INPE Scientist: "The Forest Is Sick And Is Losing Its Carbon Sequestration Capacity"

[hatrack]

EDIT

Mongabay: Please tell us about your recent trip to Altamira for the Amazon Center of the World conference.

Antonio Donato Nobre: It was very instructive, especially getting to know how the peoples of the forest protect the Amazon efficiently and lucratively. The Amazon is indeed the center of the world. It’s the most important organ in the climate’s system of metabolism, guaranteeing the stability and environmental comfort. In the Terra do Meio, a large part of the forest is in ruins. What remains is within the conservation areas, indigenous lands and the so-called Resex, which are reserves of sustainable extractivism, where the forest is in recuperation. But in that eastern portion of the Amazon, due to the deforestation and the degradation, the remaining forest may already be passing the tipping point.

Are there visible signs of the tipping point?

The native forests have a certain resilience to climatic adversities. But they do not have any capacity to resist chainsaws, tractors with chains or fires set on a large scale. These malicious inventions and their barbarous attacks create a real climate of definitive destruction. [In addition,] the air, previously always humid, has gotten progressively drier, making the forest flammable. The rains are arriving later and later each year and the carbon sequestration, previously accomplished by the forest, has diminished at the same time the mortality of large trees has increased. The people there in the region are fighting against climate change. The Brazil nut trees have a cycle: they produce more nuts one year, then produce less the next. But for a number of years now, production has plummeted due to the droughts. These losses have a connection with the change in the climate and testify to the degradation of the forest. Scientific studies published in recent years leave no doubt about the climatic change associated with the forest’s destruction.

Preliminary numbers, recently announced about deforestation in the Amazon, referring to the period of August, 2018 to July, 2019, show an increase of 29.5% in relation to the previous year. The government is defending itself, but the deforestation rate in August 2019 grew 222% in relation to the same period in 2018. How do you see this situation?

It’s a catastrophic situation! A large front of destruction was opened up this year, exacerbated by the actions of the federal government, whose rhetoric recruits mainly land grabbers on the front lines of deforestation. These thieves invade public lands and conservation areas, they occupy, and later sell the land to cattle breeders. The cattlemen expand the deforestation and sell the areas to soybean farmers, who consolidate the devastation. It came to the point that the loggers planned the “Day of Fire” as a way of expressing their glowing thanks, visible from space, for the new policy for the Amazon.

Since the beginning of the year there’s been a very clear manifestation of hostility from the authorities regarding the issue of the environment. The first sign that the new administration was going to stimulate deforestation came right at the beginning with the announcement: “we’re going to get rid of the fining industry.” But there was no such thing as the [environmental] fining industry, there was a serious work of control that resulted in a reduction of deforestation in past years, like from 2005 to 2012. This is not a mere interpretation: the official rhetoric, admitted by the man in charge as his new policy for the Amazon, has intensified the deforestation.

EDIT

https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/antonio-donato-nobre-the-forest-is-sick-and-losing-its-carbon-sequestration-capacity/

[CrispyQ]

1. This is the result of cultures that looks one quarter ahead instead of seven generations.

Everything for profit, even our planet.

We are so fucked.