The Brazilian president has said NGOs could be burning down the Amazon rainforest to embarrass his government after he cut their funding. Bolsonaro had no evidence but said 'everything indicates' that NGOs are going to the Amazon to set fire to the forest
Continue reading...Category Archives: Deforestation
Jair Bolsonaro claims without evidence that NGOs are setting fires in Amazon rainforest
Brazilian president claims green groups behind rise in blazes, but offers nothing to support his assertion
The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has accused environmental groups of setting fires in the Amazon as he tries to deflect growing international criticism of his failure to protect the world’s biggest rainforest.
A surge of fires in several Amazonian states this month followed reports that farmers were feeling emboldened to clear land for crop fields and cattle ranches because the new Brazilian government was keen to open up the region to economic activity.
Continue reading...Brazil to open long-distance hiking trail in Atlantic forest – in pictures
Inspired by long-distance tracks such as Canada’s 15,000-mile Great Trail, a proposed 4,970-mile trans-Brazil hiking trail would provide a continuous coastal corridor from its southern border with Uruguay to its northern frontier with French Guiana
Continue reading...Norway halts Amazon fund donation in dispute with Brazil
International concerns grow over deforestation surge since Jair Bolsonaro took power
Norway has followed Germany in suspending donations to the Brazilian government’s Amazon Fund after a surge in deforestation in the South American rainforest. The move has triggered a caustic attack from the country’s rightwing president.
Related: Bolsonaro rejects 'Captain Chainsaw' label as data shows deforestation 'exploded'
Continue reading...Bolsonaro has blessed ‘brutal’ assault on rainforest, sacked scientist warns
In interview with the Guardian, Ricardo Galvão says if the far-right leader doesn’t change tack the Amazon will be ruined
Illegal loggers are ramping up a “brutal, fast” assault on the Brazilian Amazon with the blessing of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, the sacked head of the government agency tasked with monitoring deforestation has warned.
Speaking to the Guardian five days after his dismissal, Ricardo Galvão said he was “praying to the heavens” the far-right leader would change tack before the Amazon – and Brazil’s international reputation as an environmental leader – were ruined.
Continue reading...Bolsonaro rejects ‘Captain Chainsaw’ label as data shows deforestation ‘exploded’
Data says 2,254 sq km cleared in July as president says Macron and Merkel ‘haven’t realized Brazil’s under new management’
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon “exploded” in July it has emerged as Jair Bolsonaro scoffed at his portrayal as Brazil’s “Captain Chainsaw” and mocked Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel for challenging him over the devastation.
Speaking in São Paulo on Tuesday, Brazil’s president attacked the leaders of France and Germany – who have both voiced concern about the surge in destruction since Bolsonaro took office in January.
Continue reading...Amazon deforestation: Bolsonaro government accused of seeking to sow doubt over data
Ministers look at setting up alternative monitoring scheme as existing system shows alarming rise in clearance rates
The Amazon forest is being burned and chopped down at the most alarming rate in recent memory, but the Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro is focused on reinterpreting the data rather than dealing with the culprits, monitoring groups have said.
At a clearance rate equivalent to a Manhattan island every day, deforestation in July was almost twice as fast as the worst month ever recorded by the current satellite monitoring system, which is managed by the government’s National Institute for Space Research.
Continue reading...Ethiopia plants 350m trees in a day to help tackle climate crisis
National ‘green legacy’ initiative aims to reduce environmental degradation
About 350m trees have been planted in a single day in Ethiopia, according to a government minister.
The planting is part of a national “green legacy” initiative to grow 4bn trees in the country this summer by encouraging every citizen to plant at least 40 seedlings. Public offices have reportedly been shut down in order for civil servants to take part.
Continue reading...The Guardian view on Amazon deforestation: Europe must act to prevent disaster | Editorial
We need rainforests to limit climate change, as well as protect biodiversity, and must do all we can to support Brazilian conservation
If there is a glimmer of light amid the darkness of recent reports from the Brazilian Amazon, where deforestation is accelerating along with threats to the indigenous people who live there, it could lie in the growing power of climate diplomacy, combined with increased understanding of the crucial role played by trees in our planet’s climate system. The deal agreed a month ago between the EU and the Mercosur bloc of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay (Venezuela is suspended) enhances European leverage with its South American trading partners. Already, the prize of access to EU markets is credited with having convinced Brazil not to follow Donald Trump’s lead by withdrawing from the Paris climate deal. Now the EU must strengthen its environmental commitments, as a letter from 600 scientists demanded before the deal was agreed.
Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, made no secret of his plans to promote development, and drew powerful support from Brazil’s agribusiness and mining interests before last year’s election. He scorns conservation and indigenous rights, claiming recently that his foreign opponents want Amazon tribes to live “like cavemen”. Satellite data shows the message is getting through, with clearances up sharply and this month set to be the first in five years in which Brazil has lost an area of forest bigger than Greater London. Illegal gold mining too is spreading. Last week one of the leaders of the Waiãpi people, Emyra Waiãpi, was found stabbed to death on a remote reserve in the state of Amapá, after armed men raided his village.
Continue reading...‘He wants to destroy us’: Bolsonaro poses gravest threat in decades, Amazon tribes say
Indigenous leaders who say Brazil’s new president is trying to force them from their lands are braced for a new era of ruin
As a blood-orange sunset drifted towards the forest canopy, Raimundo Kanamari sat on the riverbank and pondered the future of his tribe under Brazil’s far-right president.
Related: Video of uncontacted Amazon tribe highlights threat from illegal loggers
Continue reading...The jungle metropolis: how sprawling Manaus is eating into the Amazon
Informal settlements are expanding, with a new occupation attempt every 11 days, and the threat to the rainforest is severe
Antonio Pinto’s makeshift home on the outskirts of Manaus is an open-air shack, one of dozens of similar dwellings of timber and tarpaulin scattered around the hills.
Around them is the evidence of the use of flame and iron: the hills are scorched and brown, littered with fallen logs and toppled, twisted trees.
Continue reading...Video of uncontacted Amazon tribe highlights threat from illegal loggers
Clip shows a bare-chested man with a spear, who is believed to belong to the Awá people, the world’s most threatened tribe
Remarkable close-up footage that appears to show an uncontacted tribesman in the Amazon rainforest has been released by an indigenous media group that wants to raise awareness of the threat posed by illegal loggers, miners and drug traffickers.
Related: The Amazon tribe protecting the forest with bows, arrows, GPS and camera traps
Continue reading...Tree planting ‘has mind-blowing potential’ to tackle climate crisis
Research shows a trillion trees could be planted to capture huge amount of carbon dioxide
Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the biggest and cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis, according to scientists, who have made the first calculation of how many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas.
As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating. New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”.
Continue reading...Brazil: huge rise in Amazon destruction under Bolsonaro, figures show
- Monthly deforestation up 88.4% compared with a year ago
- Brazil pressured to protect Amazon under trade deal terms
Deforestation in Brazil’s portion of the Amazon rainforest rose more than 88% in June compared with the same month a year ago, the second consecutive month of rising forest destruction under the rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro.
According to data from Brazil’s space agency, deforestation in the world’s largest tropical rainforest totaled 920 sq km (355 sq miles).
Continue reading...Revealed: rampant deforestation of Amazon driven by global greed for meat
Investigation exposes how Brazil’s huge beef sector continues to threaten health of world’s largest rainforest
The cows grazed under the midday Amazon sun, near a wooden bridge spanning a river. It was an idyllic scene of pastoral quiet, occasionally broken by a motorbike growling on the dirt road that cuts through part of the Lagoa do Triunfo cattle farm to a nearby community.
But this pasture is land that the farm has been forbidden to use for cattle since 2010, when it was embargoed by Brazil’s government environment agency Ibama for illegal deforestation. Nearby were more signs of fresh pasture: short grass, feeding troughs, and salt for cattle.
Continue reading...We must not barter the Amazon rainforest for burgers and steaks | Jonathan Watts
The EU-Mercosur trade deal is good news for Brazil’s huge beef industry but devastating for the rainforest and environment
European leaders have thrown the Amazon rainforest under a Volkswagen bus in a massive cows-for-cars trade deal with Brazil and three other South American nations.
The EU-Mercosur agreement – the largest in Europe’s history, according to officials – will make it cheaper for Brazilian farmers to export agricultural products, particularly beef, despite growing evidence that cattle ranching is the primary driver of deforestation.
Continue reading...Forest twice size of UK destroyed in decade for big consumer brands – report
Greenpeace estimates 50m hectares cleared by 2020, warning companies must evolve to prevent ‘climate breakdown’
An area twice the size of the UK has been destroyed for products such as palm oil and soy over the last decade, according to analysis by Greenpeace International.
In 2010, members of the Consumer Goods Forum, including some of the world’s biggest consumer brands, pledged to eliminate deforestation by 2020, through the sustainable sourcing of four commodities most linked to forest destruction: soya, palm oil, paper and pulp, and cattle.
Continue reading...‘Death by a thousand cuts’: vast expanse of rainforest lost in 2018
Pristine forests are vital for climate and wildlife but trend of losses is rising, data shows
Millions of hectares of pristine tropical rainforest were destroyed in 2018, according to satellite analysis, with beef, chocolate and palm oil among the main causes.
The forests store huge amounts of carbon and are teeming with wildlife, making their protection critical to stopping runaway climate change and halting a sixth mass extinction. But deforestation is still on an upward trend, the researchers said. Although 2018 losses were lower than in 2016 and 2017, when dry conditions led to large fires, last year was the next worst since 2002, when such records began.
Continue reading...US-China soy trade war could destroy 13 million hectares of rainforest
Study suggests Brazil likely to rush to fill China’s sudden soy shortfall by boosting farming
The Amazon rainforest could be the greatest casualty of the trade war between the United States and China, warns a new study showing how deforestation pressures have surged as a result of the geopolitical jolt in global soy markets.
Up to 13m hectares of forest and savannah – an area the size of Greece – would have to be cleared if Brazil and other exporters were to fill the huge shortfall in soy supply to China that has suddenly appeared since Donald Trump imposed hefty tariffs, according to the paper published in Nature.
US exports of the commodity, primarily used to feed livestock, to China plummeted by 50% last year, which the authors say is an unusually sharp level of decline between two trading partners outside wartime.
‘We are fighting’: Brazil’s indigenous groups unite to protect their land
Residents of Raposa Serra do Sol are determined to face down the threat posed by mining
“A united people will never be defeated!” shouted Maria Betânia Mota, as the indigenous assembly in a partially burned-out agricultural college began. Hundreds of voices roared back in approval.
Betânia Mota is the women’s secretary of its organisers, the Indigenous Council of Roraima (CIR), which represents the majority of those living in the 1.7m hectares of savannah and scrub that make up the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve in Brazil’s northernmost state.
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