It was great time when we depended on the forests, ironically the forests now depend on us. We needed resources to thrive, we extracted them but a few us wanted more. So, our imagination to build a new world ran unparalleled and we changed the planet’s face as per our liking.
And here we are, dealing with evils like climate change at the rate we cannot conform, global warming that may not spare any soul, air saturated with pollution that cannot provide ambient oxygen, a water that is scarce for anyone to drink and what not.
But there is always something to learn. Alas in this case, one can witness humankind’s resilience and adamancy to continue to inflict pain to Mother Earth.
What’s new that is going to cost us big?
After rising for three consecutive months, Brazil’s Amazon rainforest have registered a 67% increase in deforestation, as per the preliminary government records.
The data has been collated by national space research institute INPE of Brazil, with much of the land diverted in favor of cattle ranches, farms and logging.
20th century saw deforestation in Amazon driven by industrial activities and large-scale agriculture and by 2000, more than three-quarters of forest was lost to cattle ranching.
Although President Jair Bolsonaro pledged on Earth Day in April to double the funding for environmental enforcement but was quick to sign 2021 federal budget slashing environmental spending altogether.
And any such pending request over increased spending in regards of Amazon rainforest, has remained unattended.
Seems like nationalist and fascist governments around the world love to make populist statements without actually tending to them.
Deforestation in Amazon has soared under Bolsonaro’s regime, who vouches for the development of protected nature reserves and criticizes any sort of environmental enforcement.
US climate envoy, John Kerry has told: “Unfortunately, the Bolsonaro regime has rolled back some of the environmental enforcement. If we don’t talk to them, you’re guaranteed that that forest is going to disappear.”
It is to note that “emerging markets” and rising domestic wealth along with rising standards of living in the area has brought in the demand for unconventional forest produce, further exacerbating the problem.
Even the Trans-Amazonian Highway has its significant contribution to the loss of heavenly Amazonian ecosystem.
Nevertheless, any discussion has failed to return the deforestation rate to pre-Bolsonaro levels.
Deforestation and Amazon: a story less told
With 2,548 square kilometers (949 square miles) destroyed, imagine an area more than thrice of New York city serving the planet is no more. This was just the 25% recorded decrease.
Every year, the dry season from May to October allows easier access to illegal loggers and hence the deforestation peaks at the time.
With climate change fueling problems for the world, Amazonian rainforest has been witnessing a drier-than-usual rainy season (November-April), allowing the fires to prosper.
“The rainy season is already finished and it was a bad rainy season. The fire season will probably be bad”, a meteorologist explains.
Well according to several environmentalists, the silencing of Amazons is like double Deforestation; not only of trees but deforestation of mind’s music, medicine and knowledge.
What is Amazon doing for us?
Apart from commendable and life-saving carbon storage of the World i.e. 86 billion tonnes with its 390 billion trees, Amazon shelters an irreplaceable ecosystem, a cradle to 30% of world’s different species.
Spread across these eight desperately developing countries, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana, Amazons are dwindling fast.
Amazon rainforest creates its own 50-75 percent precipitation for the area, that influences far flung areas as the Western United States and even Central America.
Amazon Basin’s fertile soil, its prosperous rainfall and rivers feeding regions indirectly generate about 70 percent of South America’s GDP.
It caters to indigenous Amazonian tribes and help them survive from non-timber forest produce.
Deteriorating health of the Amazon means subduing health of the planet. And this want of extracting more profits out of a wonderful resource, can lead to loss of several other benefits.
With dying forestlands, water has become another problem for agriculturists in Brazil. They are worried that soon, they might not be even able to keep their crops alive: the arabica-coffee crops or raw sugar.
M. K. Gandhi was right to say: “What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to each other.”
Humankind must understand this now or never: one needs to rather look out for innate heavens on Earth rather than dreaming of making their-own so called little fragile heavens and rooting out individual problems arising out of these aspirations.