Brazil Plans a Price on Oil to Accelerate Climate Efforts

Brazil expects to see its lowest rates of illegal deforestation since 1988 by the end of this year.

Minister of Environment Izabella Teixeira said the government will reduce the annual chopping and burning of the Amazon rainforest to between 4,000 and 5,000 square kilometers. The figures will be announced in the run-up to this year's U.N. climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico, this December.

The Amazon clearing is a far cry from the 24,000 square kilometers the so-called "lungs of the Earth" lost in the beginning of this decade. But, Teixeira said, it's also not enough.

"OK, you did this, yes, we are so great," the minister said in a self-mocking flourish at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars' Brazil Institute. But, she added with seriousness, "this challenge is not the only one."

Last year, at climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, Brazil promised to reduce its carbon dioxide output 36 percent over the coming decade. Meeting that goal would bring Brazil -- now the world's seventh-largest emitter -- back to its 1994 levels. This week, Teixeira said, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will sign Brazil's sectoral strategy and investment plan to show how the country will meet that target. Also this week, Brazil will launch a long-planned climate change fund, bankrolled by a levy on oil production and exploration.

Together, these moves and others are part of a larger Brazilian strategy of assuming a new role in the U.N. climate talks: that of an emerging economic superpower intent on protecting smaller, developing countries while also proving to the United States and others that it will do its part to fight rising global emissions.

But what impact that will have at the 16th U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP16, talks, where nearly all attention will be focused on getting the United States and China to come to terms over mitigating emissions, is unclear.

An emerging player throws chips on the table

In an interview with ClimateWire after speaking to the Brazil Institute about the current Convention on Biological Diversity conference in Nagoya, Japan, Teixeira was at once dismissive and upbeat about the Cancun meeting.

"COP 16? Forget it," said Teixeira when told the interview topic. Then she recovered. Cancun, she said, is key to bringing leaders together. "It's important that you have a pragmatic approach, and that you can show the global society that we are doing something. It's important to show the world that we can establish a pragmatic basis for actions."

Teixeira maintained the need for an international treaty -- though she didn't specify when that might become a reality -- and stressed the importance of developed countries like the United States making good on commitments to give poor countries $30 billion by 2020 to cope with climate change consequences.

"Let's be current with our declaration," she said. "If we're not able to do this, why are we able to spend lots of money with wars?"

The gregarious minister, who in the course of her public talk teased a questioner about her marital status ("I hope that you can have a lot of marriages. High biodiversity.") and handed her personal e-mail to a graduate student who had written recently on Brazil, offered few other specifics on COP16. Instead, she peppered much of her talk with platitudes.

On whether the Cancun meeting is a referendum on the troubled U.N. climate process: "It's important to understand that climate change is an issue with high complexity."

On whether countries, including Brazil, trust the United States when it says it will keep its Copenhagen promise to cut carbon about 17 percent below 2005 levels, despite the absence of legislation: "It's very important that you have political leadership from President Obama."

As to whether Lula will attend COP16, the minister said she wasn't sure. But, she added, "to have political leadership, you don't necessarily need to go to the COP."

Brazil's plan to grow jobs in a 'low-carbon economy'

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Farmer fined over rainforest destruction

A famer operating in the Amazon rainforest has been fined 6.15 million dollars (£4 million) for illegally clearing large parts of the tropical forest, it has been reported.
Amazon farmer hit with fine over illegal deforestation

According to a G1 report cited on Times Live, the unnamed farmer in the Brazilian region of Mato Grosso was fined after they were found to have cleared more than 2,230 hectares of land. The news source noted that the area of the Amazon is well known for clearing by fire.

The area the farmer is said to have illegally cleared is near to the Xingu National Park nature reserve, some 500 kilometres from the Mato Gross capital Cuiaba.

As well as this, another five farmers were given heavy fines over illegal tree felling, the source reported.

Illegal clearing is one of the biggest threats facing the world's tropical forests and despite strict guidelines restricting it in many rainforest nations, illegal deforestation continues.

Read more:

Rainforest: Big business leaves big forest footprints

Consumers around the globe are not aware that they are "eating" rainforests, says Andrew Mitchell.

In this week's Green Room, he explains how many every-day purchases are driving the destruction of the vital tropical ecosystems.

Burning tropical forests drives global warming faster than the world's entire transport sector; there will be no solution to climate change without stopping deforestation

When was the last time you had a "rainforest picnic"? Or even, perhaps, an "all-day Amazon breakfast"?

Next time you are in a supermarket picking up a chicken sandwich for lunch, or fancy tucking in to a hearty breakfast of eggs, sausage and bacon before setting off for work, spare a thought for the Amazon.

A new report by Forest Footprint Disclosure reveals for the first time how global business is driving rainforests to destruction in order to provide things for you and me to eat.

But it does also reveal what companies are doing to try to lighten their forest footprint. Sadly, however, the answer is: not much, at least not yet.

Consumers "eat" rainforests each day - in the form of beef-burgers, bacon and beauty products - but without knowing it.

The delivery mechanism is a global supply chain with its feet in the forests and its hands in the till.

Read More

Amazon deforestation 'record low'

Brazil's disappearing rainforests have been a concern for decades

The rate of deforestation in the Amazon has dropped by 45% and is the lowest on record since monitoring began 21 years ago, Brazil's government says.

According to the latest annual figures, just over 7,000 sq km was destroyed between July 2008 and August 2009.

The drop is welcome news for the government in advance of the Copenhagen summit on climate change.

But Greenpeace says there is still too much deforestation and the government's targets are not ambitious enough.

According to the Brazilian space agency, which monitors deforestation in the Amazon, the annual rate of destruction fell by 45%.

Green credentials

Welcoming the news, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva described the drop in the level of deforestation as "extraordinary".

He said climate change was the most challenging issue the world was facing.

Read more:

Brazilian president to cut deforestation

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, will offer to reduce the pace of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest by 80% at this year's climate talks in Copenhagen.

Mr Lula said he would make the pledge at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which is due to take place this December in the Danish capital.

He told listeners of his Coffee with the President weekly radio programme that he foresees making this reduction by 2020 amounting to 4.8 billion fewer tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

However, Mr Lula added that with respect to global warming, the responsibility of rich countries is much greater than that of emerging ones.

"We have to draw a line between rich countries, which have a had an industrial policy in place for more than 150 years, and the poor ones which only now are beginning to develop," he said.

The Amazon rainforest is the largest in the world and is the source of one-fifth of all free-flowing fresh water on earth.

According to the WWF, if deforestation continues at its present rate 55 per cent of the Amazon will have disappeared by 2030.

http://www.sidewaysnews.com/environment-nature/brazilian-president-cut-deforestation

Brazil vows to slow deforestation

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says he will offer to reduce the pace of deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest by 80 per cent by 2020 when he attends December's global climate talks in Copenhagen.

Lula said his pledge will come during high-stakes talks in the Danish capital that aim to push 192 nations towards a climate deal to succeed the landmark Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

"We're in the process of preparing our proposal for Copenhagen," he said on his weekly radio program overnight.

"I foresee that by 2020 we will be able to reduce deforestation by 80 per cent, in other words we will emit some 4.8 billion fewer tonnes of carbon dioxide gas," Lula said during his Coffee with the President program.

Brazil's rainforest, the largest on Earth, is shrinking at the rate of some 12,000 square kilometres per year because of deforestation.

Lula said he will also demand in Copenhagen that industrialised countries pay their fair share of the costs of reducing greenhouse gases.

Proposals offered by developed countries should not only cover "initiatives to reduce their emissions, but all the other harm they already have inflicted on the planet", the Brazilian leader said.

"We have to draw a line between rich countries, which have a had an industrial policy in place for more than 150 years, and the poor ones which only now are beginning to develop," he said.

"With respect to global warming, the responsibility of the rich countries is much greater than that of emerging countries," said Lula.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26207950-23109,00.html

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon Rainforest up 157% in July

The deforestation rate in Brazil's Amazon rainforest region in July went up by 44 percent from June and 157 percent compared with June 2008, a Brazilian institute announced on Tuesday.

According to the National Institute of Space Research, the deforested area, which is 836.5 square km, equals half the size of Sao Paulo, the largest city in South America.

Para state in the north of the country registered the highest deforestation in July with 577 square km, almost 70 percent of the total deforested area.

During the January-July period of this year, the accumulated deforestation area reached 1,958 square km, down 60 percent from the same period in 2008.


http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-09/02/content_11983156.htm

Shallow clouds track deforestation

Shallow clouds tend to form over deforested areas of the Amazon while deep clouds are more prevalent above the remaining forest. Now researchers from the US and Brazil have studied the mechanism behind this phenomenon and found that the mix of forested and deforested patches in damaged areas causes local atmospheric circulations that affect cloud distribution.

"The radiosonde data prepared by my collaborators made it possible to directly study the environmental conditions under which shallow and deep clouds occurred," Jingfeng Wang of MIT told environmentalresearchweb. "In fact, we have refuted several initial thoughts on the possible explanations of the observed cloud patterns as the research progressed."

Wang and colleagues believe they have assembled by far the most direct evidence that local atmospheric circulations driven by the inhomogeneous land cover due to deforestation in the Amazon basin are responsible for the distributions of clouds. "A common explanation would be that more active shallow clouds over the deforested area were caused by the boundary layer turbulence, which is more intensive due to stronger surface heating over grassy surfaces than over dense intact forest," he said. "We found this is not true in the deforested Amazon."

Together with colleagues at MIT, the University of Michigan, the Instituto Nacional Presquisa Espaciais, Brazil, and the University of California, Irvine, Wang studied an area of rainforest in the Rondonia, Brazil using radiosonde data taken in 1994 as part of the Rondonian Boundary Layer Experiment (RBLE-3) under the Anglo-Brazilian Amazonian Climate Observation Study (ABRACOS). Cloud information was provided by ivisible and infrared images from two NOAA satellites – GOES-7 and GOES-8. The area of deforestation studied contained a typical “fishbone” pattern of strips of tree removal.

While partially deforested areas exhibited a less unstable atmosphere than the neighbouring dense forest, the team found that shallow clouds formed over them. The researchers believe this was most likely due to mesoscale circulations developing from the contrast between forested and unforested strips and acting as a lifting mechanism. Boundary layer turbulence appeared to play a secondary role. Over the forest, a lack of lifting mechanism suppressed convective activity even though the atmosphere was more unstable. Those shallow clouds that did develop over forested areas eventually became deep clouds.

"The Amazon rainforest has some resilience in response to human-related disturbances - deforestation, fire etc. – but only to a certain degree," said Wang. "The clouds-landcover interplay may provide a negative feedback mechanism to restore the lost forest as long as the forest over a large domain is not completely removed. Whether the Amazon ecosystem is able to recover from the deforestation, in my opinion, depends on the size and shape of the land-cover caused by the deforestation."

Wang reckons this study is a step towards finding the threshold for deforestation beyond which the "green-ocean" of the Amazon – so-called because of the similarity in behaviour of the atmosphere above it to that above the oceans – will collapse.

Now the researchers plan to study other areas in the Amazon where deforestation has created much more uniform land cover to find out whether mesoscale circulations still play a major role in cloud climatology.

http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/research/38055

GDAE explores deforestation in Amazon

A Tufts research institute earlier this month introduced a program to examine agricultural-induced deforestation in the Amazon Basin.

Tufts' Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE) will explore the consequences of the globalized soybean industry on the developing Amazon region in its new initiative: Trade, Agricultural Expansion and Climate Change in the Amazon Basin.

The soybean industry is now one of the main forces pushing back the frontiers of the Amazon. The GDAE project seeks to model and eventually predict where deforestation is likely to occur, on what scale and how the market will respond to the rising industry.

"The project puts its finger on the most difficult issue that all emerging and emerged large and small economies face, which is how you can grow, compete globally and preserve the natural resources the whole planet needs," said Julia Sweig, the Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow and director of Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, located in Washington, D.C.

Maria del Carmen Vera-Diaz, a senior research fellow for the GDAE, is heading the project. Vera-Diaz, who spent several years in Brazil, witnessed the transformation of wilderness to cultured fields through her experiences with local farmers.

"You get an idea of how the farmer thinks, works," she said. "Most of the people have very small incomes." Though they are surrounded by the rich resources of the Amazon, farmers increasingly find the profits from deforestation enticing, Vera-Diaz said.

"The tension between natural preservation and stewardship and global competition is what the project is looking at," Sweig said.

Vera-Diaz plans to explore the changing ecology of the region through analysis methods focusing on the effects of transnational companies, regional politics, international trade agreements, climate change and geological attributes.

"[This] research goes straight to the heart of the issues with very creative and sophisticated modeling and mapping techniques. [It is] very much on the cutting edge," Tim Wise, the director of the GDAE's Research and Policy Program, said.

Vera-Diaz noted that the research will be valuable to policymakers. "They can use this kind of analysis to avoid deforestation, war [and] evicting indigenous peoples," she said. "You can take this as a guide to future investments."

Vera-Diaz's prior research on the topic focuses on the consequences of trading rainforest land for farmland. She considers these tradeoffs to be shortsighted.

In her first GDAE paper, to be published in the coming weeks, she illustrates the blind spot in some plans to support the Amazon region's transformation.

She cited a project that the Brazilian government expects will net $180 million for soybean farmers over the next 20 years. In her eyes, this logic is inaccurate since it does not take into account the harmfulness of deforestation.

"By valuing the lost forest resources, her cost-benefit shows there's actually a net loss four times greater than the supposed economic benefit," Wise said.

The GDAE aims for an ongoing project, which will eventually expanding to include different aspects of Latin American development. Currently, the GDAE is looking for funding to ensure the complete development of the program.

The GDAE is administered by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Tufts' Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1993, it explores global ecological and economic issues through multi-disciplinary approaches to research.

http://www.tuftsdaily.com/1.1487828-1.1487828

Amazon dieback could be prevented

Parts of the Amazon rainforest may face less serious droughts this century than previously feared, according to new research.

Climate models don't yet quite capture some of the peculiar features of the geography of South America.

Scientists compared 19 global climate models with actual rainfall measurements for the region.

The team found that the models tended to underestimate current rainfall levels because the models don't quite capture some of the peculiar features of the geography of South America. The models also 'vary greatly in their projections of future climate change in Amazonia,' according to the paper.

Some climate models have predicted that parts of the eastern Amazon will turn from rainforest to savannah this century. The new findings, with corrected rainfall patterns, suggest the region may move from year-long wet seasons to wet and dry seasons. This will result in a seasonal forest - not quite a rainforest, but, crucially, not savannah.

Western Amazonia could remain a rainforest, while the findings suggest north and south Amazonia may dry out.

The drier areas will become more susceptible to fires, which are rare at present, say the researchers in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Fire associated with deforestation, logging and fragmentation may trigger a transition of these seasonal forests to what is described as 'fire-dominated, low biomass forests.'
Map of the Amazon

The Amazon is biologically the richest region on Earth, hosting a quarter of global species.

Tipping point

In 2008, the same journal published another paper entitled 'Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system.' The paper listed Amazon rainforest dieback as one of nine policy-relevant tipping points that could happen this century. The paper warned that climate change may not be linear: as carbon dioxide levels gradually rise, the climate is some parts of the world may switch state more rapidly. The Amazon ranked eight on the list.

The new research suggests eastern Amazonia could escape this fate if deforestation and fires are controlled effectively. 'Such intervention may be enough to navigate eastern Amazonia away from a possible ''tipping point,'' beyond which extensive rainforest would become unsustainable,' says the paper.

Lead author Professor Yadvinder Malhi from the University of Oxford says, 'Active forest protection in the Amazon forest region can help the region adapt to climate change and minimise the risk of a dieback. This strategy will also contribute to the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.'

Surveying rain forest clearance

Controlling deforestation and fires may have a more far-reaching impact on the fate of the Amazon than previously thought.

'Even with sufficient funds and willpower, implementing biosphere management on such a scale will be a huge challenge. Brazil has recently announced an ambitious plan for slowing down Amazonian deforestation and deserves full international support. It will be critically important to understand the local and national social, political and economic context if this strategy is to succeed,' he adds.

Rainfall predictions remain a major challenge for climate models, which is why reducing uncertainty is a key priority for the research community. In February, the Natural Environment Research Council launched the £10 million Changing Water Cycle programme.

The Amazon is biologically the richest region on Earth, hosting a quarter of global species.

The research was led by Oxford University in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the University of Sheffield, and the Met Office Hadley Centre.

http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=328

Rainforest report

Logging, clearing decline for now

Here is one positive result of a slow global economy: Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest slowed in the latter part of 2008.

Satellite images show that 245 square miles of forest disappeared in the last five months of 2008. That does not seem like such a good thing until it is compared with 2007, when 1,325 square miles vanished during the same period. That's a decrease of 82 percent.

Brazil Environment Minister Carlos Minc said that government policies slowed deforestation. Brazil has become more vigilant in protecting the rainforest and punitive in its policies. Farmers, ranchers and loggers who clear land illegally no longer are eligible for government loans, for instance.

But environmentalists point to another reason: the global financial crisis has reduced demand for wood, soy and cattle. Thus, there is less call to clear land.

Amazon trees cut by loggers or burned release 400 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.

Such impact on the global climate should concern all of us. Whether Brazil's government is actually slowing the assault on the rainforest should be apparent once business picks up.

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090124/OPINION01/301249964

As Amazon Rainforest Destruction Continues, Brazil Pledges Drastic Action

Amazon deforestationIn the wake of a distressing report about accelerating deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, the Brazilian government has vowed to reduce the rate of land-clearing by 70 percent over the next decade. The government was called upon to take drastic steps after a report declared that deforestation increased this year for the first time since 2004 as surging prices for cattle and soybeans led ranchers to seek farm land in the forest. The world’s largest rainforest lost 11,968 square kilometers (4,600 square miles), an area about 10 times as large as New York City, in the 12 months through July 2008 [Bloomberg].

Tasso Azevedo, head of the Brazilian government’s forestry service said: “We can now adopt targets because we now have the instruments to implement them.” He was referring to a new Amazon fund, where foreign nations are being encouraged by Brazil to contribute financially to the conservation of the vast Amazon region [BBC News]. Norway has already agreed to contribute $1 billion to the fund over the next seven years on the condition that deforestation rates continue to drop during that time; however, Norway’s pledge is hoped to be just the beginning. The Brazilian government wants to raise $21 billion in donations to finance conservation and sustainable development projects, arguing that since the whole world receives climate benefits from an intact Amazon rainforest, the whole world should subsidize it.

The Brazilian government maintains that the figures for 2008 would have been still worse without its new crackdown on illegal logging and land clearing, and points to its policy of confiscating soy and beef products from rogue ranchers as proof that the government takes the issue quite seriously. But critics say the environmental protection agency, IBAMA, is understaffed and underfunded to face thousands of often heavily armed loggers and ranchers…. Last week a crowd in Paragominas, a town that depends heavily on logging, ransacked IBAMA offices, torched its garage and used a tractor to break down the entrance of the hotel where its agents stayed. Twelve trucks loaded with confiscated wood were stolen [New Scientist].

Brazil’s announcement of the new conservation targets coincides with the opening of a United Nations conference on global warming. Amazon destruction makes Brazil one of the top emitters of greenhouse gases because trees release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when they’re cut down or burned [Reuters]. If the rainforest remains intact, however, the ecosystem can serve as a valuable “carbon sink” that can take up and sequester carbon dioxide emissions from the rest of the world.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2008/12/02/as-amazon-rainforest-destruction-continues-brazil-pledges-drastic-action/

Hackers Responsible for Rainforest Destruction

By illegally securing transport permits for logging companies

Greenpeace announced that over 200 people and 100 logging and charcoal companies faced prosecution in Brazil for their involvement in a large-scale fraud case. The companies allegedly contracted hacking groups that broke into the government's network and altered the records in order to allow for excessive deforestation.

In their attempt to regulate deforestation, authorities from the Brazilian state of Pará introduced an online timber transport tracking system a few years ago. The idea behind the project is to control the amount of timber that can be legally transported out of the state by each company. If a company reaches its maximum allowed quota, the state stops issuing transport permits for it.

When this system was first introduced, a lot of experts and environmental groups warned that it was exposed to possible fraud in multiple ways and unfortunately their fears came true when, in April 2007, the local police started investigating hacking activity that targeted the online system. Their efforts concluded that hackers had penetrated the network and altered records in order to authorize multiple companies to secure more transport permits than allowed. The fraud was estimated at over $830 million.

The investigators initially arrested 30 individuals suspected of orchestrating the scam, but the current list of involved parties amounts to 202 people and 107 companies. "Almost half of the companies involved in this scam have other law suits pending for environmental crimes or the use of slave labour, amongst other things,” pointed out Federal Prosecutor Daniel Avelino.

"By hacking into the permit system, these companies have made their timber shipments appear legal and compliant with the forest management plans,” Greenpeace campaigner André Muggiati, explained how the scheme worked. “And this is only the tip of the iceberg, because the same computer system is also used in two other Brazilian states," he added.

Greenpeace warns that the Brazilian government is not only having problems regulating the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, but it actually plans to increase it by allowing every land owner to cut down trees from as much as 50 percent of their property. This means more than double of what the current law allows.

Much like Russia, China and Ukraine, Brazil is also the home of a large number of organized cyber-criminal groups that operate at global level, and which the country's government generally fails to dismantle and prosecute.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Hackers-Responsible-for-Rainforest-Destruction-99999.shtml

Brazil announces plan to slash rainforest destruction

The Brazilian government yesterday announced a 10-year plan to slash rainforest destruction by 70% days after new figures showed Amazon deforestation was again on the rise.

Officials said the targets, which are part of Brazil's Climate Change Plan, were the first time the Brazilian government had set specific goals for deforestation reduction.

The plan outlines a 40% reduction of deforestation until 2009, a 30% reduction between 2010 and 2013 and a further 30% cut between 2014 and 2017.

"The target is that in 2017 deforestation will be [reduced to] 5,000 sq km," environment minister Carlos Minc told reporters in Brazil's capital, Brasilia.

He said the slowdown in deforestation would mean a 72% reduction in climate changing carbon emissions. That, he added, "is an even more daring target than in England which aims for an 80% reduction but [not] until 2050."

The blueprint for deforestation reduction makes it clear that hitting the targets depends on Brazil's ability to raise funds for its fight against the loggers.

In August 2008 Brazil's government created the Amazon Fund, a mechanism for foreign governments to help pay for the protection of the world's largest tropical rainforest and combat global warming. In September Norway's government became the first to contribute to the fund, pledging $1bn (£668m).

Mr Minc said he hoped for donations of $1bn a year, in order to bankroll Brazil's campaign against deforestation.

The plans follow the release of government figures on Friday showing that deforestation rose 3.8% in the year leading up to July 2008 – the first annual increase in three years.

Satellite images captured by Brazil's Space Research Institute, Inpe, showed that 11,968 sq km of forest were cleared until July this year, up from 11,532 sq km the previous year.

Mr Minc said the rise would have been even greater had it not been for an anti-deforestation drive launched at the start of 2008. Deforestation levels had fallen in the 36 regions that suffered most deforestation in 2007 as a result of the crackdown, he said.

Known as the Arc of Fire, the crackdown has triggered violent uprisings in several Amazon towns where the economies, dependent on logging, have been badly hit.

Speaking to the Guardian earlier this year Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Brazil's minister for strategic affairs and the coordinator of its Amazon development plan, said his country needed to embark on a "revolutionary" project for the Amazon.

"We cannot preserve the Amazon without a project of development otherwise we are just playing with words," he said.

Without offering economic alternatives to logging it would be impossible to effectively combat illegal logging, he said.

"I have heard from a few foreigners the idea that the Brazilian state should actually transport the 27 million Brazilians out of the Amazon but our country is not governed by Stalin and we will not do that," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/02/forests-brazil

Brazil's endangered species list triples in size

Deforestation and illegal animal trade have done enormous damage to the species of Brazil over the last 20 years. The country's list of endangered animals now stands at 627 species -- 288% higher than the 218 species that were on the same list in 1989.

It's not clear if this is the first major revision to Brazil's endangered list since '89, but it's a significant update: 489 species were added to the list, while 79 were considered recovered enough to be dropped from the list.

Environment Minister Carlos Minc said "Industry is expanding, agriculture is expanding, people are occupying protected areas and our conservation units do not have the protection needed," but "We'll fight to remove the largest number of species possible from that list."

Minc reported that 90% of Brazil's Atlantic rainforest, where most of these newly endangered species reside, has been chopped down. More than 232,000 square miles of Brazilian forest have been destroyed since 1970.

Minc took over as Environment Minister earlier this year, after his predecessor, Marina Silva, resigned, citing government "stagnation" in the fight against deforestation.

http://www.plentymag.com/

Truth Behind The Dead Forests

Carbon is the chemical element at the root of life on earth. Indeed, all living things are essentially made of the stuff.

Humans and animals eat carbon-based foods and exhale some of the carbon they contain as CO2, a gaseous mix of carbon and oxygen.

Trees and plants breathe in the CO2 and use energy from the sun to separate the carbon from the oxygen.

The carbon is used to build their trunks, stalks and foliage, and the oxygen is released to be breathed in by humans and animals. And so on...

When a tree or plant eventually dies, it will rot or be burned or eaten, and most of its stored carbon is returned to the atmosphere as CO2.

The rest decomposes into the ground to become part of the soil.

This neat solar-powered process is known as the carbon cycle. It's a cycle that makes life possible and also affects the temperature of the planet, because the more CO2 there is in the air, the more of the sun's energy gets trapped in the atmosphere.

Humans are disrupting this cycle in two ways. First, we're burning oil, coal and gas, which are made of carbon soaked up by plants from previous eras.

Second, we're destroying forests to clear farmland or collect firewood and timber. When we do this, much of the carbon stored in the trees and soils over the centuries is released back into the atmosphere. In addition, the forest stops absorbing CO2 from the air. (If the cleared land is used to ranch cattle, there will be a further impact, as cows belch up large volumes of globe-warming methane.)

Deforestation is sometimes ignored in the global warming debate but it accounts for almost a fifth of the human impact on the climate. That's more than all the world's cars and planes, more than the entire USA, or the whole of China.

Tropical deforestation - the destruction of rainforests - accounts for the majority of these emissions. That's partly because regions like Europe cleared many of their forests centuries ago. But it's also because the sun-soaked forests of the tropics are more effective carbon stores than those in temperate areas.

For rainforest nations such as Brazil and Indonesia, carbon emissions from deforestation can outstrip those from fossil fuels. And that's not to mention the massive impact on biodiversity - the rainforests are home to more than half the world's species, from irradescent butterflies to awe-inspiring beasts such as gorillas and jaguars.

The challenge is finding a way to stop this destruction. If we don't, then the world might not be able to avoid runaway global warming - even if we succeed in slashing our fossil fuel use.

Ironically, one of the 'feedback loops' that scientists fear could cause such runaway warming is the potential collapse of rainforest ecosystems. The concern is that, as the planet warms, precipitation patterns could change, taking the rain out of the rainforests. If this happened for long enough, the forest could die off - killing countless species and releasing even larger volumes of CO2 into the atmosphere.

The solution to deforestation will probably be based on western nations paying tropical countries to protect their forests - a rent for their 'carbon services', as it were, and an alternative to income from logging and farming. There are many details to work out but hopefully new and exciting projects in Peru will help the world to see that it can be done.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Climate-Change-Expert-Duncan-Clarke-On-Tackling-Deforestation-And-Carbon-Emissions/Article/200807115023843?lpos=World%2BNews_0&lid=ARTICLE_15023843_Climate%2BChange%2BExpert%2BDuncan%2BClarke%2BOn%2BTackling%2BDeforestation%2BAnd%2BCarbon%2BEmissions%2B

Swedish tycoon's firm fined for destroying Amazon rainforest

Rio de Janeiro, June 8 (IANS) Brazilian authorities have slapped a fine of $234 million on a company owned by Swedish tycoon Johan Eliasch for illegally felling 230,000 trees in the Amazon rainforest, Spain's EFE news agency reported Sunday.

London-based Eliasch is being investigated in Brazil by the Abin state intelligence agency for allegedly illegally buying large swathes of the rainforest and grassland in order to commercially exploit it through a company known as Gethal Amazonas S.A., the news agency quoted officials as saying.

Eliasch has also been accused of owning the property without valid certification, Brazil's official Agencia Brasil news agency reported.

The fine levied Saturday by environmental agency Ibama was for illegal "extraction, transport and sale" of close to 700,000 cubic meters of lumber equivalent to 230,000 trees.

Gethal Amazonas has been given 20 days to appeal the fine, Ibama said.

Brazil's agrarian reform body, or Incra, has registered 33,000 properties acquired by foreigners covering a total of 5.5 million hectares in the Amazon.

The announcement of the fine comes as the Brazilian government is seeking to reaffirm its commitment to protecting the rainforest.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's administration has come under fire by environmentalists following the release of official statistics showing that deforestation of the Amazon has been accelerating.

The Amazon rainforest in the northern part of South America is the biggest forest in the world and is also the last big space covered with tropical plants and animals.

It is shared by nine countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, French Guiana and Guiana.

http://mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=local&newsid=80489#

Indigenous peoples hardest hit by climate change describe impacts

Biofuel production, renewable energy expansion, other mitigation measures uprooting indigenous peoples in many regions

Indigenous peoples have contributed the least to world greenhouse gas emissions and have the smallest ecological footprints on Earth. Yet they suffer the worst impacts not only of climate change, but also from some of the international mitigation measures being taken, according to organizers of a United Nations University co-hosted meeting April 3 in Darwin, Australia.

Impacts of climate change on indigenous people worldwide include:

* In tropical and sub-tropical areas, an increase in diseases associated with higher temperatures and vector-borne and water-borne diseases like cholera, malaria and dengue fever;

* Worsening drought conditions and desertification, leading to more forest fires that disrupt subsistence agriculture, hunting and gathering livelihoods, as well as serious biodiversity loss;

* Distinct changes in the seasonal appearance of birds, the blooming of flowers, etc. These now occur earlier or are decoupled from the customary season or weather patterns;

* In arid and semi-arid lands: excessive rainfall and prolonged droughts, resulting in dust storms that damage grasslands, seedlings, other crops and livestock;

* In the Arctic, stronger waves, thawing permafrost and melting mountain glaciers and sea-ice, bringing coastal and riverbank erosion;

* Smaller animal populations and the introduction of new marine species due to changing animal travel and migration routes;

* In Boreal Forests, new types of insects and longer-living endemic insects (e.g. spruce beetles) that destroy trees and other vegetation;

* In coastal regions and small-island states, erosion, stronger hurricanes and typhoons, leading to the loss of freshwater supplies, land, mangrove forests and dislocation (environmental refugees);

* Increasing food insecurity due to declining fish populations and coral bleaching;

* Crop damaging pest infestations (e.g. locusts, rats, spruce beetles, etc.), and increasing food costs due to competition with the demand for biofuels;

* Extreme and unprecedented cold spells resulting in health problems (e.g. hypothermia, bronchitis, and pneumonia, especially for the old and young).

As well, indigenous people point to an increase in human rights violations, displacements and conflicts due to expropriation of ancestral lands and forests for biofuel plantations (soya, sugar-cane, jatropha, oil-palm, corn, etc.), as well as for carbon sink and renewable energy projects (hydropower dams, geothermal plants), without the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous people.

Specific instances of indigenous people being harmed by climate change mitigation measures include the case of a Dutch company whose operations include planting trees and selling sequestered carbon credit to people wanting to offset their emissions caused by air travel. In March 2002, its project was certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) and from 1999 to 2002 over 7,000 hectares of land were planted in Uganda.

The Ugandan Wildlife Authority (UWA), responsible for managing all national parks, forced indigenous people to leave the area. Forced evictions continued to 2002, leading indigenous people to move to neighboring villages, caves and mosques. Over 50 people were killed in 2004.

Meanwhile, indigenous peoples in Malaysia and Indonesia have been uprooted by the aggressive expansion of oil palm plantations for biofuel production. Likewise, nuclear waste sites and hydroelectric dam-building displace indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories.

Participants in Darwin, Australia will hear first hand the impact of climate change on indigenous peoples and how they are adapting to a warming world. They will also explore factors that facilitate or obstruct the participation of indigenous peoples in international processes and deliberations related to reducing emissions and emissions trading.

Entitled the International Expert Meeting on Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples, the event is being organized by UNU's Japan-based Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) in conjunction with the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNFII) and the North Australia Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA).

(Papers / documentation are available online at www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/EGM_CS08.html)

Specific objectives of the meeting:

* Exchange information on the effects of climate change;

* Draw attention to the impact of climate change on indigenous peoples, their livelihoods, cultural practices and lands and natural resources;

* Identify options and advance plans to address migration and many other issues faced by indigenous peoples due to climate change;

* Identify international institutions interested in partnership with indigenous peoples;

* Highlight good practice models; and

* Identify information gaps and prescribe a way forward.

The meeting's final report will be to be submitted to the seventh session of the UNPFII.

'Indigenous peoples regard themselves as the mercury in the world's climate change barometer,' says UNU-IAS Director A.H. Zakri. 'They have not benefited, in any significant manner, from climate change-related funding, whether for adaptation and mitigation, nor from emissions trading schemes. The mitigation measures for climate change are very much market-driven and the non-market measures have not been given much attention. We hope this meeting will help address that imbalance.'

Adds Dr. Zakri: 'Most indigenous peoples practice sustainable carbon neutral lives or even carbon negative life ways which has sustained them over thousands of years.

'There are at least 370 million indigenous people throughout the world living relatively neutral or even carbon negative life styles. While not a large number when compared to the world population of 6 billion, it does have a substantial impact in lowering emissions. Compare this to the impact of the United States, with a population of 300 million -- only 4% of the world's population ' but responsible for about 25 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions.'

The meeting will also hear how indigenous people are adapting to changing climate conditions.

In Bangladesh, for example, villagers are creating floating vegetable gardens to protect their livelihoods from flooding. In Vietnam, communities are helping to plant dense mangroves along the coast to diffuse tropical-storm waves.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/unu-iph040108.php

Malthus' Theories Revisited As Global Grain Prices Rise

Sustained strength for grain prices has ignited worries on a global scale that food production may finally be reaching the upper limits of capacity and that Earth's abundance will no longer be enough for human consumption.

With world grain prices soaring to unprecedented levels, a familiar name is starting to make the rounds again after some 200 years on the shelf – Thomas Malthus.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the English demographer predicted that the exponential growth of the human population would outstrip our ability to increase food production. The result: widespread famine will cause the Earth's population to plunge.

The trillion-dollar question is whether global food output can be raised to satisfy the soaring demand and, if so, where will it come from? Some see the Earth reaching the limits of productivity, while others see hope in the use of technology to increase yields and farmable area.

"What we have on our hands today is a global food crisis...what we are talking about is classic Malthusian economics in the form of population gains beginning to outstrip the available food supply," Merrill Lynch said in a February report.

However, others see the growing chorus of alarm as overblown.

"There's certainly no reason to go into a panic mode here and to talk about Malthusian economics right now," said Gerald Bange, chairman of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's World Agricultural Outlook Board.

"We've seen some very large leaps (in production) in the past and I suspect we'll see some very large leaps in the future. Our technological abilities have not been tapped for sure," Bange said.

The price of agricultural commodities such as wheat, corn and soybeans have surged over the past two years, fed by a perfect storm of soaring demand from growing consumption in emerging markets like India and China, surging use of grains for biofuel production and climatic problems that cut production. In a little over a year, benchmark wheat prices have risen 100%, soybeans are up 75% and corn prices are up 49%. This comes as global supplies for grains have reached multi-decade lows.

While the gains are partially explained by the declining value of the U.S. dollar, in which reference prices for grains are fixed, economist point to a real increase in demand well beyond the currency effect. The sharply higher prices have already translated to real hunger in the world's poor.

Countries are scrambling to ensure supplies and shield their populations from the rising prices. Traditional agricultural exporters such as Argentina and Russia have imposed export limits and heavy export taxes to stem domestic inflation in food prices. Riots broke out in Mexico last year over the cost of tortillas, prompting the government to cap prices. A stampede over cheap cooking oil in China left three people dead and prompted the government to put limits on grocery prices.

Worldwide, 36 countries are currently facing food crises, according to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization.

"The world is entering a new era of hunger at a time when the absolute number of hungry people was already was growing," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program.

The hunger comes despite increasing production across the globe. World grain production is expected at 2.47 billion metric tons for the 2007-08 crop year, up 40 million tons from the previous year, according to the USDA.

"We'll continue to see expanding production, but there are limits to that growth," said Mark Rosegrant, director of the environment and production technology division of the International Food Policy Research Institute.

In the developed world, the pace of yield increases has slowed, dropping from about 2%-3% a year during the 'green revolution' to about 1% a year, Rosegrant said. The 'green revolution' refers to a period of soaring agricultural output achieved midway through the last century. "Prices will continue to rise over the next years," he added.

"We can get a little more output, but not much...there is no easy way to expand," said Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute.

There is at most 10% more currently feasible farmland available to expand production, with most of that area available in Brazil and Sub-Saharan Africa, said Robert Thompson, professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

However the myriad problems plaguing African countries with the potential to increase farmland is stifling the investment and development necessary, Thompson said.

Brazil is expected to greatly increase the amount of soybeans it grows next season, but the resulting deforestation is raising alarm.

Brazil's Environment Ministry warned in January that up to 7,000 square kilometers of rain forest went under the ax during the second half of 2007. If that pace keeps up, the country is expected to lose 15,000 square kilometers during the year ending in August, up 34% from the previous 12-month period.

"Pressures to increase deforestation to up crop output will increase, with the Amazon Rainforest under particular threat," said the Earth Policy Institute's Brown. But such deforestation brings other, long-term threats. "If the (Amazon) rainforest is gone, the result will be more droughts in the south of Brazil and north of Argentina," Brown said.

Water shortages are also generating concern, with increasing dryness expected due to climate change posing another threat to our ability to feed ourselves. "About 2020 many farming areas are likely to be hit by drought" due to climate change, the International Food Policy Research Institute's Rosegrant said.

"Water shortages are increasingly going to limit increasing agricultural output, with aquifers in the U.S., China and across the world being depleted," Brown said.

Faced with limited area and water limitations, many see the increased use of biotechnology as the only way to meet the intense demand for food.

Seed companies are rushing to use genetically modified plant strains to increase resistance to pests, drought and poor soil conditions and are optimistic that their technology holds the key.

"If you look at the last 40 years, yields have doubled (in the U.S.), now we're yielding about 150 bushels per acre in corn. There are many who believe that the opportunity to (again) double this average yield will take less than 40 years," Monsanto (MON) Chief Executive Hugh Grant said at a recent symposium.

"We have just begun to tap the tools of genetic engineering and biotechnology," said the University of Chicago's Thompson.

However, private biotechnology companies cannot be relied upon to fully address the world's food needs, and public-sector spending is desperately needed to develop the new crops that can meet the food needs of the developing world, Thompson said.

"In the low-income countries it doesn't pay the big multinational biotech companies to invest to solve the local problems and the high income countries' foreign aid programs are not investing much in agricultural research," he said.

"If we don't allow the tools of genetic engineering to help solve this problem, then I think we may be in trouble in the 21st century -- Malthus would have a far higher likelihood of being right," Thompson said.

http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.asp?contentid=210944

Brazil town at centre of logging crackdown

A remote Amazon logging town has become the turbulent starting point for a major crackdown by Brazilian government authorities, aimed at preventing a new wave of deforestation.

Brazil to act over acceleration in deforestation

Half of Amazon could be gone by 2030

Blood crop: Violent side of Brazil's soya industry

Sawmill workers have been queuing for food handouts in Tailândia, after logging operations were halted by the arrival of hundreds of police and troops, in an operation codenamed Arc of Fire.

With the seizure of more than 500 truckloads of illegally-felled timber, this is just the beginning of an anti-deforestation drive which is anticipated to last several months.

It follows the release of new figures in January revealing that rainforest loss in the Brazilian Amazon had accelerated in late 2007, following three years of declining figures.

The challenge of controlling illegal activity in the region has been further revealed in a new report, showing that an area of the Amazon more than six times the size of the UK is covered by questionable land claims - in other words, nobody knows to whom it belongs.

The swoop on Tailândia began last week, with the confiscation by federal environment agency officials of around 13,000 cubic metres of timber, worth about £1.5m, said to have been felled illegally.

The action brought hundreds of local people onto the streets in protest, as the town is virtually entirely dependent for employment on around 90 timber companies operating in the area. At one point, several officials were held hostage and the main highway through the town blockaded.

The arrival of around 200 heavily-armed police and special troops this week has enabled the enforcement effort to continue unimpeded, with officials engaged in a complex paper trail to determine just how much of the wood is illegal.

The vast majority was destined for the internal Brazilian market, with less than 20 per cent of wood from the Amazon going for export.

Tailândia lies in a notoriously lawless part of the state of Pará in the Eastern Amazon, and has a population of 67,000. It grew up around the activities of loggers some 40 years ago, and is estimated to have lost about 60 per cent of its original forest cover.

The wood is used not just for timber, but also for charcoal made in hundreds of small kilns to supply the iron and steelmaking industry.

With some 6,000 local people already facing unemployment as a result of the crackdown, the authorities face a major challenge finding alternative jobs for a town that largely owes its existence to illegal exploitation of the rainforest.

However, Tailândia is being used as a demonstration by the government that it is serious about clamping down on deforestation in areas that have been virtually abandoned by the state.

Operation Arc of Fire is set to progress through the other 35 municipalities identified by the government as the problem areas for deforestation, and where special measures have been introduced to try to bring illegal activity under control.

One key step is a requirement for all large landowners in these areas to re-register their properties, in an attempt to end the endemic problem of fraudulent property claims that are often used to justify clearing rainforest for cattle pasture.

But the scale of the problem is revealed in a new report published by a respected Brazilian research organisation, the Institute for Man and the Environment in the Amazon (Imazon).

It estimates that despite three recent attempts to regularise land holdings in the Amazon, some 1.5 million square kilometres, or more than six times the land area of the UK, is under uncertain ownership.

"The federal government still does not know who owns a large part of the Amazon," the report concludes.

The lead author of the report, Paulo Barreto of Imazon, said the ability of ranchers to move freely into public forest land using false property claims made it cheaper for them to deforest new areas for grazing, rather than increase productivity in already-cleared areas.

"Without clear identification of who is owner of the land, the government has difficulty applying penalties against those who carry out illegal deforestation," said Mr Barreto.

Another measure announced this week as part of the crackdown following the deforestation upturn is a new rule designed to deny finance to those destroying the forest. From July, all banks operating in the Amazon will be forced to demand documents showing that land is legally held and that environmental laws have been followed, before offering credit to farmers and other rural businesses.

The test of whether these measures have been effective will come later this year when the annual deforestation figures, covering the period from August to July, are published. The government is desperately hoping it will show a continued fall from last year's figure of 11,000 square kilometres, the lowest since 1992.

With the January 24th announcement that some 7,000 square kilometres of rainforest had already been lost by December, it is going to be a major challenge to keep Amazon deforestation on a downward trend.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/06/eabrazil106.xml