Amazon Forest Destruction Surges In Late 2007 - 2,300 Sq. Miles Gone In Four Months - Independent

[hatrack]

The destruction of the Amazon rainforest has surged in the past four months, raising the prospect of 2008 being a disastrous year for the world's most important eco-system, a senior Brazilian government scientist has warned. Dr Carlos Nobre, a scientist with a government agency that monitors the Amazon said thousands of square miles of rainforest had been destroyed since October, after four years in which deforestation rates had begun to slow.

"I think the past four months is a big concern for the government and now they are sending people to do more law enforcement," Dr Nobre, told a seminar in Washington yesterday. "But I can tell you that it is going to be much higher than 2007." The claims from the head of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research appear to undermine the government's record on environmental protection and come in the same week as a major report was released detailing the growth of cattle ranching in the Amazon.

Dr Nobre said 2,300 sq miles of forest had been lost in the past four months. That compares with an estimated 3,700 sq miles in the 12 months that ended on 31 July, which Brazilian officials hailed as the lowest deforestation rate since the 1970s. Those figures had already been hotly disputed by conservationists who point to increasing pressure from sugar cane plantations to feed the ethanol boom, illegal cattle ranching for beef exports, soybean production and illegal logging operations. "All those drivers of change are there," said Dr Nobre. "The three years of reduced deforestation... did not bring by themselves a cure for illegal deforestation."

Roberto Smeraldi, from Friends of the Earth Brazil, said the surge was part of the same cycle of destruction that has seen so much of the forest cleared in the past. "We had a real overdose of deforestation between 2002 and 2005, which led to abundant availability of cleared land," he said. "Now this land has been occupied, the process heats up again."

EDIT

http://environment.independent.co.uk/green_living/article3348001.ece

[Teaser]

1. There is no way we will stop this

I'm sorry, but the Brazilians just aren't going to stop. I've been down in the Ucayali basin, and watched settler towns like Pucallpa (in the Peruvian rainforest) spring up.
The people there just do not care about the forest, it is a means to an end for them. And I don't see how they're entirely wrong. Their first concern is getting by and feeding their kids. If I lived there, I'd probably feel the same.

I honestly don't know what to do about this.

[ProgressIn2008]

2. Chilling article -- ecological disasters really challenge our ideas about border and nations.