Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

Changing trends that could define our future.

By: Devon Calhoun

Brett and Mary. 2011. “New legislation Threatens More Deforestation in Brazilian Amazon.” December 7, 2011 http://greenglobaltravel.com/2011/12/07/new-legislation-threatens-brazilia-amazon/ May 5, 2014.

ENST 201: Problem Definition Paper

Bucknell University - May 2014

Introduction

An estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide rely on forests for their livelihoods, with 60 million indigenous people depending of forests for their subsistence (WWF 2005). However, upward trends of deforestation since the 1960’s have threatened these forests, causing devastating impacts to the people dependent as well as the world. The Brazilian Amazon, the largest tropical forest on Earth, has specifically been impacted by deforestation and many negative impacts have occurred on the surrounding environment. Tropical forests, especially the Amazon, play a crucial role in biodiversity conservation, provide essential ecosystem services to indigenous and traditional populations, and pertaining to global climate change, they are large carbon sinks (Hargrave 2012). Because of all these crucial services the Amazon provides to both humans and the earth, it has become a major priority of Brazil’s nation as well as the world. In this paper, trends and conditions of deforestation, forest degradation, biodiversity, and carbon dioxide emissions will be evaluated in an attempt to define exactly what the problem is with deforestation and what exactly makes it of national and global interest. After first defining the problem, alternatives to this problem will be investigated in terms of current debates that occur in the world today as well as their feasibility. Then finally projections for the future of The Brazilian Amazon will be laid out in an attempt to understand the problem we are dealing with in the long-run and what we can do to change the devastating fate of our beloved Amazon.

Scope

There are four main scopes that are explored in this paper, first of which being the levels of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. I will also look at the levels of forest degradation, a more gradual destructive process. Most forest degradation is caused by forest fires and selective logging as well, however, its main distinction from deforestation is that when a forest is degraded, it can still participate in forest regeneration, or natural forest regrowth (Hansen and Hiller 2005). Forest degradation can be looked at as forest in the process of being deforested because most of the time, degraded forests can be converted by deforestation. This process is best understood by evaluating Figure 1.

Lastly, the two adverse effects of both deforestation and forest degradation will be explored: biodiversity loss and increasing levels of carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere. By loosing forest area, you loose habitats of many different plant and animal species, causing a loss in biodiversity. Also, the cutting down of trees causes a massive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, or better yet a lack of forest absorption of carbon dioxide. By focusing in on these four main scopes and the trends associated with them, a better understanding of the causes and impacts of deforestation in the Brazilian amazon will be gained.

Figure 1: Souza et. Al 2013: 5495

Trends

Deforestation and Forest Degradation

As defined by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Deforestation is the process whereby natural forests are cleared through logging and/or burning, either to use the timber or to replace the area for alternative uses (WWF 2014). Over the past 30 years, the Amazon has lost more than 520,000 of forest. The loss continues at up to 27,000 annually since 1990, an area almost the size of Belgium (WWF 2014). In a Ten-year Landsat classification of deforestation and forest degradation published by the Imazon Organization, it showed that by 2010, 20% of the original forest cover of the Amazon region had been converted to pasture, agricultural lands, and, to a lesser degree, urban areas (Souza et. Al 2013: 5494). However, it also stated that deforestation rates reached their peak in the year 2004 then downturned until their lowest rate in 2010, seen in Figure 2. The Brazilian government released figures suggesting that deforestation has exceeded 520,000 since 1978, with 2004 being the second worst year of forest loss (Hansen and Hiller 2005). Over this 10-year time frame (2000-2010), 169,074 of Amazonia forest was deforested by human-dominated land uses. In the same times frame, 50,815 of forest was degraded by timber harvesting and/or fire (Souza et. Al 2013: 5493). It is important to note that trends of deforestation and forest degradation decreased from 2004 to 2010. Deforestation rates then continued to decrease by 57% between the years 2011 and 2012.

However, between 2012 and 2013, two key changes occurred. As seen in Figure 3, deforestation rates increased by 28% from the years 2012-2013. In 2012 4,656 of forest was lost then in 2013 5,843 of forest was lost. Also, forest degradation rates had a 75% reduction from the year 2012-2013. This recent upturn in deforestation rates will be the main focus when understanding both projections and alternatives explored later in the paper.

Figure 3: Brazil Ministry of Science and Technology, WWF

It is important to consider, however, that even though most of the explanations will be based on changes on human actions, the fact that degraded forests are often times in the process of become deforested lands could account for the switch in rates of deforestation and forest degradation. In other words, there is a possibility that a large potion of the previous degraded lands were converted to deforested lands between 2012-2013, either caused by humans or natural causes, that in turn caused the increase in deforested land.

Biodiversity Loss

The Amazon contains large amounts of biodiversity, containing thousands of species of plants, over a million insect species, more than 700 fish species, 1,000 bird species, over 300 mammalian species, and at least 12% of all flowering plants are found within the Amazon (Hansen and Hiller 2005). Loosing forest area means loosing species habitat and often times causing those associated species to go extinct. Today, the mosaic of the Alto Rio Guama, Alto Turiacu, Awa and Caru indigenous lands and the Gurupi Biological Reserve in the Amazon represents habitat for 158 species of mammals, 63 species of amphibians, 11 species of reptiles, and 10 species of birds that now appear on the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species (GreenPeace 2012). In the specific case of the Jaguar, a species of concern under the IUCN, its population has been spiraling downwards becoming endangered due to its loss of habitat and forest fragmentation (GreenPeace 2012).

Increasing Levels of Carbon Dioxide

Forest cover removal releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as a result of tree burning, followed by the gradual decomposition of the forest biomass left on the ground while pasture lands or crop lands are established (Aguiar et al. 2012). Global carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation contribute 12-20% of anthropogenic global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions annually (Paoli 2010). In the 1990s, the forests stored approximately 120 ± 30 Pg C in biomass carbon, of which 0.5 Pg C year–1 (0.3 to 1.1) was released through deforestation. Seen in Figure 4, from 2000-2010, carbon dioxide emission trends from the Brazilian amazon mirror the trends of deforestation, peaking in 2004 and gradually decreasing until the year 2010 (Aguiar et al. 2012).

Figure 4: Aguiar et al. 2012

Today, the Amazon forests store 90-140 billion tons of carbon, equivalent to 9-14 years of current, global, annual, human-induced carbon emissions (WWF 2014). Most large forests today are considered carbon sinks, absorbing mass amounts of carbon dioxide and help in the prevention of atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, by cutting down these forests, there is a threat that it will transform from a carbon sink to a net source of carbon dioxide (WWF 2014). Current rates of deforestation imply an estimated carbon release of around 200 million tons a year (WWF 2014).

Conditions for Increasing Deforestation

Agricultural Expansion

Starting in the 1980s, deforestation dynamics became increasingly severe as cattle ranching and soybean cropping dominated the agricultural sector (Hargrave 2012). As seen in Figure 5, it can be argued that during the last decade, deforestation rates could even be directly correlated with the prices of both soybeans and beef, both in spatial and time dimension. Several studies have documented that the expansion of cattle ranching basically coincides with deforestation and that deforestation is highly correlated with it (Hargrave 2012). As the global population increases, the demand for goods, such as soy and cattle, have also increased, therefore causing the need for land to increase.

Figure 5: Hargrave 2012 p.473

Infrastructure Expansion

It is said that deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon started in the mid 1960s as a state driven process, fueled by large-scale infrastructure projects (Hargrave 2012). This involves road construction, hydropower development, and mineral exploitation (Diniz 2013). Over the past few decades, Brazil has been attempting to dig their way out of an economic recession, most methods involving infrastructure expansion. More roads, both planned and unplanned, are being built through the core of the forest to connect Pacific ports due to the increasing demand for tropical goods such as timber, soybeans, and cattle increase (Malhi 2007). The Amazon Basin can also be considered the epicenter of the world’s hydropower plants (Brodwin 2013). Near dams, trees are cut down to increase the flow of water through the dam to increase energy output. Today, climate change has caused a prolonging of Brazil’s dry season, causing a decrease in water flow. This causes a positive feedback loop because as climate change increases, we continue to cut down trees, which then continues to influence climate change (Brodwin 2013). Furthermore, when it comes to mineral exploitation, wood charcoal could be considered Brazil’s biggest downfall in terms of drivers of deforestation. In the past few decades, thousands of remote charcoal camps, spread throughout the region have pillaged huge areas of natural rainforest to smolder into wood charcoal to fuel blast furnaces of the regions production of pig iron, a primary ingredient for steel (GreenPeace 2012). The Brazilian government has invested heavily in the regions pig iron, mining sector and infrastructure though The Great Carajas Programme, which a project funded by the World Bank. Overall, the pig iron industry and its charcoal suppliers are a main driver in the increasing amounts of deforestation in the Amazon (GreenPeace 2012).

Alternatives or Conditions for Decreasing Deforestation

Since 2004, many different methods have been used to cause the downturn in deforestation up until 2010. The government has implemented protected areas that involve both strict enforcement and fines to make sure deforestation practices are avoided. Today, Brazil has the largest Protected Area system in the world- covering approximately 220 million hectares (Imazon 2012). Questions of feasibility are raised around this method when looking at enforcement and whether there areas are effectively protected in terms of prevention and punishment. The Brazilian government has also looked into incentives for businesses and companies such as, compensating reductions in deforestation as well as credit reductions, which have proven to be quite effective considering most of the appeal of deforestation activities are to gain money in one way or another. Other methods such as as intensifying the combat against illegal deforestation as well as educating indigenous peoples of sustainable land use methods are also explored, but all of these methods stir up quite a debate. Furthermore, an effective plan to combat deforestation could also include a wide array of strategies, but the bottom line is that no research has been done in terms of comparing different strategies and their effectiveness.

REDD+

Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, also known as REDD+, was created at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty and seeks to involve developing countries in global GHG reduction efforts by creating financial incentives to improve forest management and protection and recognizing forest carbon stock enhancements (sequestration) from improved conservation and sustainable management of forests (Paoli 2010). In other words, it provides positive policy and financial incentives to countries that demonstrate reductions in emissions and/or increases in the removal of carbon from the atmosphere (Coe et al. 2013). Some of the components of REDD+ include the evaluation of forests, legal and institutional analyses, monitoring of carbon emissions, forest recomposition, Green Municipalities, capacity-building, and support for public policies and dissemination. These different programs within REDD+ range from research methods, to working with the government to draft policy, to monitoring and performing socioeconomic forest diagnoses and capacity building for agents with the objective of reducing deforestation and degradation (Imazon 2012).

Some people argue that there are limits to what we can achieve through REDD+ mechanisms (Coe et al. 2013). The main issue with REDD+ is that it only accounts for carbon, which isn’t the only thing that the forest stores. The Amazon provides many other ecosystem services, including habitat for over two-thirds of know terrestrial species, all of which aren’t accounted for in REDD+ (Busch 2013). This means that there is room for REDD+ mechanisms to favor the conservation of higher-carbon forests over higher-biodiversity forests or could displace agricultural activity into low-carbon but biologically important landscapes (Busch 2013). People who make this argument suggest adding biodiversity benefits along side carbon benefits, therefore eliminating these discrepancies, however nothing of this kind has actually been implemented. The risks and benefits of REDD+ are laid in Figure 6, showing the trade-offs included with this type of alternative.

Figure 6: Swan and McNally 2011 p.4

Projections

Business As Usual: Forest Fode

Going back to the trends highlighted earlier, there has been a recent upturn in deforestation rates in the past year. If for so many years rates of deforestation have been decreasing due to the different methods examined in the alternative section, how come we have backtracked? Some believe that the answer to this is based in recent revisions of the Forest Code passed in 2012. These revision included changes that eased restrictions for smaller landowners, allowing them to clear land closer to riverbanks, and allowed those who had illegally felled land to not face penalties if they signed an agreement to replant trees, which is unlikely to be enforced (Carrington 2013). GreenPeace made a statement about these revisions stating, “The government can’t be surprised by this increase in deforestation, given that their own action is what’s pushing it. The change of the Forest Code and the resulting amnesty for those who illegally felled the forest sent the message that such crimes have no consequences” (Carrington 2013). Another argument for this upturn was because of new infrastructure projects put in place by President Rouseff, noting that much of the recent destruction was along a government-improved highway running through Para and Mata Grosso states, which eases the transport of illegal timber (Carrington 2013). If the Brazilian government is to continue on in this path, deforestation will continue to rise. As identified, the new revisions to the Forest Code have caused an allowed increase in deforestation that will most likely rise until changes are made. This recent upturn shows a lack of enforcement that is likely to continue without some sort of change.

With Reform

In order for deforestation rates to go back down, alternative methods need to be further explored. Clearly from 2004-2010, we figured out a way to change the tides and bring down deforestation rates. With scientific research of the different methods that were used and helping to determine the effectiveness and feasibility of each method, we will be able to combat these recent changes. Also, as stated before, something needs to be done about the new revision to the Forest Code, considering its devastating impact. Overall, more research is required to determine the effectiveness and feasibility, of certain methods in order for Brazil to combat climate change. In my opinion, incentives will prove to be the most effective because as stated before, most of the drivers associated with the upward trends of deforestation and its associated impacts are caused by practices involving money. Its an unfortunate truth but people value money over nature so the involvement of some sort of incentive will prove to be most important. However, I also believe a combination of techniques can be used to combat this problem, those methods will just be determined once we research their effectiveness.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the recent upturn in deforestation reveals unreliability of the Brazilian government to keep deforestation at the top of their list of priorities. Clearly, growing their infrastructure as well as expanding their agricultural sector is a bigger priority to them than their forests, even though without their forests, expansion will cease to exist. With an increase in dry seasons and a decrease in temperature, the agricultural industry will struggle, eventually trickling down through their infrastructure, leaving them with nothing. In order to combat these changes going into the future, it is important that Brazil, as well as the world, take issues of climate change seriously. The important thing to remember about climate change is that it impacts every aspect of our life, most of which would never come to mind. Even though things such as our economies and our infrastructures seem oh-so-important to us now, they will cease to exist if we don’t put the combat against climate change at the top of our priorities. For centuries now, humans have been using earth as a resource and living off of its land to enhance their life. However, it has turned into an abusive and greedy relationship where humans take too much and give back little to nothing. If we want any hope of living another century, the first step will be to place the Amazon in front of our cattle and soy needs.

References Cited

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