Amazon rainforest being pushed ever nearer to a catastrophic tipping point
Aerial view of a burning area in Humaita, southern Amazonas State, Brazil. Picture: Michael Dantas/ AFP
Deforesting the Amazon When I was in school in the 1990s, logging in the Amazon rainforest was the most topical and pressing environmental issue. I remember researching an essay on Amazon deforestation for my geography class and becoming distressed at what I found out. Here were spectacularly layered forests, brimming with exotic and intriguing plants and animals, being destroyed as quickly as they were being explored. Indigenous peoples, custodians of these tropical forest habitat for far longer than any known ‘civilisation’ has endured, were being forcefully removed from their land.
Investments poured in to the region from entities such as the World Bank, financing thousands of kilometres of new access roads to accelerate logging and subsequent conversion to vast cattle ranches and soya-bean farms to feed factory farmed animals in far off continents.
A global campaign through the 1990s sought to end the destruction, boosted by pop-stars such as Annie Lennox, Phil Collins, and Sting calling attention to the situation. As teenagers, we were enthralled. The ‘Rio Earth Summit’ (correctly named the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, gave great hope that countries from across the world would work together to halt environmental degradation. Delegates to the Earth Summit established the Commission on Sustainable Development and world governments jointly declared the ‘Statement of principles for the Sustainable Management of Forests’. Both the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Climate Change Convention came in to being as a result of the Rio Earth summit.
More than 30 years later, the world is far more acutely aware of the planetary consequences of the loss of such large tracts of the Amazon rainforest. We now know, for example, that it contains 10% of all known terrestrial species on Earth, including 40,000 plant species, 3,000 freshwater fish species, and more than 370 types of reptiles, all components of intricately interconnected ecosystems. We also now understand that the Amazon rainforest stores an amount of carbon equivalent to 15–20 years of global carbon dioxide emissions; actively draws down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; and has a net cooling effect (from evapotranspiration) that helps to stabilise the Earth’s climate. We also know that the resilience of Amazon forests to drought events is weakening because of climate change.
In the 30 years since, major policy developments and legislative protections for biodiversity and climate have advanced. Yet the erasure of vast swathes of the Amazon rainforest continues apace. Between 2010 and 2020, 24,000 square miles were deforested, equivalent to the area of 8.4 million soccer fields. Rates of deforestation increased under former Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro. He stated that saving the Amazon rainforest is an impediment to economic growth and that “where there is indigenous land, there is wealth underneath it” — referring to opportunities for expanding cattle ranching and soya- bean production on cleared land.
Now, legislation is looming in Brazil that threatens to further limit Indigenous peoples’ land rights and facilitate the expansion of mining, cattle ranching and soya-bean production in the region. Initially the Bill was passed, supported by former right-wing President Bolsonaro and his allies in Brazil’s powerful agriculture industry. Current progressive president Lula da Silva, elected in 2022, then vetoed the Bill, only for the veto to be overturned by a conservative majority in the country’s congress. The issue now being decided upon in the country’s courts.
If passed, the Bill could lead to the deforestation of 8.5 million hectares (21 million acres) by increasing what is considered legal deforestation. One aspect of concern for Brazil’s agribusiness associations, including the Brazilian Association of Soybean Producers, is that new EU legislation tackling deforestation will restrict imports of products, such as soya beans, that are linked with illegal deforestation. If the deforestation is made legal, agricultural produce from cleared rainforest land will be permitted continued access to EU markets, including soyabeans being fed to Irish pigs and dairy cows.
Our own President Michael D Higgins has stated that the Bill “endangers all of humanity, present and future” and is a “threat to democracy and the world” on account of the extreme lobbying that has led to it and the climate implications of continued rainforest destruction that the passing of the bill would facilitate. He has urged the European Union to support President Lula da Silva in his stand against “the derailment of democracy”.
A significant consumer of the soya beans grown on cleared rainforest land are Irish farm animals. We import upwards of 4 million tonnes of animal feed each year to feed our national herd of dairy cows, pigs and poultry. Soya beans from Argentina, Brazil, and the USA comprise a major component of these feed imports, which makes Ireland a direct supporter, via trade, of Amazon deforestation.
Meanwhile, scientists across the world are warning that the entire Amazon rainforest is being pushed ever nearer to a catastrophic tipping point.
Maintaining the integrity of the Amazon forest, 60% of which is in Brazil, will depend on whether the international community can act to support protection efforts. President Lulu De Silva’s government is attempting to implement a range of protections for the forest and its indigenous communities who live there, though these are being directly challenged and undermined by powerful agri-industry lobby groups. Intervention is urgently needed from the international community to support the improvements in environmental protection, including support for governments of other countries in the Amazon basin who are attempting to collaborate on a shared conservation strategy. Supply chain issues, in which countries like Ireland are importing soya from Amazon clearances, must also be acknowledged and addressed here at home.
More than 30 years after my childhood fascination with the Amazon rainforest the clearances are ongoing. Other challenges now draw our collective attention, similarly pressing topics that the 13-year-olds of today are finding out about and taking action on. But we must not let our attention slide from this current challenge to the integrity of Amazon, and those in power must speak up to support those fighting the good fight, and in doing so stand up for the values that may just save us all.
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