Original article by Kimberly Brown and published by the BBC
With fewer planes in the sky and cars on the road, lockdown has brought many benefits to the environment. So why is it harming tropical rainforests?
Inside the world’s tropical forests, there are the agents of disease that have the power to bring our way of life to a halt. How we learn to live with these forests will determine our fate, hastening or slowing the onset of future pandemics and the climate crisis. BBC Travel and Future Planet explore two sides of our relationship with forests in two stories; this story is the second, and you can read the first here.
You might be forgiven for thinking that the global lockdown measures keeping us all at home can only have been good for the environment. Pollution in cities has decreased, wild animals have increasingly been spotted entering urban areas, and many new cycle lanes have opened up worldwide.
But in the world’s tropical forest regions, it’s another story. Environmental agencies have reported an uptick in deforestation during lockdowns, as well as increases in poaching, animal trafficking and illegal mining worldwide. The trends are alarming, environmental experts say, and could be hard to reverse.
“This narrative of nature having been given a break during Covid, it’s not entirely accurate. It’s accurate in cities and peri-urban areas,” says Sebastian Troeng, executive vice-president of Conservation International. “But unfortunately in the rural areas, the situation is almost the inverse.”
Troeng says it’s too soon for detailed data on the scale of the problem since lockdowns began, but their offices have been receiving almost daily reports of increased deforestation from around the world. Brazil and Colombia have seen an uptick in illegal logging and mining; the Philippines has also reported illegal logging and wildlife trafficking; Kenya has reported increased bushmeat and ivory poaching, as well as increases in charcoal production, which has been illegal since 2018; Cambodia has seen an increase in poaching, illegal logging and mining; and similar reports have come from Venezuela and Madagascar.
Concerns have also been raised in Malaysia and Indonesia, which have the highest deforestation rates in South-east Asia, while in Ecuador, indigenous and afro-descendent communities have reported increased illegal mining in the Choco and Amazon rainforests.
There are two main factors that could be driving these trends, says Troeng. The first is criminal groups and opportunists expanding their activities, taking advantage of lockdown and diminished forest monitoring and government presence. The second is that people living in these rural areas are facing increased economic pressures and are forced to rely more heavily on nature for food and income. In some cases, such as Madagascar and Cambodia, there has been a large urban-rural migration as people lose their jobs in the cities or return home to be with their families during quarantine, which has put extra pressure on local environments.
“What worries me is that we’re seeing these emerging trends, and they’re not going to be reversed when Covid measures are lifted because they’re related to economic factors. So my anticipation is that we’re going to have to deal with this for potentially months and years,” says Troeng.
Destruction of the rainforest will have severe ramifications. For indigenous and other communities who live there, it means a destruction of their way of life and may lead to conflict with the criminals who encroach on their territory. Studies have also shown that destroying rainforest ecosystems raises the odds of new pathogens making the jump from animals to humans. It also harms our ability to deal with climate change, as tropical forests are a key component in absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Amazon losses
One of Troeng’s biggest concerns right now is the Brazilian Amazon, which is seeing unprecedented levels of deforestation, increased illegal mining in indigenous territory and widespread cases of Covid-19 through Amazon communities.
“That’s what worries me. It’s the confluence of several bad things happening at the same time,” he says.
Brazil confirmed its first case of coronavirus on 28 February, but while most of the economy has since come to a halt as state and municipal government implement lockdown measures, deforestation has not. In April, rainforest destruction increased 64%, compared with the same month last year, according to the country’s space research agency, INPE. In the first four months of 2020, rainforest destruction rose by 55%, compared with the same time last year, clearing an area of 1,202 square kilometers (464 square miles).
“What we have seen with deforestation is that people are not afraid because they apparently think ‘the government is distracted with this health crisis, they won’t pay attention to us’,” says Ane Alencar, science director of the Brazilian environmental organisation, IPAM. “It’s an opportunistic thing.”
In March, the country’s two environmental enforcement agencies, Ibama and ICMBio, cut their forest monitoring services. The agencies said mobility restrictions impeded their ability to carry out their tasks, and they couldn’t risk the health of their staff or indigenous communities by trying to continue regular service.
Alencar says the majority of deforestation in 2020 so far happened through land grabbing of public property. Data released by IPAM show that the first three months of this year, 53% of this destruction took place on undesignated public land, protected areas and indigenous territories, compared to 38% last year. This will likely be turned into cattle land, Alencar says.
Deforestation in Brazil has spiked since last year, when President Jair Bolsonaro took office. Shortly after being sworn in, he began promoting the development of the Amazon rainforest, including indigenous reserves, calling it necessary to lift locals out of poverty. Last week, Bolsonaro authorised the army to deploy in the Amazon to fight fires and illegal logging. But environmentalists say this will not solve the problems on the ground in the long term. Alencar, and other conservationists, say the president’s own policies have helped bolster land grabbing, as well as illegal mining and logging.
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