SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP)\u2014 Deforestation in the Amazon destroyed an area bigger than Spain from 2000 to 2018, wiping out eight per cent of the world’s largest rainforest, according to a study released Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Amazon plays a vital role in curbing climate change, but destruction of the rainforest has only accelerated in recent years, found the study by the Amazon Geo-Referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network (RAISG).<\/p>\n
Since the turn of the millennium, 513,016 square kilometres (198,077 square miles) of the rainforest have been lost, according to the updated Amazon atlas produced by the organisation, a consortium of groups from across the region.<\/p>\n
It is RAISG’s first such atlas since 2012.<\/p>\n
“The Amazon is far more threatened than it was eight years ago,” RAISG said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The consortium found that after making gains against deforestation early in the century, the Amazon region has again slipped into a worrying cycle of destruction.<\/p>\n
Deforestation hit a high of 49,240 square kilometres of forest loss in 2003 — a record for this century — then eased to a low of 17,674 square kilometres in 2010, the report said.<\/p>\n
But the destruction has since surged to startling levels.<\/p>\n
“Deforestation has accelerated since 2012. The annual area lost tripled from 2015 to 2018,” the study found.<\/p>\n
“In 2018 alone, 31,269 square kilometres of forest were destroyed across the Amazon region, the worst annual deforestation since 2003.”<\/p>\n
The destruction is fuelled by logging, farming, ranching, mining and infrastructure projects on formerly pristine forest land.<\/p>\n
“The statistics presented by RAISG are an alarm bell on the increasing pressures and threats facing the region,” said researcher Julia Jacomini of the Socioenvironmental Institute (ISA), a Brazilian environmental group that is part of RAISG.<\/p>\n
The atlas “shows the importance of building an alliance of Amazon countries, which is non-existent at the moment, to fight those growing pressures and threats,” she told AFP.<\/p>\n
– World problem –<\/p>\n
The report comes as world leaders prepare for a virtual summit this weekend aimed at breathing new life into the 2015 Paris climate accord, whose goals on slowing the warming of the planet are currently set to be missed.<\/p>\n
Forests such as the Amazon play a vital role in controlling climate change because they absorb carbon from the atmosphere.<\/p>\n
However, when their trees die or burn, they release carbon back into the environment.<\/p>\n
The Amazon stretches across eight South American countries — Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Suriname and Guyana — and the territory of French Guiana.<\/p>\n
Brazil, which holds most of the Amazon — about 62 per cent — is also responsible for the worst deforestation, the study found: 425,051 square kilometres from 2000 to 2018.<\/p>\n
The destruction in Brazil has only accelerated since far-right President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019.<\/p>\n
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon surged to a 12-year high of 11,088 square kilometers from August 2019 to July 2020, according to government figures.<\/p>\n
That was a 9.5-per cent increase from the previous year, when deforestation also hit a more than decade-long high.<\/p>\n
Bolsonaro has come under fire from environmentalists and the international community for cutting funding for rainforest protection programs and pushing to open protected lands to agribusiness and mining.<\/p>\n
He has presided over a surge in wildfires in the Brazilian Amazon since taking office.<\/p>\n
There were more than 89,000 of them last year, at one point sending a thick haze of black smoke all the way to Sao Paulo, thousands of kilometres away, and causing worldwide alarm over the future of the rainforest.<\/p>\n
There have been even more fires so far this year: 101,434 and counting.<\/p>\n
Experts say the fires are largely caused by farmers and ranchers bulldozing and burning trees to clear land for agriculture — an illegal but widespread practice.<\/p>\n
Deforestation is also surging in Bolivia and Colombia, RAISG found.<\/p>\n
Bolivia lost 27 per cent of its Amazon forest cover to fires from 2000 to 2018, it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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