Deforestation Rates Increase in Central and South America

2/24/2014

Deforestation rates have risen in Central American countries due to increased drug smuggling resulting in new forest routes being cleared for money laundering and landing strips. Additionally, rising deforestation rates in Brazil ends the previous period of declining deforestation urging governments to increase global efforts to find more sustainable ways for agriculture and reducing deforestation rates.

A dramatic discovery has led to theorists claiming that deforestation is now being increased due to drug trafficking via countries in Central America such as Guatemala and Honduras.  After a crackdown of drug importation through Mexico there has been increased use of more remote routes that need to be cleared for landing strips effecting the amount of forest in the areas. In Honduras, the level of large-scale deforestation per year more than quadrupled between 2007 and 2011, at the same time as cocaine movements in the country also showed a significant rise. "A baseline deforestation rate in this region was 20 sq km per year," said lead author Dr Kendra McSweeney from Ohio State University." Under the ‘narco-effect’, we see over 60 km² per year. In some parts of Guatemala, the rates are even higher. We're talking up to 10% deforestation rates, which is just staggering."

Buying and clearing the forests helps launder profits, and the traffickers usually have enough political influence to ensure their titles to the land are not contested. Through this process, the "improved" land can then be sold on to corporate concerns. In this way, what was once forest is now permanently lost to agriculture.  The report authors argue that conservation groups now need to push for major changes in the use of military force to tackle the problem. "Conservation groups have big offices in Washington DC and have proven successful at lobbying," said Dr McSweeney. "We would encourage them to use their clout to really explore alternatives to this appallingly inappropriate, militarised approach to the drug problem.”

Despite rates being lower than in 2009, the 28% rise interrupts a period of declining deforestation. The provisional statistics from August 2012 to last July suggest that the area suffering deforestation was 5,843 sq km (2,255 sq miles), compared to 4,571 sq km (1,765 sq miles) in the previous 12 months.

Environmentalists say the controversial reform of the forest protection law in 2012 is to blame for the upwards trend in Brazil. Amazon expert Paulo Adario from Greenpeace wrote on Twitter, "If you sleep with the ruralist lobby, you wake up with deforestation". This statement came after reports that the new reform was passed due to the long-standing demand of the country's farmers' lobby, known as the ruralists despite several previous vetoes by President Dilma Rousseff. The changes reduced protected areas in farms and declared an amnesty for areas destroyed before 2008. Agriculture accounts for more than 5% of the Brazilian GDP which creates significant pressure upon the government to maintain high agricultural rates increasing the danger for deforestation.

(The banks of the Amazon river and its tributaries have experienced deforestation)

Ms Teixeira said the destruction rate was "unacceptable" but denied President Dilma Rousseff's administration were to blame." This swing is not related to any federal government fund cuts for law enforcement," she told reporters, adding that around 4,000 criminal actions have been taken against deforesters in the past year. Overall the planet saw a net loss of 1.5 million km² of forest - an area the size of Mongolia.

Google Earth Satellite imagery has produced a map that shows forest change from 2000-12. Green areas are forested; red suffered forest loss; blue showed forest gain; pink experienced both loss and gain. From the research it can be shown that The Earth lost 2.3 million square kilometres of tree cover between 2000-12, due to logging, fire, disease or storms. But the planet also gained 800,000 sq km of new forest, a net loss of 1.5 million km² in total. Brazil showed the best improvement of any country, cutting annual forest loss in half, between 2003/04 and 2010/11, however, as discussed this rate has been affected by recent reports of increased deforestation. Indonesia had the largest increase in deforestation, more than doubling its annual loss to nearly 20,000 sq km in 2011-12 whereas Paraguay, Malaysia and Cambodia had the highest national rates of forest loss. In the United States, the "disturbance rate" of south-eastern forests was four times that of South American rainforests where more than 31% of forest cover was either lost or regrown.