Try as it has, the Brazilian authorities have been unable, over the years, to stem the tide of unceasing destruction of the Amazon rainforest, globally regarded as one of the world’s centerpieces of environmental preservation. Now, according to a Saturday July 27th Associated Press (AP) report, the Brazilian government has decided to go down the road of giving a little to save a lot. In an effort to curb the destruction of one of the world’s most celebrated environmental havens, the administration of President Luiz Ignacio ‘Lula’ Da Silva has disclosed a plan to identify an area in the Amazon region, reportedly the size Costa Rica and to make it an approved area for logging over the next two years.
While illegal logging in Brazil over the years has been pursued with acute impunity, watchers have laid the blame for the transgressions on the Brazilian state for a situation in which that vast forested areas designated as public lands “enjoy no special protection or enforcement and are vulnerable to land grabbing and illegal deforestation,” the AP report says. Beyond that, the AP report goes on to tell a lurid tale of criminals frequently taking over land and clearing it, “hoping the government will eventually recognize them as owners, which usually happens.” What is seen in some quarters as a move to placate the illegal loggers who have, for years, effectively won the battle against deforestation could, watchers say, further open the Amazon to further land-grabbing and illegal deforestation.
While Brazil is a signatory to a number of high-profile treaties on the preservation of the environment, including the Frame-work Convention on Climate Change (1992), the Framework Convention on Biodiversity (1992), and the Paris Agreement (2015) which effectively places them above all Brazilian infra-constitutional legislation, including legislation on environmental protection, law enforcement has been unable to contain marauding groups who have proven to be unmindful of environmental laws and uncaring about the longer term likely consequences of de-forestation
While Director of Forest concessions, Renato Rosenberg is quoted in the AP report that “the main goal of forest concessions is the conservation of these areas” and that they also “create jobs and income in parts of the Amazon that would otherwise have little economic activity,” the marauding ways of the Brazilian de-foresters invariably ‘trump’ such good intentions as may be articulated by the Brazilian authorities.
According to the AP report, Brazilian companies allocated timber concessions under the aforementioned rules will be required to follow stipulations that they can “log up to six trees per hectare, or per 2.5 acres, over a 30-year period.” The directive adds that “protected species, such as Brazil nut, and older, seed-producing trees, are off limits.” In the matter of deforestation, however, the will of the illegal loggers invariably trumps the law. Here, the idea is that granting permission to timber companies to take a limited number of trees gives them a stake in overseeing the forest, an enormous risk in a country where scruples among loggers in terms of respect for environmental considerations is by no means universal.
The AP report also says that, “eventually, President Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva plans to treat as much as 310,000 square kilometres (112,000 square miles) of public undesignated Amazon rainforest– an area the size of Italy – as an area for logging though experience suggests that the Brazilian government is likely to face difficulties in ensuring that the loggers live within the limits of these legal arrangements.” Back in February this year, the Associated Press published a less than uplifting report asserting that the Amazon “is on course to reach a crucial tipping point as soon as 2050, with devastating consequences for the region and the world’s ability to tackle climate change.”
At the time, the AP report provided insights into research undertaken at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil and published in the journal Nature, which it says, “takes a holistic approach to estimating how soon the Amazon could reach that threshold”, asserting that the Amazon rainforest is believed to be on course to reach a crucial tipping point as early as 2050. The Amazon has proven resilient to natural changes in the climate for 65 million years, but deforestation and the human-caused climate crisis have brought new levels of stress and could cause a large-scale collapse of the forest system within the next three decades.
The researchers predict that 10% to 47% of the Amazon will be exposed to stresses that could push the ecosystem to its tipping point, a critical threshold that once crossed will lead to a downward spiral of impacts.
