The Future of the Amazon

Natalia Viana

On the banks of the Amazon River, little wooden houses built on stilts accommodate dozens of small riverside communities. They’re small groups of no more than 100 houses, or 100 families, who live off fishing, hunting and sometimes the commercialization of a local product like açaí. The lifestyles that people in these communities lead are unique, and isolated; travelling to the city to buy soap, sugar or a change of clothes generally takes hours, always aboard a motorboat, the only means of transport in the region. These families wake up at the crack of dawn and go to sleep by the light of the moon. The houses are constructed on stilts to withstand the annual floods, and little rowing boats are permanently anchored in front of them after the morning’s fishing. Everything follows the dictates of Mother Nature.   

But for some time now many of these communities have been undergoing a steady transformation. Researchers Renata Meirelles and David Reeks, who have been visiting these communities regularly over the past six years, have witnessed the change. “We were really looking forward to returning to a community in the state of Macapá that we hadn’t visited in four years. We wanted to see the locals again... But when we arrived the village was deserted. There were fewer houses than before, and the ones that were left were falling to pieces. Obviously no one lived there any more”. It was all gone; all the boats, the stilts, the children playing on the banks of the river. A reflection of the transformations that are taking place over the whole of the Amazon region.


Development

Spread over 3,300km (40% of Brasil’s national territory), the Amazon Rainforest is one of the world’s last agricultural frontiers. For some, it’s one of the few places where the production of increasingly popular cash crops such as soya could be massively increased. Ever since the area started to be populated, during the military dictatorship, this has been the attitude adopted by the federal government. The result: over the past 40 years, 20% of the forest has been chopped down.

The story goes like this: first, the government constructs a road. Then the loggers follow, opening up various illegal trails through the forest in search of expensive wood. According to the Amazon Institute, every year 1.9 thousand kilometres of new illegal roads appear, totaling 173 thousand kilometres in all. 
 
But nowadays, the loggers end up opening the way for the real culprit – agroindustry. Dan Nepstad, from the Woods Hole Research Centre, reveals that chopping down wood isn’t that devastating, because the forest can be re-planted. The most worrying phenomenon is the growth of large areas of farmland. “Agriculture and cattle farming effect vast areas and contribute to the degradation of the entire rainforest”.
 
Brasil is the world’s second largest producer of beef, and a third of all Brasilian cows graze in the Amazon. As for soya, this is a more recent phenomenon: in just under 10 years, from 1994 to 2002, Brasil became the world’s second largest producer of the crop. During this period, the area of rainforest cut down to provide farmland for soya rose from 16 to 60 thousand km2.  

Anyone travelling along official motorways like the BR 163 and the Trans-Amazon Highway will get a clear idea of just how much the Amazon region has changed. As far as the eye can see, soya fields and grazing herds of cows have replaced swathes of luscious rainforest. Now, everything is monotonous and repetitive, from the sound of the tractors to the square fences dividing one gigantic ranch from the next.

But the impact of this painful economy goes wider still. Climatologist Carlos Nobre, from the Institute of Spatial Research (INPE), reveals that the temperature rises sharply in areas of rainforest converted into pasture, sometimes by up to 2°C. The land ends up becoming less protected and drier and therefore more susceptible to forest fires. The soil is also contaminated by all the chemicals used to spray crops. Soya, for example, needs large quantities of lime, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides to grow well in the Amazon.


The Future

It’s not by chance that the BR 163, which links Cuiabá in Mato Grosso to Santarém in Manaus, is nicknamed the “soya highway”. Soya fields abound along the 800 km road. Crops are stored in large silos made by companies like Cargill, ADM and Bunge. Together, these multinationals control 60% of all the soya produced in Brasil. And they offer excellent prospects to anyone looking to plant soya in the Amazon: funding, expertise and guaranteed demand.  

This year, the last 1000km of track are going to be tarmaced over by the federal government. The work is part of a “programme of growth” that includes the construction of ten dams, eight electrical lines, seven roads, three gas pipelines and two railway lines – all the necessary infrastructure to promote agriculture. In other words, more business, more growth – and more devastation. And things could get worse with the boom in Brasilian ethanol, explains Professor Don Sawyer of the University of Brasilia. He reveals that due to the expansion of sugar cane production in the Southeast of the country, livestock may well be gradually “pushed” towards the Amazon, where land is cheaper. 

 “Today, it’s the multinational and global powers that be that control the rate of deforestation in the Amazon”, explains Dan Nepstad. Despite the great amount of effort that the federal government has put into deterring deforestation, whilst there’s demand, the rainforest will continue to disappear, he believes.  

That’s not what Maria Angelica Ikeda of the Brasilian Embassy thinks. She highlights a drop in deforestation due to more rigorous inspections by the federal police, and the creation of 82 thousand kilometres of Rainforest reserves, amongst other government initiatives. From 2004 to 2006, deforestation was cut down by over 40%.

But a lot of people disagree. According to Nepstad, the main reason for decreasing rates of deforestation was a drop in demand for soya on the international market during 2004. Since then, prices have gone up again. “This year we’ll discover whether or not the government can really manage to slow down deforestation, because the price of soya has almost doubled. I hope they can do it”. If not, then the Woods Hole Research Centre estimates that 40% of the rainforest will be raised to the ground by 2050. 


The rainforest holds sway over the future of the planet

Anyone who thinks that conserving the Amazon Rainforest is Brasil’s problem is in for a rude awakening. More and more, the international community is realizing that it has an enormous influence on the equilibrium of the planet as a whole. The Brasilian Amazon alone represents 1/3 of the world’s remaining tropical rainforest. What’s more, it’s one of the greatest areas of biodiversity on the planet. It’s estimated that one hectare of rainforest has more species of flora than the whole of Europe put together. And that’s without taking into consideration that 20% of the world’s fresh water is stored in the Amazon basin.  

What’s more, the rainforest regulates rainfall levels across South America. It also plays a fundamental role in regulating air currents, which go on to cool the oceans. If the Amazon rainforest disappeared from the map, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans would heat up, causing more phenomena like El Nino. And according to some scientists, the area is one of the world’s “tipping points”, and could have a large-scale impact on the planet if rates of deforestation continue.

Worse still: by cutting down the rainforest, an enormous amount of CO2 gas is released into the atmosphere, contributing to the Greenhouse Effect. That’s why although Brasil doesn’t generate large levels of industrial pollution, it has one of the world’s highest rates of carbon emission; 75% of which comes from deforestation. “In the future, the Earth’s climate is going to be one of extremes”, predicts José Marengo, of INPE. “And the Amazon will play a large role in this”.    


Capitalizing on the Rainforest

If the future of the Amazon region affects everyone, then everyone should contribute to its upkeep. That’s the belief of a new generation of environmentalists who are working in defense of the Rainforest. “Tropical countries that are just starting to expand agriculturally stand to lose a lot of money if they leave these areas intact”, explains Dan Nepstad. “The international community must help these countries cover the costs associated with rainforest conservation”.

The idea may seem crazy, but it’s here to stay: countries with rainforests should receive financial incentives to halt deforestation. At least international discussions seem to be pointing towards this outcome. The solution would be to pay a fixed sum of money for each acre of forest left standing.  

There are two proposals being discussed this year in relation to the Kyoto Treaty – and everything indicates that one of them will be adopted in the near future. On the one hand, there’s the Brasilian proposal, which entails richer countries contributing to an international fund, which would pay developing countries on an annual basis for slowing down deforestation rates.

On the other, there’s the proposal being forwarded by the Rainforest Coalition, a group of 15 countries with tropical rainforests, including Papua New Guinea, Costa Rica and the Congo. They suggest that reducing deforestation rates could generate credits for each country that could then be sold on the international carbon market. In this way, companies from developed countries could buy credit from a poor country and tell everyone that they were helping clean up the atmosphere and conserve areas of rainforest. Paulo Moutinho of the Institute of Annual Research into the Amazon Region predicts that if this proposal came into effect and Brasil managed to reduce levels of deforestation by 10% per year, then the country would generate a $2.47 billion profit in five years. 

According to Kevin Conrad, a member of the government of Papua New Guinea, and one of the authors of the proposal, “selling” rainforest conservation is the only way to encourage poorer countries not to destroy their natural resources. “The international community wants our wood, and they offer us various kinds of incentives to sell it to them. But if we want to conserve our rainforests, there’s no incentive whatsoever. We want to change this”.  

The same would hold true for the inhabitants of small villages, like the ones scattered along the Amazon River, insists Kevin. If these people could earn money from looking after the rainforest, this would be a much more effective deterrent than police investigations. And it’s true; from adults to children, it’s amazing the knowledge these people have of all the different types of palm trees that they have to make their way through each day on the lookout for bamboo, wood or açaí. At lunchtime, there’s always a large variety of different shell fish and fish, all freshly caught from nearby rivers. And then there’s the game that only the men seem to be able to hunt and bring back. And all this knowledge evaporates once these communities have disappeared. “If they had the option of preserving their land, obviously they wouldn’t just sell it on to someone to chop it all down”, explains Kevin.  

Whatever the proposal adopted at Kyoto, the fact remains that giving the remaining rainforest an economic value will turn the Amazon into a goldmine for Brasil. If this resource is well used, and the resulting money gets invested back into Amazonian communities, then the sad tendency witnessed in the region by researchers David Reeks and Renata Meirelles may well be reversed. Who knows, maybe in five years time, when they return to that abandoned village, they might just be welcomed by a populous community, exuberant from their fishing, their delicious local acaí, their culture – and from the rainforest surrounding them...



What’s in the Amazon for the UK?

Milo Steelefox

Beyond abundant scientific study, the Amazon has provided Britain with a vital source

Beyond abundant scientific study, the Amazon has provided Britain with a vital source of timber and the farming of crops, notably coffee and fruit, with Quaker John Cadbury’s chocolate founded on the fruit of cocoa trees. Plant and creature alike offered medicinal properties; thwarting the quinine monopoly, a remedy for malaria, Richard Spruce illegally transported cinchona seed out of Brasil in the 1860s. Likewise, Sir Henry Wickham smuggled Heveabrasiliensis seed from Manaus to British and colonial plantations, breaking dependency on rubber barons commanding the market.

Trade in the 19th century included mahogany, teak and rosewood (for perfume), and fossil fuels coaxed forth the booming rubber industry, aiding Britain’s Industrial Revolution. The C20th saw Brasil increase export of meats such as beef and chicken, and later the animal feed soybean, becoming a health bi-product for humans.

Cork, wood, pulp and paper, oil seed, oleaginous fruit, tobacco and metalliferous ores are still strong British imports, and although a positive image has grown with the biofuel ethanol, a representative of the Embassy of Brazil in London outlined the fight against biopiracy: ‘Brazil is in favour of a fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources and/or biodiversity-related traditional knowledge’, with legislation regulating international access, as ‘important economic as well as non-economic benefits are diverted from local communities as a result of biopiracy’.

Despite our increased understanding of our lack of knowledge of the rainforest’s diversity, exploitation continues with the greatest damage caused in recent decades. Britain’s dilemma entwines a history guilty of fuelling its own development upon Amazon assets, comprehension of both local and global impact, and the challenge of controlling ongoing destruction in allowing the continent itself to develop, whilst pushing for a global low carbon economy. It was never going to be easy.



A Government with Attitude

Last year, the governor of the state of Amazonas, Eduardo Braga got together with Greenpeace and came up with an innovative new idea.  The plan was to transform the Amazon region into a "deforestation-free zone", where the people responsible for cutting down trees would be prohibitted from entering.  But to make this a reality, they needed to invest in conservation, and that takes money.  So they came up with the idea of creating a State fund to provide for the local rainforest, which covers 9.5 million hectares of land in all.

Since last year, Braga has visted an array of countries in search of potential investors.  He's been to the UK twice, and it seems as if negotiations are well underway.  The way it works is simple: businesses or governments who want to reduce their carbon emissions buy up shares in the fund, which will be administrated by a private institution.  The government has calculated that ecological reserves could bring in the equivalent of $150 million in carbon credits per year - a value that looks set to increase once the market for carbon stablizes and develops. 

The money raised will be invested back into local communities and the running of the reservations.  In time, a conservation industry could emmerge within the region, gnerating profits for investors and, most importantly of all, bringing environmental stability to the region. 


AMAZONIAN POP

Neli Pereira

There’s also folk music, classical music and brega...  The rainforest is a fervent cultural hotspot

There’s more to the Amazon region than its biodiversity.  The jungle, the rivers and the small towns around the Amazon rainforest have their own diverse and vibrant culture.  Check out Jungle’s list of projects, groups and events in and around the region that you need to know about.  The Amazon has its own pop, folk and brega scenes which are starting to take the rest of Brasil by storm. 


Sailing Down the Amazon
A local boat that accommodates a multimedia laboratory along with the crew.  Their course: from the Canal de Jandiá, in Macapá, all the way up to Belém.  On board, a team of musicians, film directors, volunteers and producers all united by a common aim: offering cultural workshops to riverside communities and documenting the cultural production of communities living in the Amazon region.  This is the project of NGO Navegar Amazônia, which has involved stalwarts such as long-time musical partners Jorge Mautner and Nelson Jacobina and film director Sandro Bodanzy.  The project has been turned into a documentary film, and is still going strong, continuing its activities and voyages throughout the region.      
www.navegaramazonia.org.br 


Surfing the Pororoca
The term pororoca comes from the Tupi poroc, which means “rumble”.  The meeting point between the River Amazon and the sea creates one of the region’s most impressive natural phenomena.  It’s the pororoca, a wave that can reach up to four metres and travels 13km along the Amazon River, a perennial favourite amongst more adventurous surfers.  The first time anyone surfed along the pororoca was in `97.  Since then, a whole surfing championship has grown around the pororoca.  On the 18th May, Serginho Laus beat the world record for staying afloat on one single wave after surfing the largest pororoca wave ever (a four metre tall wave, which Laus rode for 29 minutes).     


Tecnobrega
A musical style mixing Brasilian and Caribbean rhythms, technobrega first emerged in Paraná and has gone on to take the Amazon region by storm.  Like Funk Carioca, technobrega is also a whole culture, involving songs, dance routines and balls organized and set up by people living on the outskirts of major cities.  The artists involved usually come from the communities where the balls take place and, curiously enough, the style has really caught on thanks to MP3s.  Pirate CDs produced by the artists themselves are sold on local stalls at accessible prices.  That’s why technobrega has been such a success; it’s within the general public’s reach and is an essentially regional product.  To find out more, go to www.bregapop.com   


Parintins
Paratins is an island situated 325km from Manaus that, for the past 80 years, has hosted a Folkloric Festival during June, attracting crowds of up to 100 thousand people.  The main attraction are the giant puppets based on the myths and legends of the Amazon region, such as Bumba-meu-Boi, a mythical bull, and the giant cobra.  The dispute between two of the bulls, Garantido and Caprichoso, causes riotous merrymaking at the festival, which features cultural manifestations from around the region over a three-day period. 
www.paratins.com.br


Arraial do Pavulagem
A group of artists founded in 1983 to value and promote the region’s music, Arraial organize cultural events throughout the year such as the Peixe Boi, traditional June festivities and the Roda de Boi.  All of these activities combine elements of popular religion with local art-forms and musical rhythms, preserving the cultural identity of the Amazon’s local communities whilst showcasing it for the rest of Brasil.  The group also organize educational work and environmental campaigns that endeavour to assure the survival of the region and its folklore.  
www.arraialdopavulagem.com.br



Future Native

Indigenous Brasilian stands up to prejudice and becomes one of the biggest names in children’s literature

The Amazon Rainforest is home to a diverse array of 152 different Indigenous populations, spread across nine Brasilian states.  60% of the 470 thousand Indigenous peoples living in Brasil are based in the region.  Ethnic groups such as the Yanomami, Kayapó, Xavante, Munduruku and Cinta Larga are some of the best known communities.  Each group maintains their respective customs, rituals, beliefs and art forms, which are passed on from one generation to the next.  A few years ago, the only way to discover and unveil this parallel universe was through academic texts, but times have changed... 

Indigenous people are bringing their own heritage to a wider audience.  Autobiographies such as the one written by 47 year old Brasilian writer Daniel Munduruku, who was born on the banks of the Rio Tapajós in Belém (Pará), are becoming more and more common.  He is considered one of the best writers of children’s fiction in Brasil, winning the Jabuti Prize in 2004 for his book Coisas de Índio (children’s version).  

 “I hope that my books help put an end to the stigma that Indigenous people are relics from the past that hinder progress”, he explains.  Daniel learnt Portuguese as a child.  When he was seven, he would set off each day from the Munduruku village to study in the capital.  According to him, his adaptation was painful because of the discrimination he suffered.  With the help of his family he learnt to understand the differences separating the two cultures, and when he was 15 he moved to Manaus where he studied at the Salesiano Seminary.   

After finishing a course in Philosophy there he discovered that his diploma wasn’t officially recognised by the Ministry of Education.  Frustrated, Daniel moved to São Paulo where he worked as a school teacher and realised his gift for writing.  “I used to tell stories as a teaching method.  The kids loved it.  One day, I compiled a series of texts that I’d written for my students and sent them off to a publishing house, and they decided to print them”.  To date, Daniel has published 30 books.

As well as being a writer, Daniel is studying for a PhD in Education at the University of São Paulo and is the director of an NGO that fights to protect Indigenous knowledge.  He also took part in the film Tainá: An Adventure in the Amazon, as the shaman who helps the protagonist to save the rainforest from animal traffickers.  The author’s forthcoming plans include an ambitious project to write a series of booklets charting the history of each one of Brasil’s 227 Indigenous peoples. 


How Much is the Amazon Worth? 

 "In theory, it might be possible to buy the Amazon Rainforest for $50 billion". That's not a joke: this statement was actually made to the international press by none other than Swedish millionaire Johan Eliasch, treasurer of the British Consrvative Party. The entrepreneur already owns 400 thousand hectares of Amazon rainforest and is now pushing an initiative that would allow anyone to "adopt" a piece of rainforest and conserve it. 

With a launch-date set for June, Cool Earth was creatd by Eliasch and ex-Labour minister Frank Field. "Our aim is to set up an international trust that will give every individual, family, school, university, church, trades union, women's group or youth group the chance to own a piece of the world's tropical rainforest", explains Field.

David Miliband, the British Environment Secretary, jumped on the bandwagon and aired a plan last year to create an international coalition to buy - and later preserve - part of the Amazon.  Obviously, the idea provoked an explosive reaction amongst members of the Brasilian government. In an article published in both Brasil and the UK, ministers Celso Amorim, Sergio Rezende and Marina Silva criticised "proposals that don't take into account the realities of the Amazon Rainforest".  "The Amazon Rainforest is the patrimony of the Brasilian people, and is not for sale", concluded the ministers.

Recently, Cool Earth seem to have changed their tune slightly, but the project is still going ahead. "We don't want to threaten Brasil's sovereignty in any way.  We just want to ensure that environmental services, like those necessary for the survival of the Amazon rainforest, are funded", explains the initiative's CEO, Mathew Owen.  According to him, when the initiative starts up in June, a total of 100 million tonnes of carbon will be put on sale.  There are at least 10 investors interested.  "One of our clients is a European garden furniture manufacturer.  They'll use Cool Earth to protect ten times as many trees as they chop down per year".

For just $150 per hectare, a company can assure the preservation of an acre of rainforest for around 20 years. Cool Earth assure that the money invested will be used to enable the locals to presrve the rainforest, and that they will retain their rights to the land.  In exchange, Cool Earth will earn the right to sell on carbon credit.

It's a cheap way of investing money that will almost certainly generate profits, especially given the heated debates surrounding global warming at the moment.  However, these projects will have to find a way of getting past Brasil's Federal Constitution.  Only 25% of the Amazon Rainforest can be sold off, the rest is protected by a new law and deemed public property.

According to Eliasch's calculations, buying a piece of land in the Amazon (at roughly the size of a football pitch) costs around £100-£500, depending on the geographical position of the area in question.  But the true value of the rainforest is much higher.  "If we just take the 80 billion tonnes of carbon stored in the Amazon and multiply that by $20 per tonne, you end up with a value of $160 billion, and that's without taking into account the value of the region's water, biodiversity, traditional knowledge, commerciable wood, etc", explains Paulo Moutinho of IPAM (the Environmental Research Institute of the Amazon).

It's a complicated issue.  According to Professor Anthony Hall of LSE, it's going to be very difficult to verify to what extent a country has cut back on deforestation.  There are different types of deforestation; some is selective, some is due to environmental degredation and even the most advanced satellite systems are incapable of detecting these subtle nuances.  Furthermore, tropical rainforests all store different quantities of carbon.  Therefore, would a rainforest that stores less carbon be worth less than one that stores a lot, even if it's full of different species of flora and fauna?  "It's also very difficult to evaluate whether or not reduced rates of deforestation are really due to national policies or external factors, such as falling prices in soya, which had a major impact on Brasil last year", explains Anthony Hall.

"It's going to be very difficult to solve the problem if deforestation isn't treated in an integrated way, from a national perspective", says Dan Nepstad, from the Woods Hole Research Centre.  Nevertheless, he believes that ventures such as Cool Earth should become much more common in the near future.  "More intiatives like this should start popping up all over the place, with people or businesses paying to reduce deforestation rates".  After all, being Green is big business.