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- Amazonian deforestation will only decrease
- Cattle ranching outweighs their internal link
- Alt cause- Brazilian road building
- Deforestation inevitable
- Plan can’t solve all causes of deforestation
- Asian rainforest destruction triggers the impact
AT: DeforestationAmazon depletion decliningWatts, 6-7-12, Jonathan, The Guardian, “Amazon deforestation at record low, data shows,” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/07/amazon-deforestation-illegal-logging-brazil, KHaze Deforestation of the Amazon has fallen to its lowest levels since records began, according to data recently released by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research. The boost for the environment comes a week after president Dilma Rousseff was criticised for weakening the forest protection measures widely credited for the improvement, and two weeks before Brazil hosts the Rio+20 Earth summit. Using satellite imagery, the institute said 6,418 sq km of Amazon forest was stripped in the 12 months before 31 July 2011 – the smallest area since annual measurements started in 1988. The data continues an encouraging trend. Since the peak deforestation year of 2004, the rates of clearance have fallen by almost 75%. "This reduction is impressive; it is the result of changes in society, but it also stems from the political decision to inspect, as well as from punitive action by government agencies," Rousseff said. She was speaking at a ceremony on Tuesday to mark the opening of two new nature reserves: the 34,000-hectare (83,980 acres) Bom Jesus Biological Reserve in Paraná, and the 8,500-hectare (20,995 acres) Furna Feia National Park in Rio Grande do Norte. To mark World Environment Day, the Brazilian president also signed a number of other measures to expand existing parks, protect areas of biodiversity and recognise the land rights of indigenous communities. Rousseff said Brazil was "one of the most advanced countries" for sustainable development, but its impressive efforts have been undermined by new legislation that reduces requirements on farms created by illegal logging to reforest portions of cleared land. Under domestic and international pressure, Rousseff vetoed 12 of the most controversial sections of the revised Forest Code, but environmentalists are furious that many other changes will go through. The Brazilian government insists that the compromise was a realistic balance of agricultural and environmental priorities. Environment minister Izabella Teixeira says 81.2% of the country's original forest remains – one of the highest levels in the world. But 10 former environment ministers have criticised the measures as a "retrograde step". In an unusual cross-party collaboration, they jointly signed a letter opposing the change to a code that they described as "the single most relevant institutional basis for the protection afforded to forests and all the other forms of natural vegetation in Brazil." Amazon deforestation over the years Economic and technological factors have also contributed to the slowing of clearance rates. The rise in the value of the Brazilian currency and the fall of soya and beef prices in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis eroded the incentive for land clearance for agricultural exports. Implementing regulations remains extremely difficult in the wild west-like frontiers of the Amazon and the interior forest regions. But enforcement has been strengthened by increasingly precise satellite monitoring by the National Institute for Research in the Amazon. This November, Brazil plans to launch a new satellite with a resolution of five metres, up from the current level of 250 metres. With close-to-real-time date, the central authorities are able to quickly notify federal police and environment officials about ongoing, illegal land clearance operations. The government has also responded rapidly and flexibly. After a two-month spurt of clear-cutting in Mato Grosso early last year, it established a task force to strengthen countermeasures and sent 700 inspectors to the region. This year, eight municipalities were added to the list of critical areas, bringing them under closer inspection. According to local media, the task force has apprehended 325 trucks, 72 bulldozers and 62,000 cubic metres of illegally cut timber and embargoed 79,500 hectares of land in the region. The environment ministry says further factors in the drop of deforestation are regularisation of land tenure, initiatives to encourage sustainable practices and the expansion of protected areas. According to the UN Global Biodiversity Outlook, Brazil accounts for nearly 75% of the 700,000 sq km of protected areas created around the world since 2003. Amazonian deforestation will only decreaseButler, 2012, May, Rhett A., Monga Bay, “Deforestation in the Amazon,” http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html, KHaze Since 2004 the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has fallen nearly 80 percent to the lowest levels recorded since annual record keeping began in the late 1980s. Importantly, this decline has occurred at the same time that Brazil's economy has grown roughly 40 percent, suggesting a decoupling of economic growth from deforestation. While this is welcome news for Earth's largest rainforest, it is nonetheless important to understand why more than 580,000 square kilometers (224,000 square miles) of Amazon forest has destroyed in Brazil since 1980. Why has Brazil lost so much forest? What can be done to stop deforestation? Why is the Brazilian Amazon being Destroyed? In the past, Brazilian deforestation was strongly correlated to the economic health of the country: the decline in deforestation from 1988-1991 nicely matched the economic slowdown during the same period, while the rocketing rate of deforestation from 1993-1998 paralleled Brazil's period of rapid economic growth. During lean times, ranchers and developers do not have the cash to expand their pasturelands and operations, while the government lacks funds to sponsor highways and colonization programs and grant tax breaks and subsidies to forest exploiters. But this has all changed since the mid-2000s, when the link between deforestation and the broader Brazilian economy began to wane. The reasons for the decline in Brazil's deforestation rate are debated, but most would agree that several factors come into play, including macroeconomic trends (a stronger Brazilian currency reduces the profitability of export-driven agriculture), increased enforcement of environmental laws, improved forest monitoring by satellite, new incentives for utilizing already deforested lands, expanded protected areas and indigenous reserves, heightened sensitivity to environmental criticism among private sector companies, and emerging awareness of the values of ecosystem services afforded by the Amazon. Cattle ranching outweighs their internal linkButler, 2012, May, Rhett A., Monga Bay, “Deforestation in the Amazon,” http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html, KHaze Cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. This has been the case since at least the 1970s: government figures attributed 38 percent of deforestation from 1966-1975 to large-scale cattle ranching. Today the figure is closer to 60 percent, according to research by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and its Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa). Most of the beef is destined for urban markets, whereas leather and other cattle products are primarily for export markets. Brazil is today the world's largest exporter and producer of beef. Much of its expansion has taken place in the Amazon, which currently has more than 80 million head of cattle, up from 26.6 million in 1990 and equivalent to more than 85 percent of the total U.S. herd. The Brazilian Amazon has more than 214,000 square miles of pasture, an open space larger than France. Alt cause- Brazilian road buildingButler, 2012, May, Rhett A., Monga Bay, “Deforestation in the Amazon,” http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html, KHaze Infrastructure Improvements Road construction in the Amazon leads to deforestation. Roads provide access to logging and mining sites while opening forest frontier land to exploitation by poor landless farmers. Brazil's Trans-Amazonian Highway was one of the most ambitious economic development programs ever devised, and one of the most spectacular failures. In the 1970s, Brazil planned a 2,000-mile highway that would bisect the massive Amazon forest, opening rainforest lands to (1) settlement by poor farmers from the crowded, drought-plagued north and (2) development of timber and mineral resources. Colonists would be granted a 250-acre lot, six-months' salary, and easy access to agricultural loans in exchange for settling along the highway and converting the surrounding rainforest into agricultural land. The plan would grow to cost Brazil US$65,000 (1980 dollars) to settle each family, a staggering amount for Brazil, a developing country at the time. The project was plagued from the start. The sediments of the Amazon Basin rendered the highway unstable and subject to inundation during heavy rains, blocking traffic and leaving crops to rot. Harvest yields for peasants were dismal since the forest soils were quickly exhausted, and new forest had to be cleared annually. Logging was difficult due to the widespread distribution of commercially valuable trees. Rampant erosion, up to 40 tons of soil per acre (100 tons/ha) occurred after clearing. Many colonists, unfamiliar with banking and lured by easy credit, went deep into debt. Adding to the economic and social failures of the project, are the long-term environmental costs. After the construction of the Trans-Amazonian Highway, Brazilian deforestation accelerated to levels never before seen and vast swaths of forest were cleared for subsistence farmers and cattle-ranching schemes. The Trans-Amazonian Highway is a prime example of the environmental havoc that is caused by road construction in the rainforest. Road construction and improvement continues in the Amazon today: Paving of roads brings change in the Amazon rainforest and the Chinese economy drives road-building and deforestation in the Amazon Deforestation inevitableHowden, 5-14-12, Daniel, Common Dreams, “Deforestation: The Hidden Cause of Global Warming,” http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/14/1175, KHaze Indonesia became the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world last week. Following close behind is Brazil. Neither nation has heavy industry on a comparable scale with the EU, India or Russia and yet they comfortably outstrip all other countries, except the United States and China. What both countries do have in common is tropical forest that is being cut and burned with staggering swiftness. Smoke stacks visible from space climb into the sky above both countries, while satellite images capture similar destruction from the Congo basin, across the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo. According to the latest audited figures from 2003, two billion tons of CO2 enters the atmosphere every year from deforestation. That destruction amounts to 50 million acres - or an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland felled annually. The remaining standing forest is calculated to contain 1,000 billion tons of carbon, or double what is already in the atmosphere. As the GCP's report concludes: "If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change." Standing forest was not included in the original Kyoto protocols and stands outside the carbon markets that the report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) pointed to this month as the best hope for halting catastrophic warming. The landmark Stern Report last year, and the influential McKinsey Report in January agreed that forests offer the "single largest opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions of carbon emissions". International demand has driven intensive agriculture, logging and ranching that has proved an inexorable force for deforestation; conservation has been no match for commerce. The leading rainforest scientists are now calling for the immediate inclusion of standing forests in internationally regulated carbon markets that could provide cash incentives to halt this disastrous process. Forestry experts and policy makers have been meeting in Bonn, Germany, this week to try to put deforestation on top of the agenda for the UN climate summit in Bali, Indonesia, this year. Papua New Guinea, among the world's poorest nations, last year declared it would have no choice but to continue deforestation unless it was given financial incentives to do otherwise. Plan can’t solve all causes of deforestationGlobal Change, 2010, a regent of the University of Michigan, April, “Global Deforestation,” http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/deforest/deforest.html, KHaze Deforestation has many causes. Population pressures, profits, and internal social and political forces can all push up the rate of forest loss. Access to markets, requiring roads and capital, is an additional powerful force, recently expanded due to the suite of changes referred to as globalization. Poor countries with expanding populations, inequitable distribution of wealth and power, and possibly corrupt governments are especially vulnerable. In Indonesia, powerful families allied with government rulers control large and highly valuable timber concessions. These forests are being rapidly liquidated, at enormous profit. In Brazil, many of the rural poor are moving to cities for work, and not finding it. Productive farmland is controlled by a wealthy elite with a long history of land ownership, and so many of the rural poor are landless. By opening its frontier – the Amazon forest - to its landless poor, Brazil seeks to provide a safety valve for what otherwise might be an explosive political situation. In many areas, poor people have few options to make income, and forests have few protectors, and so land is cleared for agriculture and valuable timber is sold for profit. Asian rainforest destruction triggers the impactThe Guardian 7, lexis The numbers are damning. Within 15 years 98% of the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia will be gone, little more than a footnote in history. With them will disappear some of the world's most important wildlife species, victims of the rapacious destruction of their habitat in what conservationists see as a lost cause. Yet this gloomy script was supposed to have included a small but significant glimmer of hope. Oil palm for biofuel was to have been one of the best solutions in saving the planet from greenhouse gases and global warming. Instead the forests are being torn down in the headlong rush to boost palm oil production. More startling is that conservationists believe the move to clear land for this "green fuel" is often little more than a conspiracy, providing cover to strip out the last stands of timber not already lost to illegal loggers. In one corner of Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, a mere 250,000 hectares or 1,000 sq miles&-& almost twice the size of Greater London&-&of the 6m hectares of forest allocated for palm oil by the government have actually been planted. "When you look closely the areas where companies are getting permission for oil palm plantations are those of high-conservation forest," said Willie Smits, who set up SarVision, a satellite mapping service that charts the rainforest's decline. "What they're really doing is stealing the timber because they get to clear it before they plant. But the timber's all they want; hit and run with no intention of ever planting. It's a conspiracy." The fear is that Indonesia's aim of almost doubling the 6.5m hectares under oil palm plantation in the next five to eight years&-&tripling it by 2020&-&to meet rocketing worldwide demand will afford ever-greater opportunities for the timber thieves. An estimated 2.8m hectares of forest is already lost every year. Until now palm oil&-&of which 83% is produced in Indonesia and Malaysia&-& was produced for food. But the European Union's aim of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, partly by demanding that 10% of vehicles be fuelled by biofuels, will see a fresh surge in palm oil demand that could doom the rainforests. That is likely to kill off the "flagship species" of wildlife such as the Asian elephant, the Sumatran tiger and the orang-utan of Borneo which are already under enormous pressure from habitat loss. Plantation owners regard the orang-utan as pests because it eats the young palm oil plants and hunt them down ruthlessly. "In reality it's over for the tiger, the ele phant and the orang-utan," said Mr Smits, who founded the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation. "Their entire lowland forest habitat is essentially gone already. We find orang-utan burned, or their heads cut off. Hunters are paid 150,000 rupiah (�8.30) for the right hand of an orang-utan to prove they've killed them." Two orang-utan rehabilitation centres run by the foundation on Indonesian Borneo are overflowing with more than 800 of the primates, most rescued from oil palm plantations. But the east Kalimantan centre, where rescued babies are reared by hand, has been unable to release any rescued orang-utan into the wild for four years because suitable habitat has proved impossible to find. In central Kalimantan the picture is worse: it has never staged a release in almost a decade. A new UN report The Last Stand of the Orangutan: State of Emergency found that forests in Indo nesia and Malaysia are being felled so quickly that 98% could be gone by 2022. Yet the orang-utan's lowland forest could disappear much sooner. "We're looking at the virtual extinction of the orang-utan in 15 years, or less," said Raffaella Commitante, primatologist at the foundation's east Kalimantan centre. "There are between 50,000 and 60,000 on Borneo and 7,000 on Sumatra. But 5,000 -10,000 are killed each year." Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 0.97 Mb. Share with your friends:
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