Amazon at risk
Autor: Ozeias Rocha | Publicado: 2008-03-29T16:40:00-07:00

The advance of agribusiness and new roads can reduce up to 21% of forest by 2030  This is the most pessimistic scenario of the study. Its main consequence would be a reduction of periods of rain and the increase of brutal burned and the issue of the gases that cause the greenhouse effect, as well as an incalculable loss of biodiversity in the region. If the predictions are confirmed, the damage to the Amazon and the planet will be irreparable - alert Britaldo Silveira Soares Filho, of the Center for Remote Sensing of UFMG. The projections are part of the project Scenarios for Amazon, whose first version was published in March 2006 by the journal "Nature". This time, the time of the calculations has been reduced and the computational model was more accurate, with new variables on the increase in population and accelerated expansion of agricultural boundary on the forest. The data relate to the part of the Brazilian jungle. Reason for long-mouth between the ministers of Agriculture, Reinhold Stephanes, and the Environment, Marina Silva, the advance of agribusiness has weight in the fundamental equation on the future of the Amazon. According to the IBGE, the opening of new areas of cultivation of soybeans in the region obeyed an average rate of 18% a year between 1990 and 2006. In the same period, the participation of farms that replaced the forest on the economy of the grain in the country jumped from 14% to 29%. The data on the livestock are similar: the Amazon flock has multiplied the annual ratio of 11%, and its weight in the sector rose from 18% to 36%. In Rondônia, there are already 7.7 cattle per inhabitant. A livestock Brazilian went to the Amazon, increasing the pressure on the forest. Studies show that the cost of recovering a pasture is twice as to incorporate an equivalent area of forest - says the manager of the Livestock Research Hall of the IBGE, Octavio Costa de Oliveira. Knitted road is also bad guy of deforestation In the most pessimistic scenario mapped out by the technical and Ipam UFMG, the herd Amazon grow from 73 to 210 million head in 2030, and the extension of agricultural areas saltaria of 80 thousand to 450 thousand square kilometers. Representatives of the productive sector, which accused the government of pursuing the big owners with the package of measures for the high frear of deforestation, deny the relationship between expansion of the agricultural frontier and the increase in deforestation. For the authorities in the environmental area, the biggest problem is in establishing extensive, which employs few steers in large portions of land. The farmers claim not to have viable alternative. The limitation of the technology is cost-effective. It is not possible to design a semi-intensive creation in the Amazon. The creators are very far from the centres of consumption and may not compete if the cost of production is high - says the chairman of the Committee on Environment of the National Confederation of Agriculture (CNA), Assuero Veronez. In addition to the boom of agribusiness and logging, the study list as villains of deforestation projects for expansion of the loop road Amazon, which includes works from the Growth Acceleration Program (CAP) and can result in 14 thousand kilometers of paved roads until 2027 , and the absence of government, unable to supervise the destruction of the forest and to regulate the possession of the land in the region. "It is this vicious cycle and intricate that perpetuates the advancement of deforestation of the Amazon," sentenciam the researchers. In the most optimistic scenario that the model can calculate, technicians estimated a loss of 150 thousand square kilometers of forest by 2030, equivalent to 4.68% of the forest today. To achieve this goal, it would lower the average annual deforestation to 6,500 square kilometers a year - the equivalent of 60% of the devastation counted in 2007, when the government celebrated the best result since the beginning of the 90. The projection considers that the country would expand the protected areas, making more rigorous supervision and impose a radical brake to the expansion of agribusiness. For the executive secretary of the Ministry of Environment, Joao Paulo Capobianco, the only way to end the devastation is to make the exploitation of the forest standing is more profitable business than shoot it down. Without it, the effort of the government will be able to produce a deforestation, but constant. The story of the destruction of forests is the replacement of native vegetation by an activity outside the biome in the region. It was thus that Brazil lost more than 90% of the Atlantic Forest. Without sustainable development, the fight between the expansion of the agricultural frontier and the actions of preservation will be eternal - says. No new type of occupation dreamed by environmentalists, fires result in activities such as ecotourism and the selective cutting of timber, in a system that would oblige every owner to pay for services of an environmental engineer and wait 30 years before returning to cut trees in the same hectare of land. In announcing the latest data from the National Institute of Space Research (Inpe), Marina Silva came to say that a change in consumer behaviour would lead to the boycott of products that do not follow the book ecologically correct. Capobianco admits that the forest management only became reality in the Scandinavian countries, but says that Brazil has conditions to promote "a revolution civilization" in the jungle. For Assuero Veranez, CNA, sustainable development belongs to the world of fiction, "an illusory paradise of biotechnology." Until the end of last year, the devastation of the Amazon had already turned into ashes 18% of the original forest.