where these came from . . . for now.
Source: BBC News Online
Status: Copyright 2000, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: April 12, 2000
Byline: Alex Kirby, environment correspondent
Brazil says the rate at which its Amazon rainforest is being
destroyed is continuing unchanged.
A government report said that in 1998-99 illegal logging and farming
destroyed forest totalling 130 kilometres by 130 km in area.
Satellite imagery revealed the 16,926 square km (6,347 square mile)
loss, with only a 3% margin of error.
This compares with a loss of 17,383 sq km in 1997-98. The area of
forest lost during that year was almost a third more than in the year
before. Until then, the rate had been falling since its peak in 1995
and there were hopes that conservation measures were working.
This past year there has been a strengthened police presence in
threatened areas, though it seems to have had little deterrent
effect.
But the Brazilian Government took comfort in the fact that the rate
of loss had not increased again.
The Environment Minister, Jose Sarney Filho, said: "The tendency to
an increase in deforestation has been controlled."
Dr Norman Myers, of Green College, Oxford, told BBC News Online:
"It's a worrying trend. "Fifteen years ago, the rate of loss in
Amazonia was about half what it is today, assuming the figures are
accurate. "If it goes on doubling like this, we could be in a lot of
trouble before long. "It's good news that the rate hasn't increased,
but I suspect that may have less to do with enforcement than with the
downturn in the Brazilian economy."
Roberto Smeraldi, head of the Amazon protection programme at Friends
of the Earth Amazonia, said a recent devaluation could mean more
rapid loss if loggers sought increased profits.
His organisation has helped, with the World Wide Fund for Nature
(WWF), to establish a group of 42 Brazilian timber companies
committed to obtaining wood from well-managed forests.
The group, Compradores de Madeira Certificada, uses at least half a
million cubic metres of timber annually. Dr Steve Howard, director of
WWF's global forest and trade initiative, told BBC News Online: "The
companies involved use less than 3% of the wood from Amazonia.
"It's a very small start. But it is enough in financial terms to
provide an incentive that could encourage responsible forest use.
"In a year or 18 months from now, we need to have not 42 companies
involved, but 200 to 300."