Macleans: Fire In The Amazon
Here at Greenthinkers we strive to entertain but also enjoy pointing the spotlight on great reads now and again - great reads you can print out and read on the subway. Wait, scratch that. We mean great reads you can view online in electronic form.
And we came across another one last week - Macleans Magazine’s look at Brazilian deforestation.
Already, fully 20 per cent of the Amazon rainforest has been lost to deforestation, experts say. Between July 2005 and July 2006, 14,000 square km of forest disappeared as ranchers and others slashed and burned vegetation in order to make way for agribusiness ventures, such as cattle raising and soy bean production (in the Amazon, the cattle population is increasing by more than two million head per year — a huge threat). The year before, 21,000 square km of rainforest were lost. In 2005, parts of the Amazon also experienced the worst drought the forest has seen in a century. Scientists say that if the trend continues, the Amazon rainforest will start to die.
It continues…
As it is, the burning of the Amazon in Brazil has made the country the third-largest source for carbon emissions in the world, after China and the United States. Moreover, scientists say that information on the reduction of deforestation is still very partial and unclear, and they are waiting for satellite images scheduled to be released at the end of the year, in order to make up their minds on whether deforestation has indeed dipped by 50 per cent. But what remains clear, Smeraldi says, is that “a huge area of forest is being converted every year in the Amazon, beyond any social and economic rationale.”
Nathan was thinking green at 1:13 PM on October 15, 2007
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