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Fewer trees were cut down in the Amazon rainforest this past year. Climate scientists say Brazil has done well, but deforestation is more than one nation’s problem. Marco Werman talks with Dr William Laurance of the Smithsonian Institution who has studied the Amazon for 15 years. (photo: Alex Gallafent) Download MP3
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MARCO WERMAN: There’s some interesting environmental news to report out of South America. And it’s good environmental news, for a change. Large-scale deforestation in the Amazon rainforest fell dramatically last year. Brazil’s environment agency, responsible for protecting the forests against illegal logging, says one big reason for the drop is increased use of satellite data to crack down on loggers. Dr. William Laurance is a research associate with the Smithsonian Institution and has studied the Amazon for 15 years. He describes what’s been happening in Brazil.
WILLIAM LAURANCE: We’ve seen deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon drop from around two and a half million hectares a year, which in [INDISCERNABLE] terms is about ten football fields a minute or almost one Belgium a year, down to about 700,000 hectares a year, this year, which is about three football fields a minute. So, it’s a better picture and, of course, one of the big questions is what exactly is responsible for that?
WERMAN: And what do you think is responsible for that?
LAURANCE: The Brazilian government crackdown is certainly part of this and we’ve seen some big illegal timber chains that have been broken up. So that kind of thing tends to send a bit of a ripple of fear across illegal loggers and illegal land clearers in the Amazon. And also there’s been other kinds of crackdowns. There’s been an American nun, Dorothy Stang, was actually murdered in the Amazon by a cattle rancher a few years ago and this resulted in a huge political fallout and a big embarrassment for the Lula government. And President Lula actually sent the army in as a result of that. So I think that contributed. Most people who are watching this, however, also see a big role for basically the slowdown in the global economy. Commodity prices for things like beef and timber and soy are down. In the past, we’ve seen that, for example, the frequency of forest fires goes way up in areas where there’s a lot of soy production when soy prices go up. So, I think most people are kind of holding their breath right now and thinking that when the global economy picks back up, we may in fact see another big spike in Amazon deforestation.
WERMAN: So, how does Brazil and other governments, how do they take these lessons with kind of connection between deforestation and the sluggish economy, try to reproduce them without harming their own economies in the future or is this just a short-term thing?
LAURANCE: Well, it does create a challenge for a tropical countries that are trying to slow down deforestation. And again I think we have to give a lot of credit to Brazil. Other countries around the world, for example, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Cambodia, some of the countries in Africa, are still really struggling with high rates of deforestation and so I think we have to give credit to country’s like Brazil and say, look, they’ve made real progress, but, of course, we’re really waiting with our – holding our breath hoping that the deforestation rates don’t go back up.
WERMAN: Now, tell us about this new satellite data. How are satellites actually saving the rainforests right now?
LAURANCE: The big thing is that they’re being done in real time and so there’s, you know, if someone goes out and starts knocking down the forest, if you’ve got a satellite sensor that’s not passing over very frequently or it’s of a coarse resolution, that’s not very much use. But the idea is that you’ve got these higher resolution satellites, a lot of them are covering places like the Amazon on a daily basis. And then the key thing, of course, is getting that information down to ground stations and it has to then be tied into a computerized geographic system in which you know who owns what land and if you see a fire over there, is that legal burning or is that illegal burning? Are they supposed to be knocking down the forest over there? So, Brazil has made a lot of progress in sort of trying to set up this framework. It’s linking the computers with people on the ground and linking those people on the ground with the enforcement agencies and so tying all that together, it’s a pretty impressive thing and again, I think we have to credit the Brazilians for their progress here.
WERMAN: So the Amazon is considered, you know, often said to be the Earth’s lungs and the calculus goes as the tropical rainforests are denuded, there’s less output of crucial oxygen for animals and humans. Does this research mean that it’s all okay now?
LAURANCE: No, we’re still losing a lot of tropical forest. We’re probably knocking down about ten million hectares a year or about three Belgium’s a year of tropical forest and that’s spewing about five billion tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, of course, is worsening global warming. So, a big chunk of our problem right now, global warming, is a consequence of rapid razing and destruction of tropical forests. So, the situation is definitely improving in Brazil, but again we’re waiting to see what happens with commodity prices, whether forest rates, destruction rates, will go back up. But there’s still lots of other parts of the world where they’re knocking it down very fast. So we’ve won one battle here, but the war is far from over.
WERMAN: Dr. William Laurance, a research associate with the Smithsonian Institution and he’s a professor at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. Thank you very much for your time indeed.
LAURANCE: Pleasure, Marco.
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