Brazil’s Plan: Deforestation Zero by 2030

Amazon deforestation - WWF-Brasil/Bruno Taitson Home to the vast Amazon, Brazil has reduced its deforestation rate by more than 70 percent since 2003, but Latin America’s largest country is still losing the equivalent of two football fields of rainforest every minute.

 The country aims to reduce net new deforestation to zero by 2030.

Key tools in the fight are new satellite monitoring technologies, rural titling schemes to encourage small-scale farmers to stop cutting down trees and action against illegal loggers, according to officials from Brazil’s environment enforcement agency (IBAMA).

Amazon deforestation - WWF-Brasil/Bruno Taitson

“Every act of deforestation has an economic cause,” IBAMA official Jair Schmitt informed.

“We are creating strategies to convince people not to do it (illegal logging) in the first place.”

Here are some facts about Brazil’s battle against deforestation:

* About 90 percent of deforestation is caused by illegal logging, according to IBAMA.

* Four satellites monitoring the Amazon from Brazil, the United States, China and India detect more than 100,000 points of illegal logging every year.

* The rate of deforestation peeked in 2004 at about 27,700 square kilometers of forest lost, an area larger than Israel.

* Promoting secure land tenure, especially for indigenous people, is key to protecting forests, according to Brazil’s environment agency.

* Last year Brazil lost more than 6,200 square km (2,394 sq miles) of rainforest, an area larger than Brunei.

* In 2015, environment enforcement officials made more than 4,000 arrests and seized 91 trucks, 115 chainsaws and the equivalent of 2,000 truckloads of illegally harvested wood.

* More than 70 percent of land affected by illegal deforestation is used for cattle ranching, according to IBAMA.

* Deforestation in the Amazon is responsible for 30 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil, according to campaign group Greenpeace.

This article and information were collected by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking and climate change.

Tags:

You May Also Like

At first glance, the Cerrado looks barren. But the savanna boasts important aquifers and provides major carbon storage. Andressa Zumpano / Action Aid.

Only Now the World Is Starting to Learn How Vital Is Brazil’s Cerrado to Our Planet

On May 6, 2015, the Brazilian government officially recognized a special economic region, one ...

A Kayapo boy with traditional body paint and piercing is seen at his home in Kikretum

Global Forest Watch Detecting Record Forest Loss in the Amazon

Brazil topped the list of the world’s most important Places to Watch for deforestation, ...

Rio Carnaval Parade Celebrating the Amazon Indians Leaves Big Farm Livid

Rio’s Carnaval festivities were threatened this year by a spat pitting a well-known parade ...

For Brazilian Indians the Bad from Rousseff’s Era Has Become Worse

In addition to being a politician and a constitutionalist lawyer, President Michel Temer is ...

Royal flycatcher (Onychorhynchus coronatus) in the Amazon by Philip Stouffer

The Radical Changes Fires Are Causing the Amazon Flora and Fauna

The number of fires burning in standing Amazon rainforest spiked dramatically in recent weeks, ...

Preservingthe Wild

Foreigners and Brazilians who came to visit have settled permanently in the historical city ...

Tree trunks loaded on a truck in the Brazilian Amazon

Zero Deforestation Is the Only Answer in this Side of the Amazon

Perched at the easternmost edge of the Amazon rainforest is Maranhão, one of Brazil’s ...

Forest on fire in Brazil

Brazil to Privatize Amazon’s Deforestation Monitoring. Deforesters Applaud

In the midst of the intense political turmoil unfolding in Brasília, a government move ...

A still from a FUNAI video of The Man of the Hole, filmed during a government monitoring mission

Brazil’s Man of the Hole Is Dead. The Last Survivor of His Tribe’s Genocide

An Indigenous man known as “The Man of the Hole” has died in Brazil. ...