Clear-cutting the Amazon

Roughly 40% of the South American continent is covered by the Amazon basin, with the Amazon rainforest representing the largest tropical rainforests on Earth. It is located within rapidly developing nations with booming industries and thus its conservation has been difficult. Over the past 30 years, 15% of the natural ancient forest has been completely destroyed. The diagram below shows the reported annual clear-cut deforestation figures, supplied by the Bazilian Government.

As when dealing with any metrics, we should be aware of the limitations of these. What I find most important to note here, is that these figures represent deforestation within the “Legal Amazon”. While logging regulations have become stricter over time, and thousands of control agents employed by the IBAMA (Brazils ‘environmental police’), there is still a large proportion expected to be cleared illegally. “Heating” wood has recently become a grand issue – making illegally felled logs look legal with falsified papers by bribing (or death-threatening!) landowners to sign it off. 

The latest figures by Brazils National Institute for Space Research have shown a clear surge in deforestation rates in 2013 and mid-2014, after a previously decreasing trend had given some hope to forest conservation. To blame here are mostly the continued poorly-enforced regulations* (a cut of 72% in government expenditure on environmental law-enforcement) and a government dominated by those in favour of agribusiness expansion. The future of the tropical forest seems to swing in between the two extremes: natural forest preservation (e.g. creating natural reserves) and forest clearance to create farmland for large-scale producers. Arguments exist on both sides, with the sustainable solution most likely occupying some area in between.

* The country's forestry code requires landowners in the Amazon to devote 80 per cent to native forests.