The Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest rainforest that covers more than a billion acres enclosing the regions of Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Labeled as the “Lungs of our Planet”, it provides essential oxygen by recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen thereby regulating the temperature of our environment. Its watershed and river system which is the largest in the world provides one-fifth of the world’s fresh water particularly Brazil’s inland agriculture. The Amazon rainforest has the most distinctive ecosystem that provides habitat for millions of species of plants, animals and insects giving them support and nourishment. Its tropical trees, plants and organisms are the sources of active ingredients in anti-cancer drugs manufactured worldwide. The Amazon rainforest provides a wealth of resources needed for the survival and welfare of mankind but this once great tropical rainforest has been destroyed, burnt and spoilt by ranches, farms, roads and dams. The massive deforestation of the rainforest has ruined the bio-diversity of the Amazon and its entire ecosystem resulting to the extinction of plant and animal species.
Causes of Deforestation and its Consequences
Statistics showed that from 1970 to the present, Brazil has alarmingly lost 600,000 sq km of Amazon rainforest which is the result of human activities like commercial agriculture, logging, infrastructure improvements, subsistent farming and clearing for cattle pasture. Brazil is one of the leading producers of soybean in the world market and its cropland expansion in Mato Grasso state is one of the causes of deforestation (Anderson et al 2006). Illegal logging causes 3-4% of deforestation where precious wood like Ebony that grows in the rainforest is sold at high prices making it a very profitable business. Building of infrastructure such as Brazil’s Trans-Amazonian Highway not only served the purpose of connecting far away places but also gave easy access in exploiting the wealth of the rainforest. Hydroelectric projects such as the Balbina Dam have flooded 2,400 sq km of rainforest and have emitted tons of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Poor farmers who were granted land in the Amazon by the Brazilian government were cutting forest trees and using fire in clearing land causing thousands of fires burning across the Amazon. Cattle-ranching has the highest percentage of 80% forest clearing and was believed to be the main cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Brazil is the world’s largest beef producer and exporter where ranchers expand their pasture areas in the Amazon rainforest that covered 214,000 sq miles of pasture (Butler 2012).
According to American Meteorological Society researchers, regional climate in the Amazon was greatly affected by the large-scale deforestation that resulted to higher rainfall and warmer temperatures. The region suffered a substantial increase in temperature of about 2.5 degrees Celsius and a decrease of 30% in the annual evapo-transpiration, a reduction of 25% in precipitation and 20% in runoff (Nobre et al 1991). Impact of climate change in the region was evident during the fierce drought in 2010 which has brought the Amazon River to its lowest level. The Rio Negro or Black River dropped 6cm to 13.63 meters which is the worst in history (Phillips 2010). Reports from the UN Environmental Program revealed that deforestation has also resulted to the extinction of 26 animal and plant species and 644 more species of plants and animals are now endangered. Local extinction of forest-dependent vertebrate species was at 1% in 2008 but is expected to rise to more than 80% in the coming years with the historical habitat loss (Ewers et al 2012). Every year, the Amazon is vanishing at a rapid rate and experts agree that if this rate of deforestation continues in the next few years, all of our rainforests will be lost together with all of the plants, animals and organisms that lived there. Environmental problems such as soil erosion, air and water pollution and carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases will pollute the atmosphere causing global warming which we are now experiencing (Taylor 1996).
Saving the Amazon Rainforest through Restoration
Faced with the biggest problem of balancing economic growth and the conservation of the Amazon rainforest, the government of Brazil has considered the rehabilitation of formerly forested lands, expansion of protected areas, development of sustainable use of existing forest, land policy reform and law enforcement. In 2008, the government of Brazil launched a reforestation project to grow 1 billion trees for the Amazon area. The Amazon Rainforest Project (ARP) not only aims to conduct large-scale reforestation on deforested lands but also to pursue environmental policies that nurture a sustainable economy based on forestry while helping to conserve wildlife and plant species. The government also has set programs to legalize ranch properties that were illegally occupied and incentive programs to farm owners who would cooperate in the conservation of the rainforest. So far, government has covered 150 million acres for conservation and deforestation rate has dropped by 80% in the last six years (Barrionuevo 2012).
Wealthy nations, non-governmental organizations and environmental groups should work hand in hand in achieving this common goal because saving the mighty Amazon rainforest means saving the whole planet.
References:
Anderson, L., Arai, E., DeFries, R., Del Bon Espiritu-Santo, F., Freitas, R., Morisette, J., . . . Shimabukuro, Y. (2006). Cropland expansion changes deforestation dynamics in the southern Brazilian Amazon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103, 39. Retrieved from
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/39/14637.full
Butler, R. (2012). Deforestation in the Amazon. Mongabay.com. Retrieved from http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html
Nobre, C., Sellers, P., Shukla, J. (1991). Amazonian Deforestation and Regional Climate Change. American Meteorological Society. 4, 10. Retrieved from
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0442%281991%29004%3C0957%3AADARCC%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Ewers, R., Reuman, D., Wearn, O. (2012). Extinction Debt and Windows of Conservation Opportunity in the Brazilian Amazon. Science, 337, 228-232. Retrieved from http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6091/228.full
