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Brazil and Bolivia concentrate 90% of the deforestation and degradation of the Amazon

2022-09-05T15:47:35.731Z


According to an investigation, released by the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin, the largest tropical forest in the world is on the verge of "irreversible destruction of the ecosystem"


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The Amazon is immersed in a crisis or point of no return due to high rates of deforestation and degradation.

This situation is not a future scenario, but a state already present in some areas of the region.

Countries like Brazil and Bolivia account for 90% of combined deforestation and degradation, understood as disturbances in the forest.

As a result, savannization, a process that leads an ecosystem to become plains with few trees or very far from each other

,

is already taking place in both countries, according to the report

The Amazon against the clock: a regional diagnosis on where and how to protect 80% by 2025

, released this Monday, in Lima, Peru, at the V Amazon Summit of Indigenous Peoples, organized by the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA).

The research, released by Amazonian indigenous leaders and researchers, addresses the problem at the national level in the nine countries of the basin and shows that 34% of the Brazilian Amazon has entered a process of transformation, as has 24% of the Bolivian Amazon, followed by Ecuador with 16%, 14% in Colombia and 10% in Peru, which are the countries with the highest rates.

Likewise, savannization is already a reality in the southeast of the region, mainly in Brazil and Bolivia.

Both nations share invasions or subjugation as the main cause of deforestation.

This problem puts the States and their legal frameworks at the center of the solutions.

The Amazon is on the verge of "irreversible destruction of the ecosystem" due to the high rates of loss and disturbance of the forest that, combined, already reach 26% of the region.

However, the remaining 74%, 629 million hectares of priority areas are still standing and require immediate protection.

The Amazon Georeferenced Socioenvironmental Information Network (RAISG) conceptualizes the Amazon as an integral ecosystem that covers a research area of ​​847 million hectares.

“Without knowing it, we eat, transport ourselves and wear products that destroy the Amazon.

We cannot afford to lose one more hectare.

The future of the Amazon is everyone's responsibility,” said Alicia Guzmán, representative of Stand.Earth, one of the coordinators that is part of the “Amazonia for Life” coalition.

According to the National Institute for Space Research, dependent on the Brazilian Space Agency, in the last 30 days, 31,513 fire alerts in the Amazon have been registered via satellite, making last August the worst since 2010, when the burning amounted to 45,018 throughout the month.

The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, suggested that the increase in fires was caused by natural events or by indigenous communities, as he revealed in an interview with

Globo TV

on August 22.

“In Brazil we are witnessing a government with a frontally anti-indigenous State policy that tries, in every possible way, to legalize what is illegal.

The unbridled destruction and greed of our ancestral territories, our Amazon, in the north of the country, is the visible face of the historic violation of rights to which we have been subject for decades," said Nara Baré, former coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon.

According to the same report, developed since 2021 by the RAISG

—with data from 1985 to 2020—, the cattle industry is the biggest driver of deforestation in the Amazon.

Deforestation caused by cattle ranching in the Amazon rainforest accounts for nearly 2% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions annually.

Most of the farming

in the world takes place in Brazil.

The research also indicates that 66% of the Amazon is subject to some type of fixed or permanent pressure.

It points out that where there is a strong state presence there are threats and pressures or "legal" drivers and in places where the government presence is weak, "illegal" drivers are present.

Indigenous territories and protected areas are not at the

outside of this reality.

"The blocks

oil tankers, hydroelectric plants and

mines are planned throughout the Amazon.

Current legal frameworks create conditions for States to grant licenses in intact forests or indigenous territories without the free, prior and informed consent of the populations that inhabit the region,” the document states.

Another fact that is not minor, present in the report, is that between 2015 and the first half of 2019, 232 indigenous community leaders were killed in the region due to disputes over land and natural resources

.

In 2020, this trend continued.

While, in 2021, a third of all violations recorded in the Americas were against defenders of environmental, territorial and indigenous peoples' rights.

Due to the alarming situation of violence in the region, last July, the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning the Brazilian president's human rights policies and denouncing the growing violence against human rights defenders, indigenous people, minorities and journalists in Brazil, including the assassination of Dom Philips and Bruno Pereira.

There is a direct correlation between the destruction of our home and the murders of indigenous leaders, defenders of our territories.

We have confirmed that the recognition of the rights of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin is an urgent solution to safeguard 80% of the Amazon.

We must all act in unity, and we must do it before 2025″, said José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, indigenous leader and general coordinator of COICA.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-09-05

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