While Brazil loses its rainforest to deforestation, President Jair Bolsonaro has called the data “lies” and joked about the environment
SINCE THE 1970s nearly 800,000km² of Brazil’s original 4m km² of Amazon forest has been lost to logging, farming, mining, roads, dams and other forms of development—an area equivalent to that of Turkey and bigger than that of Texas. Scientists worry this is uncomfortably close to the threshold for tree loss, of between 20 and 25%, beyond which deforestation begins to feed on itself, turning much of the Amazon basin into drier savannah known as cerrado.
The deforestation rate had slowed between 2004 and 2012, when the government beefed up its environmental protection agency, Ibama, and an international Amazon Fund was created to pay for conservation projects. But it began ticking up again after a weakening of environmental legislation and budget cuts during Brazil’s recession of 2014-2016. Between August 2017 and July 2018 Brazil lost 7,900km² of Amazon forest—nearly a billion trees. This year’s figure is almost sure to be higher.
Environmentalists blame Mr Bolsonaro’s insouciance about the Amazon. It is a “virgin” that should be “exploited” for agriculture, mining and infrastructure projects, he says. The environment minister, Ricardo Salles, fired 21 of Ibama’s 27 heads; he has yet to replace most of them, crippling the agency’s enforcement duties.
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