MONTHLY NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 2020
Woods Hole Research Center Rising from the ashes of the Amazon, a path forward for Brazil’s development and the world’s climate Dr. Michael Coe Tropics Program Director
An alarming rise in human caused fires in Brazil captured the world’s attention in the middle of 2019. Using up-to-the-minute satellite data, our team at IPAM-Amazônia and WHRC quickly determined that the fires were almost exclusively associated with illegal deforestation. In other words, people felt confident in 2019 that they could illegally deforest private and public lands and burn the trees, without fear of being prosecuted.
Now it is early 2020 and the deforestation and fire season is rapidly approaching. People generally start cutting trees in April and the fires start 2 or so months later after the felled trees have dried out. As scientists who’ve dedicated our careers to Amazon conservation, we know that it is time to have serious conversations about how to stop fires and protect our global climate, but also how to fix a broken model of economic development that encourages short-sighted deforestation.
We’ve already lost over 750,000km2 of the Amazon—nearly 20%—in the last four decades. We really can’t afford to lose more. In addition to harboring immense biodiversity, this forest is a very important part of the global climate. It stores as much carbon as 10 years of human-caused emissions and is the source of much of the rainfall locally and thousands of miles away. That, in turn, supports agriculture, urban water supplies, and a large fraction of Brazil’s economy. Thus, continued deforestation doesn’t just destroy a magnificent forest, it will likely lead to catastrophic climate change, more frequent crop failures in Brazil, and even greater economic uncertainty globally.
Rather than conserving tropical forests, current political and economic forces are accelerating us towards an irreversible tipping point. Climate change is already beginning to degrade remaining forests. Indigenous people and forest communities,
responsible for protecting almost half of the Amazon, are losing their land rights and protections. Roads, railroads, and dams are being proposed and constructed to unsustainably exploit pristine forests.
Yet the science is clear: Additional deforestation would materially decrease the productivity of existing Brazilian farmland, accelerating global warming while reducing food security. This is frequently misunderstood, but our data is unequivocal.
NASA
A sustainable path forward begins with the recognition that the current development model, which assumes that nature stands in the way of development, is wrong. We must shift to a model which recognizes that forest conservation and development can go hand in hand. This was already achieved in the mid-2000s when Brazil reduced its deforestation rates by about 80% while increasing its soybean and beef production.
BRAZIL continued on next page
WHRC is an independent research organization where scientists study climate change and how to solve it, from the Amazon to the Arctic. Learn more at www.whrc.org.