Apex-Brasil

Gouda cheese, wienerschnitzel and the Amazon

July 26, 2010

Consider this thought experiment: Given the importance of the Amazon rainforest to the effort to curb climate change, and the potential value of the thousands of species that live only in the Amazon, and the vastness of the place (See Just how big is the Amazon?), what benefit, if any, can justify destroying a few trees, or a few thousand trees, or even a few thousand square miles of trees? Feeding a hungry family? Providing energy, at a lower cost to a nearby city? Making meat or cheese cheaper in the U.S. or Europe?

These are obviously not theoretical questions. They’re the kinds of questions facing the Brazilian government, and they are relevant to the rest of us because decision we make—about the government leaders we elect or about what to eat for dinner—can have an impact on the Amazon. These are also the kinds of questions that arose frequently during my six-day tour of Brazil last week. The government-organized trip for international reporters focused on the Amazon.

The good news is that the rate of deforestation of the Amazon is decreasing, and dramatically. Six years ago, 27.7 square kilometers of trees were cut down—that’s about 10,700 square miles, an area bigger than the state of Massachusetts. Last year, about 7,000 sq. km. were cut down, and this year the pace is slowing further, satellite photos show.

Americo Ribeiro Tunes, who’s in charge of protecting the forest for IBAMA, Brazil’s equivalent of the EPA, told us: “Brazil is on the verge of a major victory over deforestation.”

Well, maybe, but, along with stepped-up law enforcement, a big reason for the decline in deforestation is the global recession, which drove prices down timber, soy and beef, easing pressures on the Amazon. A strong global economy recovery will likely renew the pressure to destroy forest land to raise cattle or harvest timber, no matter what the laws say.

Besides, there’s plenty of opportunity for legal deforestation of the Amazon. Today, landowners are permitted to cut down up to 20% of their land under Brazil’s Forest Code;  proposed revisions would raise that to 50%. Government-approved plans for industrial development include the controversial Belo Monte Dam, which would be the world’s third largest dame, and the potential expansion of the Urucu Oil Province, which we visited (See Deep in the Amazon, learning to like fossil fuels) also pose a threat. Revenues from Amazon development can be used to promote social and education programs in Brazil, the government says.

This may—may—justify drilling for more oil and gas at Urucu. The Petrobras project has done minimal damage to the rainforest, while providing tax benefits to the region, as well as cleaner energy and cheaper electricity to Manaus, where 2 million people live.

Similar arguments can be made for hydroelectric projects like the Belo Monte Dam, which has been in the works for years. The environmental costs are significant, Reuters reports:

The 6 kilometre-long (3.75 miles) dam will displace 30,000 river dwellers, partially dry up a 100-kilometer (62.5 mile) stretch of the Xingu, and flood a 190-square-mile (500-sq-km) area three times the size of Washington D.C.

And the benefits? According to Amazon Watch, which opposes the project,

The electricity may be exported in large part to eight industrial mining and construction companies: Alcoa, ArcelorMittal, Camargo Corrêa, CSN, Gerdau, Samarco, Vale, and Votorantim.

Without knowing more about what these companies do, how much they pay in taxes and how many people they employ, it’s hard to whether the dam will be worth building. In an interview last week, Brazil’s energy minister, Marcio Zimmerman, said the dam is valuable because it’s a source of carbon-free electricity.

As an outsider, and someone just starting to learn about Brazil, I’m not prepared to offer an opinion about these big infrastructure projects. It turns out, though, that while they attract a lot of controversy–movie director James Cameron of Avatar fame last spring joined a protest against Belo Monte–they aren’t the major cause of deforestation. Cattle ranching is, by far, No. 1:

Which brings us to gouda cheese and weinerschnitzel. The oil and gas from Urucu are necessities, so long as we drive cars and fly in airplanes. Likewise electricity–energy is a driver of economic growth, jobs and wealth. But the soy plantations and cattle ranches? They occupy a great deal of land, employ relatively few people and produce animal feed and meat, much of which is shipped to Europe at the U.S.  Ocean-going ships filled with soy, for example, travel from the Amazon port of Santerem to Amsterdam, to feed Dutch and German cows. Meat’s a luxury–millions of people can, and do, live without it.

Destroying rainforests to make cheese, veal and burgers seems like a bad trade-off. At the very least, it’s another reason to eat less meat–not that we really need one. (Among them: Meat is an inefficient and expensive way of getting calories, it contributes to heart disease and obesity, causes of animal suffering, pollutes waterways, etc.) Now that I’ve seen the Amazon, and come to understand the connection between deforestation, cattle and soy, I’m going to curb my own consumption of meat. It’s easy, and it seems like the very least we can do.

Disclosure: My week-long trip to Brazil, with a focus on the environment in the Amazon, was organized by Apex-Brasil, a government-backed agency that promotes trade and investment. It’s sponsored by Electrobras, Petrobras and Banco do Brasil.

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Just how big is the Amazon?

July 25, 2010

It’s one thing to read about the Amazon, and quite another to see it first-hand, as I did for the first time last week. Even then it’s hard to get your head around the size of the world’s largest rainforest and the world’s largest river.

Yet size is really important when talking about the Amazon.

Size is why the fate of the Amazon matters to everyone: it’s a crucial storehouse for carbon, and the richest repository of  biodiversity in the world. It’s also the reason why “managing” the rainforest is hard, if indeed it can be done at all. (Back in the 1970s, for better or worse, Brazil tried to build a 5,200km road called the Trans Amazonian Highway, but it never finished the job. Too much heat, rain, flooding, etc.) While Brazil has made great strides in stopping illegal deforestation (See Can Brazil Save the Amazon?), protecting what’s left of the forest remains a daunting task.

My government-sponsored trip with a group of international reporters focused on climate and the Amazon. When we met with Izabella Teixeira, Brazil’s environment minister, someone asked her whether the ministry needs more cops on the ground to enforce laws prohibiting deforestation. Of course, she said, smiling, but she was honest enough to add that there’s no way to catch all the violators. Remember, she said, we’re talking about a region of 3.5 million hectares, or  1.6 million square miles, and that’s just the portion of the rainforest inside Brazil. “If you put an army unit there, it would not be enough,” she said.

Size also makes predicting the Amazon’s future very difficult. Just last week, Andrew Revkin of The New York Times, who has reported on the region for more than 20 years, wrote on his blog:

I’m convinced that the system of rivers and forests is durable enough — not to mention expansive enough — to persist, and even thrive, as Brazil and its neighbors develop their economies.

But Lou Gold, a well-informed American blogger in Brazil, sees things very differently, warns that there’s a rush to develop the rainforest with roads, dams, energy projects, and more of the cattle ranches and soy plantations that have destroyed so much of it. A World Bank study called “Assessment of the Risk of Amazon Dieback,” available here, is summarized like this by the Bank Information Center:

The study predicts with more certainty than any other prior study that the legal Amazon (one of the four primary global climate feedback mechanisms) is very close (about 2-3% of total deforestation) to a tipping point of combined events that will lead ultimately to its collapse

Who’s right? I’m not expert enough to offer an opinion. Meanwhile, here are a few words, numbers and pictures from the trip, most chosen to give you a sense of the size of the river and rainforest.

First, a few words: Brazil is the world’s fifth biggest country and almost half the country is covered by the Amazon. One day, we flew for 90 minutes from the city of Manaus to an oil-and-gas outpost in the forest and in between saw nothing but treetops. They looked like a giant carpet of broccoli. Another day, we flew an hour in the opposite direction, from Manaus to Santerem and, again, saw nothing but forest between the two cities.

No bridges cross the Amazon. That’s not because the river is too wide, I was told, although there are places where, during the rainy season, the river grows to more than 120 miles (!) across. It’s because there aren’t enough people living alongside it to create a need for bridges. People travel from place to place by ferryboats like these, bringing hammocks to sleep in because riverboat journeys often take several days.

Ferryboats in Santerem

Now, a few numbers: The Amazonian forest holds 20% of the world’s fresh water. It’s home to about 45,000 species of plants, 1,800 species of butterflies and 2000 species of fish–ten times as many as all of Europe. (One night at dinner in Santerem, we enjoyed the ribs of a big fish called the Tambaqui that eats plants, by swimming among the trees that get covered during the rainy season when rivers rise by as much as 45 feet. A treat not to be missed if you visit Brazil.)

Tambaqui

Some other things that I saw on the trip…

The Negro River, one of several huge tributaries to the Amazon, from our hotel in Manaus:

The Negro River

The Tabajo River, another big tributary, seen from the riverfront in Santerem. Way in the background, you can see a big Cargill dock, used to ship soy to Europe.

The Topajos River

Trees in the Tapajo national forest, part of the Amazon biome:

A church at dusk in Santerem:

Tomorrow, in my last report from Brazil, I’ll explore the question: Is sustainable development possible in the Amazon? Or is it an oxymoron?

Disclosure: My trip was organized by Apex-Brasil, a government backed agency that promotes trade and investment in Brazil, and financed by Petrobras, Eletrobras and Banco do Brasil.

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Sustainable livelihoods in the Amazon

July 21, 2010

Inside the Tapajos National Forest, where 228 people have joined in a cooperative known as Coomflona, workers display sandals and wallets made of latex from rubber trees, necklaces and earrings made from the seeds of plants and tiny bottles of plant oils:

More important, they talk about how they are harvesting timber from the rainforest with extreme care, strictly limiting the number of trees that are cut, preserving younger specimens and removing the older ones with minimum impact.

These activities and others like them—harvesting acai or Brazil nuts, ecotourism, or developing oils for medicinal or cosmetic use–are absolutely vital to protecting the Amazon because they generate the income needed by the people who live there.

They’re often called sustainable livelihoods, meaning that they are ways to make a living that preserve or restore the environment.

Without them, people would resort to cattle ranching—small-scale agriculture, soy farming or illegal logging—the very activities that already have deforested nearby areas, as shown here:

Yesterday (July 21), I visited  Coomflona with a small group of reporters from the U.S., UK, France and Brazil. Before the visit, we took a charter flight from the small city of Santarem over the Tapajos forest to see the contrast between protected zones and denuded areas. Below is an image of the forest and another of deforestation, taken from the plane:

After the flight, we drove an hour from Santerem to the coop– a potential solution to the problem of deforestation, albeit at a small scale. Coomflona, which began in 2005 with lots of Brazilian government and international support, has organized people from nearby communities to exploit the rainforest in sustainable ways. [click to continue…]

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