial of president Dilma Rousseff, who was forced to step aside when her trial began in March 2016 , culminating in her formal impeachment in August 2016 . The uncertainty in 2016 offered an opportunity for the rapid advancement of legislative initiatives to remove environmental restrictions, and this continued following the formal transfer of presidential powers (Fearnside, 2016b ). Other factors may have contributed. The value of the Brazilian real relative to the US dollar decreased by 12% from January to May 2016 (the period when decisions regarding deforestation are usually made), increasing the attractiveness of exporting soy and beef. Beef prices rose by 5%, and soy prices rose by 12.5%. The May 2016 soy price was 18% above the May average for the preceding five years. These economic factors would have contributed to the 2016 surge, but the magnitude of the surge suggests that it also had roots in the spectacular rise in the political power of the ruralists, which had begun well before the end of the previous presidential administration (Fearnside, 2017d ).

The similarities and differences in the changes in deforestation rates among the nine states in Legal Amazonia are revealing. Deforestation rates increased in all states except Amapá and Mato Grosso. Amapá is insignificant, since the state only accounted for 0.3% of the total deforestation in 2016 . Deforestation in Mato Grosso in 2016 was 1508 km 2 , though this was 5.8% less than in the preceding year. Mato Grosso has a substantial influence from soybeans, whereas in the other states the vast majority of clearing is for pasture. The importance of Mato Grosso relative to other Amazonian states has been decreasing, from 43.1% of the total deforestation in 2004 to 18.9% in 2016 , reflecting the dwindling areas of remaining forest in places that are topographically favorable for mechanized agriculture. Other factors leading to decreased clearing in Mato Grosso include the predominance of large properties in this state; these properties are more sensitive to repression measures than are smaller ones (Godar et al., 2014 ). The distribution of the 2016 surge among Amazonian states suggests a continuation of trends to increased prominence of ranching relative to direct deforestation for soybeans, and of greater importance of smaller properties relative to larger ones.

How Can Deforestation Be Controlled?

Inspection and the punishment of illegal deforestation is an important part of any effort to control the process, because the lack of this form of action fosters an assumption of impunity, with far-reaching consequences. Monitoring capabilities are important to these efforts, and the advent of the DETER program, in 2004 , provided an essential tool to allow reaction within a meaningful time period (Assunção, Gandour, & Rocha, 2013 ). Since 2003 , Brazil’s command-and-control program is administered under the Plan of Action for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in Legal Amazonia (PPCDAm) (Ministério do Meio Ambiente, 2013 ). The program has had measurable effects (Arima et al., 2014 ).

Amazonian deforestation can be controlled, but the unfounded notion that it is under control and that therefore new roads, dams, and other infrastructure projects can be built without increasing deforestation is very dangerous. The official government interpretation—that the 2005–2012 decline proves that deforestation is under control—has been repeated countless times. However, falling commodity prices (rather than governance measures) account for nearly all the decrease in deforestation rates between 2005 and 2007 , which represents 70% of the total through 2012 , when the downward trend ended. Deforestation rates did not continue to decline after 2012 , despite frequent official statements implying that the decline continued.

The effect of the repression program since 2008 rests on a fragile foundation: the 2008 Central Bank resolution linking government bank loans to an absence of pending fines (Fearnside, 2015e ). This is because the ruralist bloc has enormous influence in the national legislature, and revoking the Central Bank resolution is one of its priorities. The effectiveness of the repression program could literally be removed at the stroke of a pen.

An example of the potential for the repression of deforestation to have an effect on clearing rates is provided by a state government program, from 1999 to 2001 , in Mato Grosso (Fearnside, 2003b ). At a time when deforestation was increasing in Amazonia as a whole, the trends in Mato Grosso turned from increases to decreases in municipalities in which significant amounts forest were still available for clearing (deforestation will tend to zero independent of any repression program in municipalities with little left to clear). However, after the election of Brazil’s largest soy entrepreneur as governor, in 2002 , the program was gutted and entered a phase of “institutional subversion” (Rajão, Azevedo, & Stabile, 2012 ).

It is important that direct deforestation control measures, such as fining property owners who clear without the required licensing and restricting credit in municipalities (counties) that have been blacklisted for illegal deforestation, can have a significant effect (Tasker & Arima, 2016 ). The Brazilian foreign ministry’s long opposition to any form of international payment for avoiding deforestation was based on the belief of key individuals that controlling deforestation was impossible (Fearnside, 2012a ). Indeed, the succession of “packages” of control measures implemented after each rise in clearing rates seemed to have no effect. Brazil changed its position in 2007 , after the “slowdown” in deforestation was well underway.

Remove or Redirect Subsidies

Subsides take many forms besides the notorious fiscal incentives that massively subsidized large cattle ranches in the 1970s and 1980s. Low-interest loans are provided for actors of various sizes, including small farmers. A large subsidy, which often goes unrecognized, results from periodic “amnesties,” forgiving debts for farmers, both large and small, whose crops have failed because of weather events or other general misfortunes, thus transferring the risk of these agricultural activities to the taxpayers (e.g., Fearnside, 2001b ). Of course, a wide array of other government expenditures provides transport infrastructure and other services in remote locations, generally with only a minimal return to the government in the form of taxes. In the case of small farmers, the fact that a substantial fraction of the economically disadvantaged portions of Brazil’s rural population depends on government bolsas (stipends), such as the family stipend ( bolsa família ), and on rural retirement benefits for elderly family members, represents a substantial subsidy that maintains families in agricultural activities even when they are unprofitable in their own right. Although they are closely tied to electoral politics, these income-redistribution programs are based on poverty-reduction objectives that apply to both rural and urban residents throughout the country as a matter of social justice. Government stipends maintain important deforestation actors, such as sem terras (organized landless workers). These actors have a key role in settlement establishment and deforestation (Simmons, Walker, Perz, Aldrich, Caldas, Pereira et al., 2010 ). Government settlement projects are heavily subsidized (Peres & Schneider, 2012 ). Even at the low levels of deforestation by small farmers, rural residents emit far more greenhouse gases than do urban residents, and the impact of the larger actors is very much greater (Fearnside, 2001a ). Preventing rural-urban migration is seen as socially desirable, both by rural people who want to stay where they are and by urban residents who fear the social impact of burgeoning cities. However, municipality-level data in Amazonia indicate a positive effect of urbanization on well-being as measured by the human development index (HDI) (Caviglia-Harris, Sills, Bell, Harris, Mullan, & Roberts, 2016 ). The questions of how much rural subsidy is appropriate and of what types are extremely delicate ones.

Remove Ulterior Motives

Land speculation is a motive for deforestation that has essentially no benefit for the country and leads to substantial environmental damage. It needs to be stopped by government actions such as taxes and fines.

The present system of land-tenure establishment, which is based on deforestation, must end. Brazil has yet to make the transition from the centuries-old custom of the “regularization” of de facto possession of illegal land claims to one in which the population assumes as a matter of course that illegal occupation of land will not eventually result in a land title. A significant setback occurred in 2009 , with Provisional Measure (MP) 158 (Law No. 11,952) creating the terra legal (legal land) program that legalizes claims up to 1500 ha (which can hardly be considered a small farm). Large illegal claims are often subdivided among the various members of an extended family to gain legal title within the limits of the program. The amount of land potentially to be legalized totals 67 million ha, or half the size of the state of Pará (Fearnside, 2013a ). Most pernicious, the program leads to the logical assumption by present and future grileiros and squatters throughout the region that their claims will eventually be legalized by subsequent regularization programs. Achieving the goal of Amazonia becoming a landscape with defined and secure land tenure is essential for many reasons, including encouraging more sustainable behavior by landholders and assuring the rights of exclusion that must underlie any program for payment for environmental services, but a path to reaching this goal without provoking the perverse assumption of an eternally moving “line in the sand” has yet to be found. The “closing of the frontier” in 1890 in the western United States (Turner, 1893 ) has yet to have its parallel in Brazilian Amazonia, and a way must be found to achieve this by means other than simply running out of land (Fearnside & Graça, 2006 ).

Land-tenure establishment is handled by the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), which in recent years has acted almost entirely reactively, resettling squatters and sem terras (members of organized landless movements) in official settlement areas (Fearnside, 2001b ). Settlements represented 13.5% of all deforestation up to 2011 in the 1911 settlements included in a study by Schneider and Peres ( 2015 ). In a study by Yanai, Nogueira, Graça, and Fearnside ( 2017 ) covering 3325 settlements, the settlements accounted for of 21% of the deforestation up to 2013 . This process has no natural stopping point because the number of landless farmers in the country exceeds the capacity of the entire Amazon region if distributed in settlement areas (Fearnside, 1985 ). Caldas, Simmons, Walker, Perz, Aldrich, Pereira et al. ( 2010 ) expressed the implications most eloquently, “It is time to recognize past mistakes and adapt the land policy to the new reality in the Amazon that takes into consideration the environmental problems that current laws are causing. If we do not act now, the future of the poor in the region will not change; and the same cyclic processes of land occupation and degradation will occur until no forest will remain to support life in the region.”

Soy Moratorium

On July 24, 2006 , three months after the release of the Greenpeace ( 2006 ) report “Eating Up the Amazon,” Cargill and other major soy exporters of were convinced to sign a “soy moratorium” that committed them to not buy soy grown in the Amazon on land deforested after 2006 (a cutoff that was relaxed to 2008 in 2013 ). The moratorium was successively renewed, and in 2016 it was made permanent. It has had a measurable effect in reducing new forest clearing for soy (Adario, 2016 ; Gibbs, Rausch, Munger, Schelly, Morton, Noojipady et al., 2015 ). However, the soy moratorium cannot be credited with the overall decline in deforestation rates in Amazonia (the “slowdown”), as has sometimes been implied. The departure of overall deforestation rates from what is explained by commodity prices only began in 2008 , not in 2006 . The direct conversions affected by the moratorium are only a portion of the impact of soy. The moratorium does not include the cerrado , where soy expansion continues unfettered. The displaced deforestation from pastures converted to soy (either in the cerrado or in the Amazon forest) causes increasing clearing of Amazon forest for pasture, not only by means of the invisible hand of the economy, as ranchers respond to price signals, but also directly by the migration of ranchers themselves to rainforest areas. When an area becomes more profitable to use as soy than as pasture, as happened, for example, in Mato Grosso, ranchers do not switch to become soy planters. Instead, the ranchers (who represent a distinct cultural group in Amazonia; see Hoelle, 2015 ) will sell their land to a buyer with a soy-planting background (often arriving from non-Amazonian states such as Rio Grande do Sul), and the rancher will use the proceeds of the sale to buy a much larger area of cheap land in Pará on which to establish a new ranch.

Another limitation is that significant markets exist outside the exporting companies that participate in the soy moratorium. Since 2013 the main destination for Brazilian soy has been China, where purchases are little influenced by environmental impacts in other parts of the world. There are also domestic markets, including the market for soy oil in Brazil’s biodiesel program (Fearnside, 2009b ).

Cattle Agreement

In June 2009 Greenpeace released a report entitled “Slaughtering the Amazon” (Greenpeace, 2009 ), and four months later, the “cattle agreement” was signed by major slaughterhouses: JBS (Friboi), Bertin, Minerva, and Marfrig. There were actually two agreements: in July 2009 , a term of adjustment of conduct was signed; and in October 2009 , a zero deforestation agreement (G4). The agreements have been found to have had an effect in reducing deforestation despite problems with “laundering” cattle (Gibbs, Munger, L’Roe, Barreto, Pereira, Christie et al., 2016 ). “Laundering” cattle occurs when a nonparticipating ranch moves its cattle to a participating ranch, from which the cattle are sold to one of the signatory slaughterhouses. Improbably high cattle production per hectare of pasture is a sign that ranches are acting as intermediaries. This is a “common and accepted practice” and is not prohibited by the cattle agreement (Gibbs et al., 2016 , p. 8). The monitoring system tracks only properties, not individual cows (which would need to be identified by ear tags, for example). The cattle agreement is most relevant for beef being exported to other countries, although the adherence of Brazil’s largest supermarket chain (Pão de Açucar) in 2016 is an important milestone in the domestic market (Charoux, 2016 ). Earlier, 35 Brazilian supermarket chains had discontinued beef purchases from offending slaughterhouses, and similar commitments had been made by some leather buyers (Arima et al., 2014 , p. 467). As with soybeans, the fact that China is the major destination for beef undermines any possibility of pressure from consumers there affecting adherence.

An example of the problems with the cattle agreement is provided by JBS (which gets its name from the initials of its founder, João Batista Sobrinho), which, including the fusion of Friboi and Bertin, which it acquired on October 27, 2009 , is the world’s largest processer of cattle products. Shortly before the cattle agreement, Greenpeace reported a large number of cattle purchases by Bertin from ranches that had been embargoed (Greenpeace, 2009 ). After the cattle agreement, the federal prosecutor’s office found a similar pattern of violation by JBS (Greenpeace, 2011 ); in 2012 , JBS recommitted to the cattle agreement.

Protected Areas

Creating and defending protected areas is an important component of any strategy for containing deforestation. Protected areas in Brazil include both indigenous lands, which are under the National Foundation of the Indian (FUNAI), and “conservation units,” which are under the Ministry of the Environment (Ministério do Meio Ambiente [MMA]) if federal, or under equivalent state-level agencies if created by the state governments. Since advent of the National System of Conservation Units (SNUC), in 2000 , conservation units are classified into categories as “integral protection” and “sustainable use” (Ministério do Meio Ambiente, 2015 ). The integral protection category is for various kinds of parks and reserves that exclude human residents; the sustainable use category includes forests for timber management, “extractive reserves” for rubber tappers and other collectors of nontimber forest products, and “sustainable development reserves” with riverside dwellers and other traditional residents. Overlap sometimes occurs between indigenous territories and conservation units, leading to conflicts among government agencies and between the resident populations and the agencies. A case in point is a national forest (for timber management) that was created on the Tapajós River without considering the needs of the Munduruku indigenous residents, who are struggling to have the area declared as an indigenous land (Fearnside, 2015b ).

Protected areas have a significant effect on preventing deforestation (Ferreira, Venticinque, & de Almeida, 2005 ; Ricketts, Soares-Filho, da Fonseca, Nepstad, Petsonk, Anderson et al., 2010 ; Veríssimo, Rolla, Vedoveto, & Futada, 2011 ; Walker, Moore, Arima, Perz, Simmons, Caldas et al., 2009 ). Location with respect to the arc of deforestation is important in this effect (Nolte, Agrawal, Silvius, & Soares-Filho, 2013 ), and the defensibility of the sites chosen should be an essential criterion in selecting areas (Peres & Terborgh, 1995 ). The category of the protected area, together with its administration at the state or federal level, affects reserve effectiveness in preventing deforestation (Vitel, Fearnside, & Graça, 2009 ). Locational effects and political pressures can obscure these differences (Pfaff, Robalino, Sandoval, & Herrera, 2015 ). Indigenous lands have the best record in excluding deforestation (Nepstad, Schwartzman, Bamberger, Santilli, Ray, Schlesinger et al., 2006 ). In the case of the Amazon Protected Areas Program (ARPA), which beginning in 2002 created and fortified a series of conservation units to meet an objective of protecting 600,000 km 2 of Amazonian forest, the reserves have been shown to imply a reduction in deforestation (Nepstad et al., 2006 ; Soares-Filho, Moutinho, Nepstad, Anderson, Rodrigues, Garcia et al., 2010 ).

Sites can be selected to create barriers in order to block the advance of deforestation. For example, in 2004 , a 30,000 km 2 “mosaic” of protected areas was created by the state of Amazonas to block entry of deforestation from Mato Grosso. Another example is the “armored zone” ( zona blindada ) along the proposed BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) Highway. This is supposed to act, in a way similar to the armor on a tank, to prevent deforestation from perforating the barrier of reserves that are parallel to the highway. Although the reserves themselves may resist deforestation, planned side roads cutting through them would simply take deforesters into unprotected areas beyond the line of “armor” (Fearnside, Graça, Keizer, Maldonado, Barbosa, & Nogueira, 2009 ). Reserves are needed in the large area that would be exposed to this migration to the west of the Purus River (Graça, dos Santos M. A., Jr., Rocha, Fearnside, Emilio, Menger et al., 2014 ). Similarly, new reserves are needed in Roraima in areas that would receive migrants from the arc of deforestation as a result of opening the BR-319 (Barni, Fearnside, & Graça, 2015 ).

The creation of protected areas is, in many cases, a question of now or never. Once population moves into and claims an area, it becomes politically impossible to create protected areas. One of the choices that must always be made is whether to prioritize the creation of areas in the integral-protection category or in the sustainable-use category. Because it is much easier to obtain political and local support for creating sustainable-use areas, these often best serve the objective of obtaining large areas of protected forest within a time frame that avoids losing the option to create a protected area altogether (Fearnside, 2011 ). Depending on circumstances, creating integral-protection protected areas can also result in social injustices. However, it is also possible to go too far in the direction of reduced protection in order to garner support. The SNUC includes as one of its protected area types the “environmental protection area” (APA). There are almost no restrictions on APAs, in practice, including in urban areas. Creating APAs may result in maps with large areas colored in green, but it does little to actually protect the forest. Instead, it offers an easy escape for interest groups intent on averting protected-area restrictions because they can always demand that a proposed protected area be an APA instead of one of the types with more real protection (e.g., Câmara, 2000 ; Pádua, 2011 ).

Protected areas are not as protected as is often assumed (Table 1 ). Deforestation takes place within these areas, including indigenous areas (Fearnside, 2005b ; Nogueira, Yanai, Vasconcelos, Graça, & Fearnside, 2017 ). There is also a tendency for the government to downgrade or downsize existing reserves, or even to revoke them completely (Bernard, Penna, & Araújo, 2014 ; de Marques & Peres, 2015 ). An example is provided by the protected areas that would be affected by planned dams in the Tapajós River basin (Fearnside, 2015a ). Another is a proposed law by legislators from the state of Amazonas to revoke protection from 10,000 km 2 of the “mosaic” of conservation units in the deforestation hotspot in the southern part of the state (Instituto Socioambiental, 2017a , 2017b ).

Table 1. Protected Areas in Legal Amazonia (a)

a Values summed from Nogueira et al. ( 2017 ), which includes area and carbon data for each protected area.

b All original vegetation, including nonforest vegetation, such as cerrado (savanna).

Since both the human and financial resources for protected areas are always very limited, one of the perennial dilemmas is whether to give priority to creating new areas or to invest in staffing and defending existing areas. So long as Brazilian Amazonia continues to have large areas of unprotected forest on government land, the better option is to maximize the creation of new areas, even if they are “paper parks” with only a token government presence. This is needed to obtain larger areas before the opportunities to do so are foreclosed. Even “paper parks” have a significant effect in inhibiting deforestation because their legal status makes it far less likely that potential invaders will be successful in gaining title to the land in the future, as compared to their invading forest in an area that is not legally protected.

Depending on whether a protected area is near or far from the deforestation frontier, its effect on deforestation will either be immediate or delayed. The priority for reserve creation will depend on the objectives that motivate the decision. It is often said that those who are primarily concerned with maintaining biodiversity and those who are primarily concerned with avoiding climate change share a natural alliance in that protecting tropical forest achieves both goals. However, this identity of interests can break down when choices must be made. If the priority is protecting biodiversity, the objective is likely to be seen in terms of a measure such as the number of species that will be maintained over a long time—theoretically permanently—making the creation of large, inexpensive reserves far from the frontier the best choice (Fearnside, 2003a ; Fearnside & Ferraz, 1995 ). In terms of climate change, the priority is likely to be measured in terms of reduced emissions over a short time period, making reserves nearer to the frontier the best choice. The financial costs and other obstacles at each distance from the frontier will determine the ideal location, which is likely not to be at either extreme in terms of distance from the frontier. In practice, the type of protected area is associated with distance from the frontier, and sustainable-use areas are more likely to be closer to the frontier than are integral-protection areas, giving the former a greater short-term effect in avoiding deforestation (Pfaff, Robalino, Lima, Sandoval, & Herrera, 2014 ).

The 2015 Paris accords have fundamentally changed the criteria for choices based on climate benefits: the objective is expressed as keeping mean global temperature from rising above a value “well below” the benchmark of 2 °C over the preindustrial average, whereas the objective was previously expressed in terms of Article 2 of the Climate Convention, which specifies “stabilization” of greenhouse-gas concentrations at a level to avoid “dangerous interference with the global climate system.” Because stabilization can take many years, even centuries, this is an entirely different time scale. Assuming that diplomats and decision-makers are serious about complying with the Paris accords, what counts is what happens in the next 20 years. In terms of protected areas, relevant benefits will be from those near the frontier. The fact that many protected areas are far from the frontier means that their climatic benefit is decreased by the Paris accord relative to other forms of mitigation that yield quicker returns. Another factor decreasing the importance of protected areas is the effect of “leakage,” or the displacement of impacts, in this case deforestation, to locations beyond the boundaries of a mitigation project. Leakage from reserve creation is of two types: “in-to-out” leakage, in which deforesters leave the area to continue clearing forest elsewhere, and “out-to-out” leakage, in which potential squatters and grileiros choose areas elsewhere in the forest to invade because the reserve decreases their chances of gaining title. Deforestation that has been displaced by leakage will continue until the available forest is exhausted in the landscape outside the reserve, after which the climatic benefit that was lost through leakage will be recovered assuming that the reserve is effective in excluding deforesters (Fearnside, 2009a ). The impact of leakage on decreasing the climatic value of a reserve increases with increasing value attributed to time, as through a discount rate. Reserves as a mitigation option therefore decrease in value with the Paris accords. By contrast, other options substantially increase in value, such as refraining from building hydroelectric dams, which are an energy source that has very high initial emissions and that emits methane, a short-lived gas with high impact while it remains in the atmosphere (Fearnside, 2015c , 2017c ).

Contain Infrastructure Projects

An essential part of any plan to contain deforestation in Amazonia is to limit new infrastructure projects, such as roads and dams. This often goes unmentioned in plans for limiting deforestation, such as Brazil’s PPCDAm (Ministério do Meio Ambiente, 2013 ) and National Plan for Climate Change (Comitê Interministerial sobre Mudança do Clima, 2008 ). Vast plans for new infrastructure imply more, not less, deforestation—one cannot expect deforestation to decrease if new projects go ahead regardless of impacts. The pattern of assuming that unrealistic governance scenarios will play out in practice is a formula for environmental disaster (Fearnside, 2007 ; Fearnside & Graça, 2009 ).

Decisions on new infrastructure represent a key element that is in the control of the government. The decision to build a road, for example, is made by a handful of government authorities, as contrasted with the individual decisions of the thousands of actors who will determine the deforestation consequences once the road is built. The decision-making process for infrastructure projects is therefore critical. Decision-making is distinct from licensing, although licensing is also important. At present, the role of environmental licensing in Brazil is largely limited to suggesting minor changes in project design or compensation measures, not to comment on the existence or not of the infrastructure project in question. This system need to reformed to ensure that environmental and social costs and benefits are transparently assessed and democratically debated before the actual decision to build a project is made (e.g., Fearnside, 2014a ). Among the changes needed to create a more rational decision-making system is to remove the underlying causes of the current bias in favor large, expensive projects regardless of their impacts. This requires making changes in the regulation of political campaign contributions (Fearnside, 2016d ). It also requires revocation of the “security-suspension” laws stemming from Brazil’s military dictatorship period that allow any judicial decision to be overturned in the interests of the “public economy” (Fearnside, 2015c ). Despite its problems, Brazil’s environmental licensing system is far better than the practices that were used before this system was implemented, in 1986 ; however, environmental licensing faces a series of immediate threats that could result in its being effectively abolished by the National Congress (Fearnside, 2016b ; Ferreira et al., 2014 ).

Abandon Myths That Divert Efforts to Contain Deforestation

A variety of myths tend to divert efforts to control forest loss in directions that fail to achieve this objective or that are counterproductive. One is the idea that “sustainable logging,” or “sustainable forest management,” will motivate long-term maintenance of the forest. It is simply assumed that what is called “sustainable forest management” is really sustainable (e.g., Ministério do Meio Ambiente & Ministério de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, 2014 ). However, fundamental contradictions result in the behavior of the managers not being sustainable, no matter what their discourse or promises may be (Fearnside, 1989d , 2003a ). This is because trees in tropical forests grow at rates that are limited by biology and have no relation to the rates at which money can be made in alternative investments. In practice, the trees are in competition with a wide range of other possible investments (including first-cycle forest-management projects elsewhere), and it is more profitable for the manager to exploit the potentially renewable resource as quickly as possible and then to invest the proceeds in an option with a faster return elsewhere (e.g., Clark, 1973 , 1976 ). The first cycle, which is what is in course in virtually all forest-management projects in Brazilian Amazonia, is inherently more profitable than subsequent cycles because the large forest trees that have been growing for centuries at no cost to the manager are there for the harvesting; whereas the situation will change in a future equilibrium when the manager can only harvest what grows while the management area is being defended and maintained. In addition, based on the population biology of the trees, the current rules for management projects are unlikely to maintain forest indefinitely even if they are followed as is theoretically envisioned (Kageyama, 2000 ). Furthermore, the theoretical 30-year cycle in terra firme (unflooded upland) forests has been subverted by the inclusion of loopholes that imply a virtual zero probability of continuation after the first cycle. An example is provided by a project in Acre managing 12,000 ha (Fearnside, 2015f ). Instead of dividing the area into 30 plots, one to be harvested in each year of the cycle, the manager was allowed to harvest the entire area in only six years. Theoretically, the land would have then sat unused for 24 years until the second cycle began. The chance of this happening was obviously slim, even less so given that the area was later sold for a settlement project. The chances are even lower in the case of small management projects (up to 100 ha under management) in the state of Amazonas, which allow the entire area to be harvested in the first year, to theoretically be followed by a 29-year wait for the start of another cycle.

Another myth that diverts efforts to contain deforestation is the notion that intensification of agriculture and ranching will cause actors to stop deforesting. There are good reasons for intensification, but land sparing is not one of them. The subsidies and marketing advantages that can be garnered from this discourse represent attractions for endorsing this path, which nevertheless goes against economic logic. The idea that people’s ambitions are limited by a “full-stomach” effect, when one stops expanding production once minimal requirements are met, does not apply to individuals who are integrated into modern economies, as are almost all actors in Amazonian deforestation. A number of authors have proposed land sparing through intensification by (Sánchez, Bandy, Villachica, & Nicholaides, 1982 ; Strassburg, Latawiec, Barioni, Nobre, da Silva, V.P., Valentim et al., 2014 ; Zarin, Harris, Baccini, Aksenov, Hansen, Azevedo-Ramos et al., 2016 ), but the prospects that this strategy will have the desired environmental result are poor (Fearnside, 1987c ). Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the response to a productivity increase would be to restore forest. If pasture were to produce more, then the ranchers would simply export the excess—not keep the total production of their properties constant and reduce pasture areas. In fact, since the more highly productive pastures would presumably be more profitable than the present ones, the tendency would be to do just the opposite—expand the area of pasture by clearing more (Fearnside, 2002 ; Kaimowitz & Angelsen, 2008 ). Pasture area in Brazil is not restrained, either by a limited desire of ranchers to make more money or by global markets for beef.

Another diversion of efforts to contain Amazonian deforestation is investment in subsidizing what is known in Brazil as “recuperation of degraded areas,” that is, restoring tree cover in nonproductive areas that have already been deforested. This should not be a current priority because, under current conditions in Amazonia, it is much more expensive to recuperate a hectare of forest than to avoid a hectare of deforestation, and the benefits in terms of both carbon and biodiversity are much less (Fearnside, 2003a ). Severe limits restrict the recuperation of degraded lands through sustainable uses such as agroforestry (Fearnside, 1995 ). One is the difference in scale between the extent of degraded pastures in Amazonia and the capacity of markets and input sources to support agroforestry. Another is the logic from the viewpoint of a farmer making decisions on agroforestry: if a hectare is planted in a degraded pasture, it will produce very little compared to what it would produce if another hectare of forest is cleared and planted.

Provide Alternatives

It is not enough to prohibit deforestation and punish violations—alternatives must be offered for supporting the small farmers who sustain themselves by clearing forest, for both subsistence and commercial production. However, there is no need to provide such alternatives for investors (Fearnside, 1989b ). These larger operators can fend for themselves very well by switching to other types of investment without a need for subsidies with funds intended for environmental purposes.

The current economy of rural Amazonia is almost entirely based on destruction of the forest: selling timber and replacing forest with crops or pasture. Tapping the value of the environmental services of the forest as an alternative basis for the rural economy. Even though the environmental services, such as avoiding global warming, recycling water, and maintaining biodiversity, are worth much more to human society than the money gained from destroying the forest, the institutional mechanisms needed to transform these services into a monetary flow and to use this flow to support the rural population without provoking perverse social effects are lacking. Some progress has been made toward the goal of obtaining monetary flows through international negotiations under the Climate Convention, but the social side of this mechanism—how money would be used once obtained—is completely unresolved. Payment for environmental services (PES) is viewed as the most direct way of providing conservation incentives and avoiding perverse effects on equity (Börner, Wunder, Wertz-Kanounnikoff, Tito, Pereira, & Nascimento, 2010 ; Ferraro & Kiss, 2002 ). Land-tenure regularization is an unavoidable prerequisite for PES to function (Wunder, Börner, Tito, & Pereira, 2009 ), which creates both dangers and new opportunities to induce environmental compliance (Duchelle, Cromberg, Gebara, Guerra, Melo, Larson et al., 2014 ). In terms of cost effectiveness, command and control is still the cheapest option for reducing deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia, but PES, if directed to small actors, offers a way of reducing or avoiding negative social impacts (Börner, Marinho, & Wunder, 2015 ).

One cannot simply pay people for doing nothing or distribute money and goods to local communities without creating conflicts and destroying cultures. The recent disastrous case of compensation distributions to indigenous communities affected by the Belo Monte Dam offers a concrete example (Fearnside, 2017a , 2017b ; Heurich, 2013 ). Subsidizing purchases of nontimber forest products from extractive reserves has been suggested as one possible support mechanism (Fearnside, 1989c ). Current discussions of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) involve a series of controversies, including questions of how accounting for carbon benefits is done at both the proposal stage and later stages for verification and payment (Fearnside, 2012a , 2012b ; Vitel, Carrero, Cenamo, Leroy, Graça, & Fearnside, 2013 ; Yanai, Fearnside, Graça, & Nogueira, 2012 ). Resolution of the various open questions regarding the quantification and institutional mechanisms for rewarding the environmental services of Amazonian forests, including their carbon benefits, remains a top priority for creating an alternative to deforestation on the scale and within the time frame that this alternative is needed (Fearnside, 2013b ).

Is Brazil’s Amazonian Deforestation “Development”?

The term “development” implies a change with an effect that increases human well-being. This is not to be confused with “growth,” which refers to an increase in the throughput of matter and energy in a human society and may or may not benefit well-being (Daly, 1996 ). Fortunately, development does not necessarily require growth, which is subject to sever planetary limits (Steffen, Richardson, Rockstrom, Cornell, Fetzer, Bennett et al., 2015 ). Limiting factors within Amazonia restrain many types of use (Fearnside, 1986b , 1997c ; Fearnside & Leal Filho, 2001 ). To be considered sustainable development, the productive systems must continue to yield their benefits for a very long time, theoretically indefinitely, the Brundtland Commission’s ( 1987 ) caveat regarding nonrenewable resources notwithstanding. Many of the most common land uses, such as extensive cattle pasture, are unsustainable (Fearnside, 1983 ). In the case of cattle pasture, which dominates deforested areas in most of Brazilian Amazonia (Fearnside, 1996 ; INPE, 2014b ), the human population supported per unit area of deforestation is minimal: the productivity and financial benefit are small, and there is even less of a local benefit (Fearnside, 2005a , 2013a , 2016c ). The question of who benefits is, of course, critical to defining what is development; this author has argued that the people living in Amazonia must be benefited in order for undertakings in the region to be considered “development” (Fearnside, 1997b ).

The sequence of changes in human well-being as Amazon deforestation progresses has been characterized as a boom-and-bust pattern, in which indicators of well-being increase in the early phase of deforestation, followed by a decline after the frontier stage has passed so that the median HDI by municipality (county) returns to a low level, similar to that before the deforestation boom (Rodrigues et al., 2009 ). This conclusion was based on a cross-sectional study of statistics by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for 286 municipalities from 1991 to 2000 . Celentano, Sills, Sales, and Verissimo ( 2012 ), using the same data source, reached a similar conclusion based on 399 municipalities (that also went up to 2000 ), although these authors also found that HDI could rise again after the crash in a second turning point. The boom-and-bust pattern has been contested by Weinhold, Reis, and Vale ( 2015 ), who found that the pattern in the cross-sectional data is explained by spatial correlation, because the pre-frontier phase is largely represented by poor municipalities with abundant forest in the western part of the state of Amazonas, while the postdeforestation “bust” is largely represented by heavily deforested areas in the state of Maranhão, where the persistent poverty of northeastern Brazil explains the low HDI rather than the assumed sequence based on municipalities elsewhere. The boom-bust effect disappears without these municipalities in the analysis, and extending the analysis to 2010 also eliminates the effect. Weinhold et al. ( 2015 ) also emphasize that none of the five existing longitudinal studies of specific cases shows a boom-and-bust pattern. Caviglia-Harris et al. ( 2016 ) also analyzed these municipal data for 1991 , 2000 , and 2010 , finding that cross-sectional analysis shows a boom-and-bust but that a panel analysis indicates instead a “decoupling” of HDI from deforestation.

An important aspect of municipal-level HDI data is that only the population that is present at the time of each census is considered. There are both winners and losers with the arrival and with the passage of the deforestation frontier. Many of the transformations involve a substitution of the resident population, with one set of residents being either expelled or bought out by the next. For example, small farmers may be replaced by cattle ranchers, who may at a later phase sell their land to soybean planters from other parts of the country, as has occurred in many areas in Mato Grosso. The municipalities dominated by soybeans in Mato Grosso have some of the highest HDI values in Brazil, but the initial population of these areas is no longer present and is not among the beneficiaries: only the winners remain (Fearnside & Figueiredo, 2016 ).

Both extensive cattle ranching and soybeans occupy vast areas but support few people as compared to family agriculture. However, in the approximately 3,000 settlements that have been established to support small farmers (Yanai et al., 2017 ) the sequence of developments is not so different in environmental terms. The vast majority of the land that the settlers deforest soon becomes cattle pasture, even if it is first planted a time or two in annual food crops (e.g., Diniz, Hoogstra-Klein, Kok, & Arts, 2013 ; Fearnside, 1986b , 1989e ). Altering this pattern will require changing the way land tenure is established, eliminating the tradition of legalizing invasions whether by small squatters or large grileiros (Fearnside, 1979 , 2001b ). It will also require an end to using Amazonia as a dumping ground for the country’s social problems, such as the presence of millions of poor, landless farmers. Brazil’s Amazon forest was originally the size of Western Europe, and the 784,666 km 2 that had been deforested by 2016 is the size of France and the United Kingdom combined. This alone is more than sufficient to feed the Brazilian population. Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of beef, and one of the top exporters of soybeans, meaning that the production of these products already far exceeds the amounts needed to feed the country’s population, and every hectare that is now being deforested for pasture and soy is for export. This means that deforestation can be reduced without affecting Brazil’s food supply. In other words, “zero deforestation” is possible.

Acknowledgments

The author’s research is supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq: Proc. 304020/2010-9; 573810/2008-7), the Foundation for Support of Research in Amazonas (FAPEAM: Proc. 708565), the National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA: PRJ15.125) and the Brazilian Research Network on Climate Change (RedeClima; FINEP: 01.13.0353-00). No funds are received from corporate sources, such as those for soy, beef, or timber. Reviewer and editor comments were helpful.

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• Conservation in the Amazon

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What are the causes of deforestation in the Amazon?

The Amazon rainforest, covering much of northwestern Brazil and extending into Colombia, Peru and other South American countries, is the world’s largest tropical rainforest. The rainforest is covered by thousands of rivers, including the Amazon.

The Amazon has been home to indigenous tribes for thousands of years; however, it is now under considerable threat from exploitation caused by the demand for resources such as timber and by clearing the forest for activities such as rearing livestock and growing crops.

What are the main resource-exploiting activities in the Amazon rainforest?

The graph below shows the leading causes of deforestation in the Brazillian Amazon. From this, we can see that commercial logging (cutting down trees to sell/use the wood) accounts for only 3% of deforestation. However,  deforestation must occur before the other land uses occur.

Causes of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Logging companies are mainly only interested in high-value timber such as mahogany and teak, which is sold to companies in other countries. Where only high-value trees are removed, it is called selective logging. However, to access more valuable wood, it is often the case that other, less valuable, trees are also removed to improve access. These are commonly used as fuelwood or made into pulp or charcoal. Vast areas of forest are cleared at once. This is known as clear felling.

Mineral Extraction

Gold mining in the Amazon Rainforest

The primary type of mining in the Amazon is for gold. However, other minerals are also extracted including iron ore, bauxite and oil. In 1999 10,000 hectares of land were used for mining. However, this had increased to 50,000 hectares by 2016. Mining causes complete devastation to the environment as trees are clear-felled, and the topsoil is completely removed to access the minerals underground.

The timelapse below shows deforestation caused by the growth of the Carajas mine, the world’s largest iron ore mine.

Attempts are being made to restore the rainforest in areas that have been mined. The BBC news website has a video about this.

Energy development

A reservoir in the Amazon rainforest

An unlimited supply of water and ideal river conditions have led to the development of hydroelectric power stations (HEP Stations). Constructing dams and reservoirs involves flooding vast areas of rainforest. Over time the submerged forest causes the water to become acidic as it rots. This can cause turbines within the dam to corrode. In addition to this silt, from surface run-off, causes dams to become blocked.

Illegal Trade in Wildlife

Poaching, hunting and illegal wildlife trafficking are big business in Brazil. This does not directly cause deforestation; however, it is upsetting the natural balance of the rainforest ecosystem .

What activities are causing the rainforest to be cleared?

Commercial farming: cattle.

Cattle ranching in the Amazon rainforest

Ranching is the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazillian Amazon. Ranching involves clearing an area of rainforest then rearing cattle on the land. Deforestation leads to the destruction of the nutrient cycle, which means the land can only sustain herds for a short period because the quality of pasture quickly declines. The cattle then have to be moved on to a recently cleared area of land.

Subsistence farming: Crops

There are nearly 3 million landless people in Brazil alone. The government has cleared large areas of the Amazon Rainforest and encouraged people to move there. The scheme has not been successful. Farmers stay on the same land and attempt to farm it year after year. Nutrients in the soil are quickly exhausted as there is no longer a humus layer to provide nutrients. The ground becomes infertile, and nothing will grow.

Commercial farming: Crops

Soy bean plantation in the Amazon

Large plantations have been created from cleared areas of rainforest. Crops such as oil, pineapple and sugar cane are grown. The majority of clearance for commercial farming has occurred to make way for soybean cultivation. As with cattle farming, the land can only sustain crops for a short period, which leads to further deforestation.

Road Building

Roads are required to access the Amazon rainforest and bring in heavy transport and machinery and send goods to market, roads are necessary. Large swathes of rainforest have been removed making way for roads. Once a road has been constructed, it opens the rainforest to other users. People settle along roads due to accessibility, which leads to further deforestation as houses are built and crops are grown. The construction of the Transamazon Highway has allowed increased access to remote areas of the Amazon Rainforest.

The animation below shows how forest clearance occurs once roads have been constructed.

The image below shows a clearing made by a subsistence farmer along the Amazonian highway. Roads bring colonisation and destruction to the Amazon rainforest.

A clearing made by a subsistence farmer along the Amazonian highway

Settlement and population growth

The economic activities discussed on this page require workers. As industry developments, it brings economic opportunities which result in people migrating to the rainforest to get a job. As these people need homes and services further deforestation occurs.

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Deforestation: Case Studies

Deforestation is putting our planet at risk, as the following case studies exemplify. It is responsible for at least 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions 1 and wipes out 137 species of plants, animals and insects every day 2 . The deplorable practice degenerates soil, losing half of the world’s topsoil over the past 150 years. 3 Deforestation also leads to drought by reducing the amount of water in the atmosphere. 4

Since the 1950s, deforestation has accelerated significantly, particularly in the tropics. 5 This is primarily due to rapid population growth and a resultant increase in demand for food and resources. 6 Agriculture drives about 80 per cent of deforestation today, as land is cleared for livestock, growing animal feed or other crops. 7 The below deforestation case studies of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest and the Congo Basin provide further insights into modern deforestation. 

Deforestation case study: Brazil

Nearly two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest – the largest rainforest in the world – is within Brazil’s national borders. 8 Any examination of deforestation case studies would be incomplete without considering tree felling in Brazil. 

History of deforestation in Brazil

Humans first discovered the Amazon rainforest about 13,000 years ago. But, it was the arrival of Europeans in the late 15th century that spurred the conversion of the forest into farmland. Nevertheless, the sheer size of the Amazon meant that the rainforest remained largely intact until the early 20th century. It was in the latter half of the 20th century that things began to change. 9

Industrial activities and large-scale agriculture began to eat away the southern and eastern fringes of the Amazon, from the 1950s onwards. 10 Deforestation in Brazil received a significant boost in 1964 when a military dictatorship took power and declared the jungle a security risk. 11 By the 1970s, the government was running television ads encouraging land conversion, provoking millions to migrate north into the forest. 12 Settlements replaced trees, and infrastructure began to develop. Wealthy tycoons subsequently bought the land for cattle ranches or vast fields of soy. 13

By the turn of the 21st century, more than 75 per cent of deforestation in the Amazon was for cattle ranching. But, environmentalists and Indigenous groups drew international attention to the devastation caused and succeeded in curtailing it by 2004. Between 2004 and the early 2010s, annual forest cover loss in Brazil reduced by about 80 per cent. The decline is attributed to “increased law enforcement, satellite monitoring, pressure from environmentalists, private and public sector initiatives, new protected areas, and macroeconomic trends”. 14  

Brazil’s deforestation of the Amazon rainforest since 2010

Unfortunately, however, efforts to curtail deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon have stalled since 2012. 15 Tree felling and land conversion have been trending upwards ever since. The economic incentive for chopping the rainforest down has overcome the environmental benefits of leaving it standing. 16 Political movements and lax government legislation have leveraged this to their advantage. President Jair Bolsonaro won the 2018 election with a promise to open up the Amazon to business. 17 Since his inauguration, the rate of deforestation has leapt by as much as 92 per cent. 18

However, there is still hope for the Amazon rainforest. Bolsonaro’s principal international ally was US President Trump. Now that environmentally-conscious Joe Biden has replaced him in the White House, international pressure regarding deforestation will increase heavily. 19 Biden has made this clear with a promise of USD $20 billion to protect the Amazon. 20

The impact of continued deforestation in Brazil

For its three million plant and animal species and one million Indigenous inhabitants, it is imperative that Amazonian deforestation is massively and immediately reduced. 21 As much as 17 per cent of the Amazon has been lost already. 22 If this proportion increases to over 20 per cent, a tipping point will be reached. 23 This will irreversibly break the water cycle, and at least half of the remaining forest will become savannah. 24

Impact on climate change

Losing the Amazon would also mean losing the fight against climate change. Despite the rampant deforestation in recent years, the remaining Amazon rainforest still absorbs between 5 to 10 per cent of all human CO2 emissions. 25 Cutting trees down increases anthropogenic emissions. When felled, burned or left to rot, trees release sequestered carbon. 26 A combination of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preserving existing forests is crucial to preventing dangerous levels of global warming. 27  

Deforestation case study: The Congo Basin

The Congo Basin is the second-largest rainforest in the world. 28 It has been described as the ‘second lungs’ of the Earth because of how much carbon dioxide it absorbs and how much oxygen it produces. 29 But, just as the world’s first lungs – the Amazon – is being destroyed by humans, the Congo’s rainforest is also suffering heavy casualties. 30

60 per cent of the Congo Basin is located within the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). 31 The DRC is one of the world’s largest and poorest countries, though it has immense economic resources. 32 Natural resources have fuelled an ongoing war that has affected all the neighbouring countries and claimed as many as six million lives. 33 The resultant instability combined with corruption and poor governance have led to an ever-increasing rate of deforestation within the DRC’s borders. 34

Deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Compared to the Amazon and Southeast Asia, deforestation in the Congo Basin has been low over the past few decades. 35 Nevertheless, great swathes of primary forest have been lost. Between 2000 and 2014, an area of forest larger than Bangladesh was destroyed. 36 From 2015 until 2019, 6.37 million hectares of tree cover was razed. 37 In 2019 alone, 475,000 hectares of primary forest disappeared, placing the DRC second only to Brazil for total deforestation that year. 38 Should the current rate of deforestation continue, all primary forest in the Congo Basin will be gone by the end of the century. 39

Drivers of deforestation in the DRC’s Congo Basin

Over the past 20 years, the biggest drivers of deforestation in the DRC has been small-scale subsistence agriculture. Clearing trees for charcoal and fuelwood, urban expansion and mining have also contributed to deforestation. Industrial logging is the most common cause of forest degradation. It opens up deeper areas of the forest to commercial hunting. There has been at least a 60 per cent drop in the region’s forest elephant populations over the past decade due to hunting and poaching. 40  

Between 2000 and 2014, small-scale farming contributed to about 90 per cent of the DRC’s deforestation. This trend has not changed in recent years. The majority of small-scale forest clearing is conducted with simple axes by people with no other livelihood options. The region’s political instability and ongoing conflict are therefore inciting the unsustainable rate of deforestation within the Congo Basin. 41

In future, however, industrial logging and land conversion to large-scale agriculture will pose the greatest threats to the Congo rainforest. 42 There are fears that demand for palm oil, rubber and sugar production will promote a massive increase in deforestation. 43 The DRC’s population is also predicted to grow to almost 200 million people by 2050. 44 This increase will threaten the remaining rainforest further, as they try to earn a living in a country deprived of opportunities. 45

The impact of deforestation in the Congo Basin

80 million people depend upon the Congo Basin for their existence. It provides food, charcoal, firewood, medicinal plants, and materials for building and other purposes. But, this rainforest also indirectly supports people across the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Like all forests, it is instrumental in regulating rainfall, which can affect precipitation hundreds of miles away. The Congo Basin is a primary source of rainfall for the Sahel region, doubling the amount of rainfall in the air that passes over it. 46

The importance of the Congo Basin’s ability to increase precipitation cannot be understated. Areas such as the Horn of Africa are becoming increasingly dry. Drought in Ethiopia and Somalia has put millions of people on emergency food and water rations in recent years. Destroying the DRC’s rainforest would create the largest humanitarian crisis on Earth. 47  

It would also be devastating for biodiversity. The Congo Basin shelters some 10,000 animal species and more than 600 tree species. 48 They play a hugely important role in the forest, which has consequences for the entire planet. For instance, elephants, gorillas, and other large herbivores keep the density of small trees very low through predation. 49 This results in a high density of tall trees in the Congo rainforest. 50 Larger trees store more carbon and therefore help to prevent global warming by removing this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. 51  

Preserve our forests

Preserving the Amazon and Congo Basin rainforests is vital for tackling climate change, as these deforestation case studies demonstrate. We must prioritise protecting and enhancing our existing trees if we are to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C, as recommended by the IPCC. 52

• Rainforest Alliance. (2018). What is the Relationship Between Deforestation And Climate Change? [online] Available at: https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/articles/relationship-between-deforestation-climate-change.
• www.worldanimalfoundation.com. (n.d.). Deforestation: Clearing The Path For Wildlife Extinctions. [online] Available at: https://www.worldanimalfoundation.com/advocate/wild-earth/params/post/1278141/deforestation-clearing-the-path-for-wildlife-extinctions#:~:text=Seventy%20percent%20of%20the%20Earth.
• World Wildlife Fund. (2000). Soil Erosion and Degradation | Threats | WWF. [online] Available at: https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/soil-erosion-and-degradation.
• Butler, R.A. (2001). The impact of deforestation. [online] Mongabay. Available at: https://rainforests.mongabay.com/09-consequences-of-deforestation.html.
• The Classroom | Empowering Students in Their College Journey. (2009). The History of Deforestation. [online] Available at: https://www.theclassroom.com/the-history-of-deforestation-13636286.html.
• Greenpeace USA. (n.d.). Agribusiness & Deforestation. [online] Available at: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/forests/issues/agribusiness/.
• Yale.edu. (2015). The Amazon Basin Forest | Global Forest Atlas. [online] Available at: https://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/region/amazon.
• Time. (2019). The Amazon Rain Forest Is Nearly Gone. We Went to the Front Lines to See If It Could Be Saved. [online] Available at: https://time.com/amazon-rainforest-disappearing/.
• Butler, R. (2020). Amazon Destruction. [online] Mongabay.com. Available at: https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_destruction.html.
• the Guardian. (2020). Amazon deforestation surges to 12-year high under Bolsonaro. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/01/amazon-deforestation-surges-to-12-year-high-under-bolsonaro.
• Earth Innovation Institute. (2020). Joe Biden offers $20 billion to protect Amazon forests. [online] Available at: https://earthinnovation.org/2020/03/joe-biden-offers-20-billion-to-protect-amazon-forests/.
• Brazil’s Amazon: Deforestation “surges to 12-year high.” (2020). BBC News. [online] 30 Nov. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-55130304.
• Carbon Brief. (2020). Guest post: Could climate change and deforestation spark Amazon “dieback”? [online] Available at: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-could-climate-change-and-deforestation-spark-amazon-dieback.
• Union of Concerned Scientists (2012). Tropical Deforestation and Global Warming | Union of Concerned Scientists. [online] www.ucsusa.org. Available at: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/tropical-deforestation-and-global-warming#:~:text=When%20trees%20are%20cut%20down.
• Milman, O. (2018). Scientists say halting deforestation “just as urgent” as reducing emissions. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/04/climate-change-deforestation-global-warming-report.
• Bergen, M. (2019). Congo Basin Deforestation Threatens Food and Water Supplies Throughout Africa. [online] World Resources Institute. Available at: https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/07/congo-basin-deforestation-threatens-food-and-water-supplies-throughout-africa.
• www.esa.int. (n.d.). Earth from Space: “Second lungs of the Earth.” [online] Available at: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Earth_from_Space_Second_lungs_of_the_Earth [Accessed 26 Feb. 2021].
• Erickson-Davis, M. (2018). Congo Basin rainforest may be gone by 2100, study finds. [online] Mongabay Environmental News. Available at: https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/congo-basin-rainforest-may-be-gone-by-2100-study-finds/.
• Mongabay Environmental News. (2020). Poor governance fuels “horrible dynamic” of deforestation in DRC. [online] Available at: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/12/poor-governance-fuels-horrible-dynamic-of-deforestation-in-drc/ [Accessed 26 Feb. 2021].
• DR Congo country profile. (2019). BBC News. [online] 10 Jan. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13283212.
• Butler, R.A. (2001). Congo Deforestation. [online] Mongabay. Available at: https://rainforests.mongabay.com/congo/deforestation.html.
• Mongabay Environmental News. (2020). Poor governance fuels “horrible dynamic” of deforestation in DRC. [online] Available at: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/12/poor-governance-fuels-horrible-dynamic-of-deforestation-in-drc/.
• Butler, R. (2020). The Congo Rainforest. [online] Mongabay.com. Available at: https://rainforests.mongabay.com/congo/.
• Editor, B.W., Environment (n.d.). Large trees are carbon-storing giants. www.thetimes.co.uk. [online] Available at: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/large-trees-are-more-valuable-carbon-stores-than-was-thought-k8hnggzs8#:~:text=The%20world [Accessed 26 Feb. 2021].
• IPCC (2018). Summary for Policymakers — Global Warming of 1.5 oC. [online] Ipcc.ch. Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/.

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Amazon Rainforest Collapse?

Image by Lingchor.

“A major question is whether a large-scale collapse of the Amazon forest system could actually happen within the twenty-first century.” (Source: Bernardo M. Flores, et al, Critical Transitions in the Amazon Forest System , Nature, Feb. 14, 2024).

It may seem absurd to consider collapse of the Amazon rainforest (65-million-years-old) which seems impossible, too far out, not warranting an article like this, but, sorry to say. it is already happening in early stages, as explained herein in some detail, with facts.

In fact, peer-reviewed studies of ecosystems such as (1) Greenland (2) the Great Barrier Reef (3) vast permafrost regions of the Northern Hemisphere upper latitudes define risks combined with (4) the Amazon rainforest could result in a synchronized collapse 1,2,3,4 sometime in the future, who knows, but it’s headed in that direction? All four are noticeably breaking down; no doubt about it, 100% factual. It would likely be geologically catastrophically quick. Each of these tottering ecosystems is negatively impacted by human-generated global warming via fossil fuel emissions, CO2. And it’s happening fast.

The potential collapse of the iconic Amazon, one of the planet’s biggest, best-known ecosystems, arises after years of failure by world leaders to listen to scientists’ warnings to do something about fossil fuel CO2. As a result, by ignoring science, society is its own worst enemy, in denial, unapproachable denial.

A recent Earth.org headline reflects the sobering facts found in the Flores study of the Amazon and supports the uncanny proposition of a potential synchronized collapse of ecosystems: “Up to 47% of Amazon Rainforest at Risk of Collapse by Mid-Century Due to ‘Unprecedented Stress’ from Global Warming and Deforestation,” Earth.org, Feb.15, 2024.

The Flores study is the first-ever major study to focus on a range of forcings impacting the world’s most famous rainforest. Previous research only assessed individual forcing aspects without looking at the entire picture. “This study adds it all up to show how this tipping point is closer than other studies estimated,’ said Carlos Nobre, an author of the study.” (Source: Manuela Andreoni, A Collapse of the Amazon Could Be Coming ‘Faster Than We Thought ,’ The New York Times, February 14, 2024).

The Flores study combined with NASA research of droughts occurring so frequently that the Amazon no longer has enough time to heal, depict a tenuous ecosystem that could turn the global climate system upside down, putting civilization into a state of stress and confusion. Already, portions of southeastern Amazon have experienced large-scale deforestation that’s past the point of recovery.

“The collapse of part or all the Amazon rainforests would release the equivalent of several years’ worth of global emissions, possibly as much as 20 years’ worth, into the atmosphere as its trees, which store vast amounts of carbon, are replaced by degraded ecosystems. And, because those same trees pump huge amounts of water into the atmosphere, their loss could also disturb global rainfall patterns and temperatures in ways that aren’t well understood,” Ibid.

The Flores study outlines parameters for the rainforest to survive: (1) global warming not to exceed 1.5°C (2) deforestation kept below 10% of original tree cover (3) annual dry season cannot exceed five months for the forest to stay intact. “If you pass those thresholds, then the forest could, in principle, collapse or transition into different ecosystems,” Ibid.

{Footnote to Prior Paragraph: According to the World Wildlife Foundation, 17% of the forest is already lost with another 17% degraded. The Council on Foreign Relations claims 20% has been destroyed over 50 years. According to a recent study in Nature d/d March 1, 2024: “The combined effects of land use change and global warming resulted in a mean annual rainfall reduction of 44% and a dry season length increase of 69%, when averaged over the Amazon basin… Savannization and climate change, via increasing dry-season length and drought frequency, might have already pushed the Amazon close to a critical threshold of rainforest dieback . Increases in the length of the dry season have been reported in several recent studies.”}

Are the three above-stated parameters for rainforest survival achievable?

The Flores study says governments must halt carbon emissions and deforestation and somehow restore 5% of the degraded rainforest to keep the ecosystem alive and functioning as a rainforest. Yet, the parameters are threatened: “Dry season mean temperature is now more than 2 °C higher than it was 40 years ago in large parts of the central and southeastern Amazon. If trends continue, these areas could potentially warm by over 4 °C by 2050.” (Flores)

“Keeping the Amazon forest resilient depends firstly on humanity’s ability to stop greenhouse gas emissions, mitigating the impacts of global warming on regional climatic conditions.” (Flores) Indeed, this is the problem of all problems as fossil fuel producers are intent on increasing production over the foreseeable future into 2050. The health of the Amazon rainforest is not a consideration in oil and gas company business plans.

Yet already, “the northwestern portion of the biome (in Amazonas and Roraima states) and in the interior of the Para state, as well as other parts of Brazil, such as the semiarid region of Bahia state, in the northeast, and Mato Grosso d0 Sul state in the savanna biome, have already seen extreme temperature increases of more than 3°C (5.4°F) just since the 1960s.” (S0urce: Detailed NASA Analysis Finds Earth and Amazon in Deep Climate Trouble , Mongabay, Dec. 21, 2023).

This “deep climate trouble” statement made by NASA reflects insanely fast temperature increases, and GRACE satellite groundwater readings in dangerous red zones with severe bouts of drought so frequent that the rainforest no longer snaps back, never seen before in NASA’s data base. The Amazon rainforest is truly a victim of excessive global warming. All arrows point down.

Moreover, in addition to too much CO2: “Real-time satellite monitoring shows that so far in 2024, more than 10,000 wildfires have ripped across 11,000 square kilometers of the Amazon, across multiple countries, never have this many fires burned so much of the forest this early in the year.” (Source: Fires Imperil the Future of the Amazon Rainforest , Mother Jones, March 18, 2024) This info is based upon Brazil’s own National Institute for Space Research, as excessive wildfires weaken the forests and emit CO2 in competition with human CO2 emisions.

Roraima, which is Brazil’s northernmost state within the rainforest and known for its “wet-wet climate” positioned above the equator naturally suppresses forest fires because of its “wetness.” However, in late February, according to NASA satellites, widespread intense fire activity 5-times the average for February and 50% above the previous record number of fires. According to Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service: “The intensity and size of many of the fires are also unusual.” It’s dry, it burns.

Equally concerning for Roraima, during a normal year the fires only cover a few square kilometers, but this year the fires that began in fragmented regions of the rainforest of pastures and recently cleared forest spread into surrounding areas, burning hundreds of square kilometers, not just a ‘few.” (Source; Shane Coffield, postdoc at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

“A new NASA study shows that over the last 20 years, the atmosphere above the Amazon rainforest has been drying out, increasing the demand for water, and leaving ecosystems vulnerable to fires and drought. It also shows that the increase in dryness is primarily the result of human activities.” ( Hunan Activities Are Drying Out the Amazon: NASA Study, Vital Signs of the Planet, NASA.)

“Indeed, despite global efforts to protect forest land, deforestation is still rampant, with around 15% of the Amazon already cleared, 17% degraded by human activities such as logging, fires, and under-canopy extraction, and a further 38% at risk due to prolonged droughts. About a third of global tropical deforestation occurs in Brazil’s Amazon forest, amounting to 1.5 million hectares each year.” (Earth.org)

Based upon simple arithmetic from the preceding paragraph, 70% of the rainforest is (a) already cleared (b) degraded by human activities (c) at further risk due to prolonged droughts. Not a good score card. In fact, horrible.

There are solutions, which have been harped upon by climate scientists for decades, stop fossil fuel emissions, stop CO2 which is 76% of greenhouse gases. At the risk of being overly didactic, world leaders need to consider ramifications when skirting the original precepts of the Paris 2015 climate accord to take bold measures to commence halting CO2 emissions more seriously by 2030 to hold global warming in check at 1.5C pre-industrial, especially as major ecosystems of the world are fast approaching the cliff’s edge with global temperatures knocking on the 1.5C door (assuming IPCC decadal calculations for 1.5C) although, 1.5C seems to be here now.

Should world leaders, more than 100 typically attend UN climate conferences, “go to the ends of the earth” to demand sticking to the Paris climate accords of 2015 instead of attending the conference just for photo ops with Bono?

Answer: Absolutely, Yes!

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at  [email protected].

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Ecuador Is Literally Powerless in the Face of Drought

Ecuador is in trouble: Drought has shrunk its reservoirs, and its hydroelectric dams have had to power down. The government has been forced to cut electricity to homes for hours at a stretch, and in mid-April, President Daniel Noboa declared a 60-day state of emergency . Since then, homeowners have been taking cold showers and struggling without internet access, while restaurants have been serving up meals by candlelight to avoid closing and losing perishable food. For businesses, that’s the worst, says Etiel Solorzano, a Quito-based tour guide for Intrepid Travel. “Three hours of no power? You can go bankrupt for that.”

Some days, the power outages have lasted up to eight hours or more, says Juan Sebastián Proaño Aviles, a sustainability coordinator and mechanical engineering professor at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito. Things have improved a little—power cuts are now no longer a daily occurrence—but Proaño Aviles expects sporadic energy shortages to continue for years. “It’s going to be a problem,” he says. “We have to do something pretty fast.”

In regions that receive most of their precipitation in a short period each year—like Ecuador, Southeast Asia, and the American West—reservoirs have historically been effective at storing water. (In Ecuador and Southeast Asia, a rainy season contrasts a dry season, while the American West gets heavy snow during fall and winter.) Managing agencies can then gradually release the stored water throughout the year to generate power as needed. This dependability helped make hydropower the largest renewable electricity source in the world.

However, climate change is increasing the annual variability of precipitation , leading to more extreme highs and lows that render hydropower much less reliable. “Phenomena that are impacting hydropower generation, they are playing out all around the world,” says David Michel, a senior fellow in the Global Food and Water Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research nonprofit. A 2023 study in Nature found that the amount of water in reservoirs around the world is declining by about 1 percent a year on average. Last year, Western US hydropower production fell to a 22-year low , and in 2022, China’s Sichuan province experienced a record-breaking drought that resulted in rationed power, specifically at factories.

At the same time that hydropower is falling, rising temperatures and population growth are driving up energy demands, further straining the systems. Ecuador’s situation indicates what could happen in other regions that are heavily reliant on hydropower—like China , Brazil , and parts of the US, like Washington state —if drought conditions don’t improve.

That said, Ecuador is particularly vulnerable; it relies on hydroelectricity for nearly 80 percent of its power . (China, in comparison, gets only 18 percent of its power from hydro plants; the US, 6 percent. Energy shortages would therefore be much more localized.) Ecuador’s low rainfall has been partly attributed to El Niño , a routine climate pattern that causes prolonged dry spells in the region, but academics have indicated that climate change is the main cause , increasing both the duration and intensity of droughts and leaving the country drier than it has been in decades. “This area is always wet—either full of fog, a little rain, or really strong rain,” says Solorzano, motioning to the Amazon region that we can see out of the window. “Every single time. But now it’s dry.”

By Tess Owen

By Reece Rogers

By Will Knight

By Kim Zetter

During times of low water, Ecuador has few options to meet its baseline energy demands, because it doesn’t have any other major energy sources, says Proaño Aviles. Colombia and Peru usually trade energy with Ecuador, but they won’t sell their electricity right now because they too have had to ration water for their dams. And trying to plan ahead for this—at least with much confidence—hasn’t been easy either. Studies have projected that between 2000 and 2071, hydropower generation in Ecuador could see anything from a 55 percent drop to a 39 percent increase, depending on the climate change scenario, says Michel.

Other factors have also reduced the function of Ecuador’s power plants. “There’s also increased erosion or sedimentation in the river that then gets into the turbines and decreases their efficiency,” says Michel, with deforestation and forest fires both culprits. In Ecuador, some of the recent outages have been because of the Coca Codo Sinclair dam needing to have sediment removed from its turbine inputs.

Despite hydropower’s vulnerabilities, more capacity is expected to be installed in parts of the world. In Southeast Asia, countries such as Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia are increasing their hydro capacity to meet rising energy needs. “Hydropower has this tremendous promise for expanding electricity access to underserved populations, generating revenue for states, and for linking regions together in power-sharing agreements and selling electricity across borders,” says Michel. “But these challenges of climate change—what we’re seeing in Ecuador—are also going to be challenges in Southeast Asia.”

Effective management strategies for handling these climate challenges will be essential, and will vary by region. One promising approach for areas with heavy rainfall, according to Michel, is to increase the use of rainwater harvesting systems, which use catchment areas, like a roof, gutters, and storage tanks, to capture and store heavy rainfall in localized systems. This helps replenish groundwater and supports agricultural and municipal needs, reducing the amount of water extracted from rivers, meaning more can be held for electricity generation.

Additionally, modernizing the grid—admittedly a costly, intensive job—can enhance its ability to handle fluctuations in demand, says Proaño Aviles. New infrastructure can both minimize energy losses and optimize the distribution of electricity, so less energy needs to be produced overall, meaning less water is needed.

Countries should also invest in other renewable sources to diversify their power supply, so that when water levels are low, they have a backup. In Ecuador, for example, the government is offering a 100 percent income tax exemption for new investments in renewables, including wind and solar farms. Proaño Aviles notes that private investment will be an essential step, as it can help fund renewable energy projects faster than the government can alone.

Finally, energy and water conservation are essential tools, no matter the region. Proaño Aviles has seen small businesses in Ecuador adhering to efficient energy-management standards to prepare for future events. In some places, resource-use regulations are even mandated by government. Michel points to Las Vegas as a case study: The city has strict water-conservation measures, including incentives for residents to replace grass lawns with desert-friendly landscaping and restrictions on watering schedules. The city also uses a tiered water-pricing system that charges higher rates as water use increases, and an advanced water-recycling system that treats and reuses wastewater.

“I think it has a powerful demonstration effect because it raises the visibility for policymakers in other cities and for consumers around the country who can see what’s happening,” Michel says. “It stands as a signal that, yeah, we do have policies and approaches that can help answer these challenges.”

As climate change alters weather patterns and increases the frequency of extreme events, proactive and comprehensive management are crucial to prevent widespread energy crises—whether in South America, the US, or Asia. For Ecuador, its energy future hinges on the ability to address immediate challenges but also plan for long-term resilience. “I think we’re moving in the right direction, but I don’t know if it is at the right pace,” says Proaño Aviles. “I don’t know if it’s fast enough.”

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