Amazon Deforestation: Overview

Introduction

Amazon deforestation refers to the loss of trees and other natural plant growth in South America's Amazon rainforest, especially as caused by humans through either direct or indirect means. The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world and a hotbed of biodiversity. Yet the rainforest has also long been subject to deforestation from human activity, including loggers harvesting valuable tree species, farmers and ranchers expanding their agricultural operations, and mining companies seeking new resources. The pace of such activity began to increase in the late twentieth century and remained strong in the early twenty-first century, generating growing concern from environmentalists. However, considerable debate arose over how to consider and address the issue of Amazon deforestation, with .

For nations whose territory includes parts of the Amazon—Brazil (which controls by far the largest portion of the rainforest), Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana—along with corporate partners and investors, the Amazon rainforest is a key national economic resource. Some proponents of development argue that Amazonian mining, ranching, lumbering, and agriculture are crucial to helping these countries compete in the global market. The construction of highways, railroads, gas lines, power plants, and settlements to support those industries provides additional jobs. Advocates claim that efforts to reduce poverty in particular depend on using the resources of the Amazon. Furthermore, some observers point out that similar exploitation of natural resources in the past helped other nations become world powers, so it would be hypocritical to hold South American countries to a different standard.

back into the atmosphere, contributing to the wide-ranging problem of climate change.

Meanwhile, the people most directly impacted by Amazon deforestation are Indigenous groups who live there, such as the Yanomami of Brazil and Venezuela. For them, the Amazon rainforest is a material, cultural, and spiritual resource that supports every aspect of their lives. Activists and allies note that Indigenous tribes experience health problems, cultural loss, and environmental degradation as a result of deforestation.

Understanding the Discussion

Amazon River: One of the largest rivers in the world, stretching approximately 4,000 miles from the Andes Mountains in Peru across northern Brazil to the Atlantic Ocean.

Amazonia: A term for the Amazon rainforest, the largest rainforest in the world, closely linked to the Amazon River and its 500 tributaries; also known as the Amazon River basin. The Amazon contains approximately two-thirds of the world’s fresh, unfrozen water, an estimated 2.5 million insect species, tens of thousands of species of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, trees, and other plants, and unknown numbers of undiscovered species. This makes the basin the world’s single most important region for biodiversity. Countries that share the Amazon basin are Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.

Deforestation: Removal of at least 40 percent of the growth in an area of forested land. Humans often remove forests by burning or logging (also called clear-cutting) to create space for agriculture or development. Deforestation releases carbon into the air that mixes with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, contributing to global warming through the greenhouse effect. Burning land also removes oxygen-producing plant life from the ecosystem and destroys soil nutrients. Destroying large portions of forests can disrupt the balance of precipitation and wind patterns as well.

Indigenous people: The people considered the native inhabitants of a particular region, especially in contrast to colonizers and their descendants.

Sustainable agriculture: Method of agriculture that balances the social, economic, and environmental health of land and people.

History

For thousands of years Indigenous peoples have made the Amazon rainforest their home. It was long thought that the groups living there before the arrival of Europeans were mostly small in numbers and subsisted as hunter-gatherers, with little large-scale impact on the natural environment. However, later research has suggested that there was in fact a considerable human population in the region and that in some places they significantly impacted the ecology of the forest, including through intentional burning to clear land for agriculture. hundreds of Indigenous groups,

Eventually, ay the 1940s overpopulation in southern Brazil had created major social problems there. As a result, in 1960 the Brazilian government decided to relocate the capital 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) inland, to the outskirts of Amazonia. At the same time, Brazil began the first of several initiatives to encourage families to take up small-scale farming in the rainforest, and offered incentives to businesses to take up cattle ranching. In the process, the Indigenous populations lost land and were exposed to new waves of diseases, including tuberculosis and measles, brought by the settlers.

In 1970, the Brazilian government began a large-scale road construction project that included the Trans-Amazon highway. The new roads boosted industry, commerce, agriculture, and resettlement initiatives. At the time, the population of the Brazilian Amazon region was estimated at 2 million, including tens of thousands of rubber tappers who earned a living collecting rubber from rubber trees. As loggers, farmers, ranchers, and miners moved to the Amazon frontier, disputes over land with the rubber tappers and the Indigenous peoples often resulted in violence. Squatters and illegal logging operations increased tensions. Illegal deforestation involving slash-and-burn methods was common and difficult to squelch. The Brazilian government imposed new regulations intended to benefit each group but struggled to enforce them.

In 1978, eight countries signed the Amazonian Cooperation Treaty to promote economic development in the rainforest. Two major projects in Brazil resulted from this push: Polonoroeste and Grand Carajas. Polonoroeste, funded in part by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, was a resettlement initiative intended to relieve ongoing overpopulation in southern Brazil, and included the construction of more highways. As a result of these programs, the population in the Brazilian Amazon surged to 20 million.

Amazonian development provided many jobs and helped the Brazilian economy considerably. At the same time, however, the projects displaced additional Indigenous populations and polluted the environment. Accelerating deforestation began to draw concern from environmentalists.

A notable figure to emerge during this time was Chico Mendes, who came from a Brazilian family of rubber tappers and rose to become a prominent social activist and advocate for preserving the Amazon rainforest. He organized the National Council of Rubber Tappers to represent the workers whose livelihoods were being destroyed as the rubber trees disappeared. In response to his work, the Brazilian government initiated the National Plan of Agrarian Reform in 1985, which set aside extractive reserves specifically for collecting rubber and Brazil nuts, and other sustainable land uses. However, Mendes was murdered in 1988, reflecting the great tensions between those seeking to protect the forest and ranchers and other business interests promoting land clearing.

Throughout the late twentieth century, scientists at Brazil’s Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (National Institute of Amazonian Research, or INPA) conducted environmental research in the region. The INPA found that the unprecedented rate of deforestation was destroying plant and animal habitats. Along with other international organizations including the World Wildlife Fund, the Rainforest Action Network, and the Nature Conservancy, the INPA worked to draw international attention to the plight of the rainforest. By the turn of the twenty-first century, the movement to "save the rainforest" was a well-known cause worldwide. While the initial focus was largely on preserving biodiversity and protecting endangered species, increasing recognition of the threats posed by climate change brought heightened attention to the Amazon's importance to the global climate as well. Much of the spotlight remained on Brazil, as the nation accounting for the great majority of the Amazon rainforest.

Amazon Deforestation Today

By the early decades of the twenty-first century, the primary reason for deforestation was to clear land for cattle grazing. Brazil stood as one of the world's leading exporters of beef and had some of the largest ranches in the world. The country also increased its production of soybeans as more land in the Amazon was cleared. The resulting growth in international trade boosted the Brazilian economy and allowed the country to reduce its debt. Yet objections from environmentalists and Indigenous activists continued. Notably, improved satellite imaging helped clarify how much forest was being lost over time and how this intertwined with other broad trends, from socioeconomic factors to climate change.

Various efforts to stop Amazon deforestation emerged over the years. The Amazon Region Protected Areas (ARPA) program, a partnership between the Brazilian government, the World Bank, the German Development Bank, World Wildlife Fund, and other organizations, was formed to support the establishment of parks and biodiversity reserves in the region. As a result of the partnership, Brazil established Tumucumaque Mountains National Park in 2002, which became the largest national park located in a rainforest. In 2006, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed the Public Forest Management Law, giving sustainable logging rights to private companies for 3 percent of the Amazon region. The intention was to promote sustainable agriculture, preserve species, prevent erosion, and stop illegal logging. Also under Lula, soybean farmers and cattle ranchers who cleared the rainforest for agriculture could not sell their products legally. These policies, along with activism from Indigenous groups such as the Amazon Alliance and the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) as well as substantial foreign aid aimed at conservation, helped decrease the annual rate of deforestation from 10,088 square miles in 2003 to 1,700 square miles in 2012.

Beginning around 2013, however, the rate of Amazon deforestation increased markedly once more, driven in part by political instability in Brazil. By 2016 the rate of clearing had nearly doubled from 2012 levels, rising to 3,088 square miles. Illegal logging, phony land deals, assaults on Indigenous people, and corruption among law enforcement officials facilitated this increase. The differing attitudes of subsequent Brazilian presidential administrations were also considered to play an important role. For example, after Michel Temer became president in 2016, he relaxed environmental standards and protections and cut government funding for the environment ministry. Right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019, even more directly championed the logging and cattle ranching industries and stood against international pressure to conserve the Amazon. Under the Bolsonaro administration, the rate of deforestation spiked sharply, reaching a reported six-year high in the first half of 2022.

After Lula returned to power in 2023, esearchers noted an immediate significant drop in the year-to-year deforestation rate that January. Still, environmentalists warned that the Amazon continued to shrink steadily, with serious consequences for biodiversity and climate change. One prominent study published in January 2023 suggested that 17 percent of the rainforest had been cleared in the preceding fifty years, while as much as 38 percent of the remaining forest was already severely impacted by drought and human activity. In August 2023, Lula and the presidents of seven other nations with territory in the Amazon convened at a meeting of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, a body intended to promote conservation efforts on the global scale. The leaders hoped to revitalize the alliance, which was rooted in a 1978 treaty but had seen little activity or impact over the years. By January 2024, the BBC reported that deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon in 2023 had decreased by almost 50 percent when compared to the 2022 figure.

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