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Charlie Rogers / Moment / Getty Images
As the COVID-19 virus was spreading around the world, deforestation in the world's rainforests rose at an alarming rate, the German arm of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said in a study published on Thursday.
<p>The study, which analyzed satellite data of 18 countries compiled by the University of Maryland, found that deforestation rose by 150% this March compared 2017-2019 average for the same calendar month.</p>
<p>Around 6,500 square kilometers (2,510 square miles) of rainforest were felled in March alone — an area seven times the size of Berlin, the WWF said.</p><p>"This indicates that we're dealing with a coronavirus effect on the exploding rates of deforestation," Christoph Heinrich, the head of nature conservation with WWF Germany, said in a statement.</p>
Indonesia Forests Hit Hardest
<p>The forests most heavily hit by deforestation in March were in Indonesia, with more than 1,300 square kilometers lost. </p><p>The Democratic Republic of Congo saw the second-largest forest loss with 1,000 square kilometers followed by Brazil with 950 square kilometers.</p><p>The Brazilian non-profit research institute Imazon told news agency DPA that deforestation was up in April as well. The institute recorded a loss of 529 square kilometers in the Amazon in April, a rise of 171% compared to last year.</p>Tied to COVID-19
<p>The WWF says there's ample evidence to suggest the boom in rainforest deforestation is being fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><p>With stay-at-home orders and strict lockdowns in place in countries around the world, authorities haven't been able to patrol nature preserves and indigenous territories as often — a situation that criminal organizations and illegal loggers have been using to their advantage.</p><p>The virus has also prompted massive job losses in many countries, leaving many newly-unemployed people increasingly desperate for sources of income.</p><p>The WWF noted that the legal timber trade is a substantial source of income for several African countries but is virtually on ice amid various coronavirus shutdowns. The broken supply chains have led to concerns that the forests are losing their value and forest conservation efforts are losing their foothold.</p><p>Along the Mekong River in southeast Asia, tourists have disappeared and with them a substantial source of income for local merchants selling forest products like honey, nuts or berries. Many have left the cities and returned to their home villages and are cutting down trees for firewood or a source of income.</p><p>The WWF said governments providing financial and technological support to locals could help reduce the rise in deforestation.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/wwf-rainforest-deforestation-more-than-doubled-under-cover-of-coronavirus/a-53526064" target="_blank">Deutsche Welle</a>.</em><em></em></p>From Your Site Articles
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The Ebo Forest in Cameroon, Africa, is a biodiversity hotspot, home to an amazing range of wildlife, including forest elephants, gorillas, drills, chimpanzees, grey parrots and the goliath frog. San Diego Zoo Global
By Lamfu Fabrice Yengong and Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue
Biodiversity loss is a global crisis. In May last year, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warned that over 1,000,000 species are threatened with extinction worldwide. On May 22, the International Day of Biodiversity, it is important to recall the silent victims of our country's obsession for industrial growth at the expense of our forests.
<p>Tropical rainforests are estimated to harbor more than half of the world's plant and animal species. They are also essential for access to water, regulating temperature and preventing soil erosion. It's time to return the forests to indigenous and local communities. </p><p>In our country, Cameroon, the conservation of biodiversity, global climate goals and human rights of indigenous and local communities are all put at stake for industrial exploitation of the rainforest, driven by short-sighted thinking. Biodiversity hotspots are put at risk by industrial logging and agriculture, as trees are cut for the tropical timber market and entire forests cleared to make room for oil palm and rubber plantations. The government tries to assure conservationists that some space will be reserved for the wildlife in the forest it trashes, but even protected areas are not truly safe. </p><p>Companies, usually foreign-owned, are rapidly destroying rainforests that have existed for years. Local communities are left poorer after their traditional source of livelihood is desecrated. The only ones getting rich are a small group of beneficiaries that are close to the circles of power. </p><p>Some low-income countries that are rich in forests are resorting to quick solutions like logging and industrial agriculture. But industrial logging concessions and rubber and palm oil plantations are never the job-creating mechanism they promise to be. That has been demonstrated over and over again in forest countries around the world.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/407/" target="_blank">the Dja Faunal Reserve</a>, a UNESCO world heritage site in the South of Cameroon, is home to more than 100 species of mammals, including at least 14 primates, such as the endangered western lowland gorilla, chimpanzee, and white-collared mangabey, as well as species such as the endangered forest elephant, and the African grey parrot, bongo antelope and leopard.</p><p>The Dja Faunal Reserve is adjacent to the Sudcam rubber plantation, mainly owned by rubber giant Halcyon Agri. Sudcam has cleared more than 10,000 hectares (approximately 25,000 acres) of dense tropical rainforest in the South region of Cameroon – an equivalent of 10 football pitches a day – to make way for a rubber plantation between 2011 and 2018. The rubber plantation has rattled the lives of several indigenous communities, namely the Baka, but it has also aggravated the lives of those numerous protected species in the Dja Reserve.</p><p>To indigenous and local forest dependent communities, the rainforest serves as a source of nutritious foods and traditional medicine, much of which science has yet to explore. The forest is also the foundation of their social life, from recreational to ritual practices. Furthermore, biodiversity loss itself is a direct and immediate threat to the livelihood of indigenous peoples like the Baka next to the Sudcam plantation.</p><p>Upon the arrival of rubber company Sudcam, the indigenous community has lost access to its forest and specifically to the animals and plants they rely on. As Sudcam gets richer, it leaves entire communities in impoverishment, abjectness and destitution. </p>
<p>That is the fate which the chiefs of the Banen people of the Littoral region in Cameroon are trying to avoid <a href="http://www.cameroon-info.net/article/cameroun-denonciation-le-peuple-banen-du-littoral-soppose-a-la-confiscation-de-ses-terres-371484.html" target="_blank">in their current struggle</a> against the destruction of large parts of the Ebo forest. </p><p>The <a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/blog/ebo-forest-a-stronghold-for-cameroons-wildlife/" target="_blank">Ebo Forest</a> is a biodiversity hotspot, one of the intact forest ecosystems in the Gulf of Guinea, stretching over 2000 square kilometers (approximately 772 square miles). Ebo Forest is home to an amazing range of wildlife, including forest elephants, gorillas, drills, chimpanzees, grey parrots and the goliath frog – the largest living frog on the planet. Accordingly, it was designated over a decade ago by the Cameroon Government as a National Park. </p><p>However, on February 4, the same government of Cameroon authorized two logging concessions (<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P8O3pc1JeLaAnDF1ERXvRrIAzjnw09SG/view" target="_blank">UFA07005</a> and <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n2cgvavirDdYmApiTd5vLV0hQRova6Ed/view" target="_blank">UFA07006</a>) inside the area of Ebo Forest. The planned concessions are enormous – about the size of London. Again, the government of Cameroon wants to convince us that conservation can be done with chainsaws. </p><p>Biodiversity loss doesn't only mean our children would get to see some of the world's most marvelous creatures only in documentary films. The consequences are far greater and more tangible.</p>
<p>The extinction of forest elephants, for example, small relatives of African Savanna elephants, might also reduce the number of large trees that they support, trees that excel at storing carbon. In the Congo Basin forest, the disappearance of forest elephants might mean a loss of about three billion tons of carbon – equivalent to France's CO2 emissions over more than 25 years, according to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/science/elephants-climate-change.html" target="_blank">New York Times article</a> on recent research published in the journal <em>Nature Geoscience.</em> </p><p>Cameroon's government has made public commitments to preserve and protect biodiversity. Positive declarations and ambitious plans may win applause and some international funding, but all eyes should be on implementation. <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/press/8593/we-were-told-not-to-go-into-the-forest-anymore-greenpeace-investigation-exposes-human-rights-violations-by-halcyon-agri/" target="_blank">Field investigations by Greenpeace Africa</a> and others clearly show how far we are from protecting biodiversity. </p><p>In Cameroon's government, as well as in the meeting rooms and corridors of development agencies, decision makers often hold outdated views. Too often we hear that only through rapid and massive removal of the rainforest in favor of large-scale logging and industrial agriculture plantations can the country emerge out of poverty. </p><p>Yet that model has repeatedly failed the people, as short-term high profits always remained accessible only to a small circle of beneficiaries. On the contrary, local communities who have lived in harmony with nature for many generations are likely to face poverty, abuse, hunger and alcoholism <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-sustainable-development-ravaged-the-congo-basin/" target="_blank">wherever</a> forests are suddenly destroyed. It is becoming increasingly clear that the best solution for both human rights and the planet is for forests to be managed by local communities. They do so much better than the industrial loggers or plantation owners. </p>
<p>The Cameroonian government needs to realize that trashing forests is not the way to make the economy grow. Rapid and intensive exploitation of nature has more far-reaching consequences than short-term economic growth. To prevent the extinction of fauna and flora species, indigenous communities that live among them need the rights to manage their forest.</p>
<p>Standing for biodiversity means communities should get the rights to manage their forests, instead of the corporations that destroy them. </p>
<p class=""><em>Lamfu Fabrice Yengong is a Congo Basin researcher. </em></p><p><em>Sylvie Djacbou Deugoue is a forest campaigner for Greenpeace Africa.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Aerial view of the Esperanca IV informal gold mining camp, near the Menkragnoti indigenous territory, in Altamira, Para state, Brazil, in the Amazon basin, on August 28, 2019. Joao LAET / AFP / Getty Images
By Peter Yeung
From the skies above Creporizao, a remote town in the south of the Brazilian Amazon, the surrounding area looks like a vast blanket of dark green rainforest. But along the dirt roads and rivers that run through it like arteries are telling patches of muddy brown: illegal gold mines.
<p>Wildcat miners come to the area seeking their fortune. Every day, hundreds of laborers embark on long journeys up and down the Crepori river to reach the gold pits, while others fly in on small planes that land on makeshift airstrips. Such scenes have become common across the world's largest rainforest, and are being held up as the cause of widespread destruction.<br></p><p>Jose Maria, a miner from the state of Maranhao, some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to the east — who does not reveal his full name — is waiting on the river banks for a ride. "We're here to do honest work and earn a living," he said. "I don't see what the problem is."</p>
<p>But the pits where Jose Maria and fellow miners work are located on the more than two million-hectare territory of the Munduruku, one of the largest indigenous tribes in the Amazon, whose mineral-rich lands are protected under Brazil's 1988 Constitution.</p><p>A 2019 survey by polling institute Datafolha showed 86% of Brazilians oppose mining on indigenous territory, yet it has been encouraged by Brazilian president <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazils-bolsonaro-proposes-bill-allowing-mining-on-indigenous-land/a-52273665" target="_blank">Jair Bolsonaro's controversial bill, which calls for the legalization of commercial mining on indigenous land.</a></p><p>Submitted to Brazil's Congress in early February, the bill has yet to be put to a vote. A planned ballot was pushed back with the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Maia, telling Congress it was "not the right moment." But he also stressed that the bill was "not unconstitutional."</p>
<p>Brazil's Ministry of Mines and Energy told DW it was planning to "regulate activities" on indigenous land, adding that the process would require "consultation with the indigenous communities," which would be able to participate in mining activity.</p><p>While some in the Munduruku have been won over by the allure of riches, and allow gold extraction on their land in exchange for money, the majority remain opposed to illegal mining.</p>
'Full-scale gold rush'
<p>About 13% of Brazil's territory is classified as indigenous land, spread across more than 400 reserves. But <a href="https://www.amazoniasocioambiental.org/en/" target="_blank">according to the Amazon Geo-Referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network</a>, there are more than 450 illegal mining sites in the Brazilian Amazon, where most of those reserves are located.</p><p>The proposed law would likely lead to a dramatic rise in the level of mining activity.</p><p>"Once you open the door, it will become a flood," Glenn Shepard, an American anthropologist who works with indigenous populations affected by illegal mining, told DW. "The law will create a precedent for miners to go in. It's already a full-scale gold rush going on, and these indigenous groups are losing control."</p><p>Greenpeace's journalism team, Unearthed, has reported that <a href="https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2020/04/03/coronavirus-brazil-amazon-gold-rush-indigenous-groups-deforestation/" target="_blank">gold miners planned to continue working through the coronavirus pandemic</a>, increasing fears of spreading the disease to indigenous groups. </p><p>In advance of the vote on the bill, the Ministry of Mines and Energy told DW it had received more than 4,000 applications for mining-related activities on indigenous land.</p><p><a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazilian-indigenous-tribesmen-shot-in-hit-and-run-attack/a-51574624" target="_blank">Tensions between miners and local communities are already high.</a> In June last year, Brazil's indigenous rights agency, Funai, reported dozens of miners dressed in military uniform invading the Wajapi community, in the Brazilian Amazon, stabbing and killing one of its leaders.</p><p><a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/spotlight-criminalisation-land-and-environmental-defenders/" target="_blank">According to research by international NGO, Global Witness</a>, 20 land and environmental defenders were killed in Brazil in 2018 alone. Globally, the nonprofit cited mining as the deadliest sector, with 46 reported murders in the same year.</p>
The deforestation issue
<p>Environmentally, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/amazon-sees-alarming-rise-in-deforestation/a-51668498" target="_blank">one of the biggest impacts of mining is logging.</a> A 2017 report published in the journal Nature Communications found that mining accounted for 9% of all forest loss in the Amazon between 2005 and 2015.</p><p>Satellite <a href="https://maaproject.org/2020/gold_brazil/" target="_blank">analysis </a>published by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project revealed that 2,000 hectares of gold mining-related deforestation occurred in 2019 across the Munduruku indigenous reserve, more than double the amount recorded the year before.</p><p>Last November dozens of tribal leaders from the Amazon met with officials in Brasilia to file claims and report serious threats to their territories.</p><p>Alessandra Korap Munduruku, a leader from Para state who attended the meeting, says the legalization of mining would "be the death of our people."</p><p>Besides bringing "disease and prostitution to our people, drug addiction to our children, and violent conflict to the Munduruku men," she said gold mining activity is also killing fish through mercury poisoning.</p><p>Released across the region's major Tapajos River during the mining process, mercury is seeping into the tributaries like those that snake past the mining town of Creporizao. Local communities rely on these rivers for many of their water needs.</p><p>Late last year, in the first study of its kind, Erik Jennings, a neurologist based in the city of Santarem, took blood and hair samples from 112 tribespeople to assess mercury levels.</p><p>"It's a slow genocide," Jennings told DW. "The mercury can cause serious cognitive and visual impairment, and deform fetuses."</p>
Problematic legal trade
<p>Even the legal gold trade in Brazil is largely unregulated, which facilitates illegal business and plays a significant role in the destruction of the Amazon. Prosecutors in Para state say the lack of regulation in the legal trade and the fact that receipts are paper-based carbon copies make it easy for criminals to thrive and illegal gold to enter the legal system.</p><p>"The practice of fraud in the sector is quite easy, and the investigation of illegalities becomes an almost insurmountable obstacle," Luis de Camoes Lima Boaventura, public prosecutor in the Amazonian city of Santarem said.</p><p>"Until a computerized system is installed, the authorities cannot check, in real time, the legality of the transactions. To make a transaction of illegal gold, all you currently need is a pen and paper."</p><p>According to National Mining Agency estimates, around 30 tons of gold worth some 4.5 billion reals ($1.1 billion, €900 million) are illegally traded in the state of Para annually. That is around six times more than the amount legally declared.</p><p>When miners like Jose Maria return to Creporizao at the end of what can be days away, they come to one of a dozen gold shops that line the main drag to melt what they have mined into standardized bars. Once that is done, illegally-mined gold, which is responsible for widespread deforestation, pollution and violence in the Amazon, has entered the system and can no longer be traced.</p>From Your Site Articles
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Land clearing by Digoel Agri. Pusaka
A new company has begun clearing rainforest in an area of Indonesia's easternmost Papua province earmarked to become the world's largest oil palm plantation, in a vast project that has been mired in allegations of lawbreaking.
<p>If seen through to completion, the Tanah Merah project will generate an estimated $6 billion in timber and create a plantation almost twice the size of London, at the heart of the largest tract of intact rainforest left in Asia. It will also release an immense amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, at a time when Indonesia has committed to reducing <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/emissions" rel="noopener noreferrer">emissions</a> from <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/deforestation" rel="noopener noreferrer">deforestation</a>.<em></em></p>
<p>Since March of last year, the Digoel Agri Group, founded by a politically connected Jakarta family and now backed by an investor from New Zealand, has bulldozed 170 hectares (420 acres) of rainforest in a section of the project previously spared from land clearing, satellite imagery shows.</p><p>The clearance amounts to a fraction of the 280,000 hectares (692,000 acres) allocated for the project, now controlled by several different conglomerates. But it signals that deforestation could quickly accelerate after a decade of false starts by other investors.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjg5NzQzNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwOTU3MjkwMH0.Dvf-M0hbY-fIaELT0R0DyctTdKkOvGwuLzd1eXrnbJI/img.jpg?width=980" id="78247" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f4d56d58401899bcc49dd41f190d8a9c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
A satellite view of Digoel Agri's forest clearance, seen in late November 2019.
<p>Since it was first conceived in 2007, the rights to the project have changed hands several times, involving a string of investors who have deployed crude and complex corporate secrecy techniques to hide their identities.</p><p>The licensing process for the project has been plagued by irregularities. A cross-border <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/the-secret-deal-to-destroy-paradise/" target="_blank">investigation</a> by The Gecko Project, Mongabay, Malaysiakini and Tempo, published in November 2018, revealed that key permits were signed by an elected official who was simultaneously serving a prison sentence for embezzling state funds.</p><p>A subsequent <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/revealed-government-officials-say-permits-for-mega-plantation-in-papua-were-falsified/" target="_blank">report</a> found that officials believe other essential permits — for both the plantation and a giant sawmill to process the timber — were falsified.</p><p>Two companies, majority-owned by anonymous firms registered in the United Arab Emirates, began operating on the basis of these permits, to the north of the land now held by Digoel Agri. In response to written questions from The Gecko Project and Mongabay they have denied the allegation that the permits were falsified.</p><p>On paper, Digoel Agri's involvement in the project represents a clean break from those allegations. The firm arrived on the scene after the suspect permits held by earlier investors were revoked and reassigned to it.</p><p>Jackson Iqbal de Hesselle, 32, a member of the Rumangkang family, which is behind Digoel Agri, said its operations were clean. "We're obeying the rules," he said in a recent interview at the firm's office in Jayapura, the capital of Papua province.</p><p>However, while there are no apparent links between Digoel Agri and the previous investors, its ability to operate is partly predicated on the allegedly compromised licensing process that went before.</p><p>The legal basis of Digoel Agri's activities rests partly on decrees rezoning the land to allow development, issued by the Ministry of Forestry in 2012, following requests from earlier investors. The applications were based on the plantation permits that were allegedly falsified.</p><p>As of late last year, Indonesian authorities had yet to investigate the allegations, officials from several agencies <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/revealed-government-officials-say-permits-for-mega-plantation-in-papua-were-falsified/" target="_blank">said at the time</a>.</p><p>NGOs scrutinizing the project assert that officials rushed into reallocating the lands to new investors without properly considering the allegations of irregularities in the licensing process and the environmental and social impacts the project would have.</p><p>Arie Rompas, the head of forest campaigns at Greenpeace Indonesia, called the Tanah Merah project a "public scandal" and said the permits underlying it should be examined and revoked.</p><p>"There is still an opportunity to save this area," he said.</p>
Enter the Rumangkangs
<p>Digoel Agri was set up by members of the Rumangkang family, according to the Indonesian government's corporate registry. The late family patriarch, Ventje Rumangkang, who <a href="https://kumparan.com/kumparannews/pendiri-partai-demokrat-ventje-rumangkang-meninggal-dunia-1stwRMdnjsT" target="_blank">died</a> in February at the age of 74, was a founder of Indonesia's Democratic Party, the vehicle for Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's successful presidential run in 2004.</p><p>At their office in Jayapura, Jackson and his brother Jones Rumangkang, 44, said they had decided to invest in the Tanah Merah project after being encouraged to do so by bureaucrats in Boven Digoel, the district in which the project is located. They then formed several companies under the Digoel Agri brand and set about acquiring the permits.</p><p>The brothers said they were helped along by Fabianus Senfahagi, the head of a local indigenous people's association. He had played a role shepherding through the project in its early stages, <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/the-secret-deal-to-destroy-paradise/" target="_blank">accompanying</a> surveyors sent by other investors around 2012.</p><p>A paper trail of correspondence among Fabianus and government officials shows he subsequently agitated for the permits to be revoked and reassigned to the Digoel Agri Group.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjg5NzQzOS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMzYxNzczMX0.ZcD-KdlSgXx5kqObg-YRDbnfnUz4QLIR0D7G_E2I25s/img.png?width=980" id="e849c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c7a429fa0a26cf860930a108f7da9c6f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" /><p>His letters to the district government in 2014 claimed the local Auyu people were anxiously waiting for the project to begin. By this time, the land concessions that would be transferred to the Rumangkangs were majority-owned by Tadmax Resources, a Malaysian logging and property conglomerate. Minority stakes were retained by the Menara Group, an enigmatic Jakarta firm that brought the project to life in 2010.</p><p>Over the next three years, the permits held by Tadmax and Menara were revoked by the district and provincial governments. The stated rationale for cancelling them was the companies' failure to begin operating. However, bureaucrats at the Papua investment agency had also raised concerns that some of the permits had been falsified.</p><p>Tadmax and Menara have not responded to repeated requests to comment on these allegations.</p><p>By 2017, the concessions previously held by Tadmax and Menara had been reallocated to the Digoel Agri Group.</p>
<p>In early 2019, Tadmax and Menara challenged this decision. A letter to the central government from Dr. Sadino & Partners, a law firm representing the joint investors, accused officials of illegally revoking the permits. They also argued that anyone using the same land on the basis of new permits — like the ones underlying Digoel Agri's operations — was committing a crime.</p><p>Jones and Jackson insisted that Digoel Agri was in compliance with the law and had obtained the permits it needed to begin operating, from the district and provincial governments.</p><p>Ordinarily, to convert rainforest to a plantation, Digoel Agri would also have needed to apply to the forestry ministry in Jakarta to rezone the land for development. But by the time the Rumangkangs arrived in Papua, this process had already taken place.</p><p>The Menara Group and its co-investors had obtained decrees rezoning the land from the then-minister in 2011. These decrees were issued on the basis of permits that provincial government officials have repeatedly reported were falsified.</p>
<p>In an interview last year, Sigit Hardwinarto, the ministry's director-general of forest planning, said the rezoning could be reviewed if the allegation that the permits had been falsified was reported to his department.</p><p>The rezoning of the land is a legacy of the administration of President Yudhoyono and then-Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan. During his tenure, Zulkifli <a href="http://www.greenomics.org/vast-majority-of-palm-oil-permits-granted-by-sby-regime" target="_blank">reportedly</a> rezoned 2.4 million hectares (5.9 million acres) of land for conversion to oil palm plantations.</p><p>Yudhoyono's successor, President Joko Widodo, and the new forestry minister, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, have sought to strike a different path. In 2018, Widodo <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/09/indonesian-president-signs-3-year-freeze-on-new-oil-palm-licenses/" target="_blank">signed</a> a three-year moratorium on the issuance of new licenses for oil palm plantations.</p><p>The policy had been announced in the wake of Indonesia's 2015 fire and haze crisis, in which Indonesia's vast peat swamps burned as a result of agricultural fires from the oil palm and timber plantation industries. Toxic smoke from the fires drifted into neighboring countries, creating a public health crisis.</p><p>The moratorium explicitly barred the forestry ministry from rezoning land for oil palm development. It also instructed the cabinet to review all existing oil palm permits with an eye toward possibly revoking them. Several weeks after the president first declared he would sign the moratorium, in 2016, Siti singled out the Tanah Merah project as one that merited scrutiny.</p><p>In comments posted on her <a href="http://www.sitinurbaya.com/kegiatan-menteri-lhk/569-unprecedented-steps-taken-to-reinforce-presidents-palm-oil-expansion-moratorium" target="_blank">personal website</a>, Siti referred disparagingly to the fact that the project appeared to have been established so the licenses could be "traded" to Malaysian investors, and said the president had instructed her to prioritize implementing the moratorium in Papua.</p><p>"We really have to safeguard [the forests of Papua] and must formulate and implement a development concept in Papua to the best of our ability," she quoted Widodo as telling her.</p><p>However, neither these policies nor the allegations around the Tanah Merah project have stymied its progress under the direction of new investors. NGOs monitoring the implementation of the moratorium have noted limited progress in Papua.</p><p>"There has been no significant progress in how this policy is implemented," said Arie, the Greenpeace campaigner. "The Tanah Merah project should be a strong case to see how this [policy] can be carried out seriously and effectively."</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjg5NzQ0NS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5NDI5MzkxNH0.pdeCBRSpo4RBY_jHYpiQcB97hicn5vCvDircXLw271s/img.png?width=980" id="490ad" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3e81cf5fcb4e682a7e2b84c7c1baa808" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
A road cuts through one of the Digoel Agri land concessions, seen in January. Pusaka
Competing Interests
<p>The Rumangkangs insist that the project will benefit the Auyu people. Jones said the ones he met were overjoyed about the prospect of a plantation on their land.</p><p>"They didn't just ask, they cried," he said. "The Auyu tribe is the poorest in Boven Digoel, even though they're so rich [in natural resources]."</p><p>The Rumangkangs have enlisted foreign investors to help them develop the plantation. Their chief partner is a New Zealand property developer named Neville Mahon. In 2018, Mahon became the majority shareholder of the Digoel Agri subsidiaries with land concessions in the project. He could not be reached for comment.</p><p>Mahon associate Thirunavukarasu Selva Nithan, an Australian national, is the sole director of the three companies, corporate records show. Contacted by email, he said he had resigned his position and directed questions to Jackson.</p><p>The involvement of these investors adds to a growing list of actors from across the world with a stake in what could become the world's largest stretch of oil palm. Malaysian logging giant Shin Yang has constructed a sawmill to process timber from the project.</p><p>North of the Digoel Agri concessions, investors whose identities are hidden behind anonymously owned companies in the United Arab Emirates have also begun clearing land, with the Menara Group and the sister of a prominent politician from Indonesia's National Mandate Party as their minor partners. So far, they've bulldozed 8,300 hectares (20,500 acres) of forest, nearly 3% of the project's total area.</p><p>Yet another firm holds the rights to the northernmost block of the project. Corporate records show it is majority owned by two holding companies registered to a letterbox address in Malaysia. The minor shareholder in that venture is the Malaysian logging giant Rimbunan Hijau.</p><p>Many Auyu remain steadfastly opposed to the Tanah Merah project, according to Franky Samperante, the director of Pusaka, an Indonesian nonprofit that advocates for indigenous peoples' rights.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjg5NzQ0Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMjEzMDU3OX0.N5bvUeHwDRD4y0fyN1WJY00sNEoVMmmP9ljXWsmLQ0Y/img.jpg?width=980" id="bdb0a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9b24cd26b8abc8784869535ba9d4a23c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/new-player-starts-clearing-rainforest-in-worlds-biggest-oil-palm-project/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mongabay</a>.</em></p>Franky Samperante. Sandy Watt / The Gecko Project
<p>On a recent trip to the area, he found that members of the Kemon clan, whose land has been targeted by Digoel Agri, did not want the plantation to go ahead on the grounds that it would destroy their food and water supplies.</p><p>He questioned the government's decision to allow the plantation to move ahead, without investigating the allegation that permits held by the earlier investors had been falsified.</p><p>"In light of the irregularities that have arisen, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry must review the decrees rezoning the land," he said. "The government must impose sanctions on the perpetrators."</p>From Your Site Articles
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Satellite mapping of the devastating fires that swept through the rainforest in August last year. NASA Earth Observatory / Joshua Stevens
By Jessica Rawnsley
Antonio Donato Nobre is passionate about the Amazon region and despairs about the level of deforestation taking place in what is the world's biggest rainforest.
<p>"Just when I thought the destruction couldn't get any worse, it has," says <a href="https://fru.to/en/palestrante/antonio-donato-nobre-en/" target="_blank">Nobre, one of Brazil's leading scientists</a> who has studied the Amazon — its unique flora and fauna, and its influence on both the local and global climate — for more than 40 years.</p>
<p>"In terms of the Earth's climate, we have gone beyond the point of no return. There's no doubt about this."</p><p>For decades, he has fought against deforestation. There have been considerable ups and downs in that time, but he points out that Brazil was once a world-leader in controlling deforestation.</p><p>"We developed the system that's now being used by other countries," he told Climate News Network in an interview during his lecture tour of the UK.</p><p>"Using satellite data, we monitored and we controlled. From 2005 to 2012, Brazil managed to reduce up to 83% of deforestation."</p>
Dramatic Increase
<p>Then the law on land use was relaxed, and deforestation increased dramatically — by as much as 200 percent between 2017 and 2018.</p><p>It's all become much worse since Jair Bolsonaro became Brazilian president at the beginning of last year, Nobre says.</p><p>"There are some dangerous people in office," he says. "The Minister of Environment is a <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-brazil-politics-minister/brazils-incoming-environment-minister-found-guilty-of-improper-conduct-idUKKCN1OJ2U1" target="_blank">convicted criminal.</a> The Minister of Foreign Affairs is a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/15/brazil-foreign-minister-ernesto-araujo-climate-change-marxist-plot" target="_blank">climate sceptic</a>."</p><p>Nobre argues that Bolsonaro doesn't care about the Amazon and has contempt for environmentalists.</p><p>His administration is encouraging the land grabbers who illegally take over protected or indigenous tribal land, which they then sell on to cattle ranchers and soybean conglomerates.</p><p>For indigenous tribes, life has become more dangerous. "They are being murdered, their land is being invaded," Nobre says.</p><p>In August last year, the world watched as large areas of the Amazon region — a <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/tropical-forests-may-be-heating-earth-by-2035/" target="_blank">vital carbon sink</a> sucking up and recycling global greenhouse gases — went up in flames.</p><p>Nobre says the land grabbers had organised what they called a "day of fires" in August last year to honour Bolsonaro.</p><p>"Thousands of people organized, through WhatsApp, to make something visible from space," he says. "They hired people on motorbikes with gasoline jugs to <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/bolsonaros-legal-bonfire-fuels-amazon-inferno/" target="_blank">set fire to any land they could</a>."</p><p>The impact on the Amazon is catastrophic, Nobre says. "Half of the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/amazon-rainforest">Amazon rainforest</a> to the east is gone — it's losing the battle, going in the direction of a savanna.</p><p>"When you clear land in a healthy system, it bounces back. But once you cross a certain threshold, a tipping point, it turns into a different kind of equilibrium. It becomes drier, there's less rain. It's no longer a forest."</p><p>As well as storing and recycling vast amounts of greenhouse gas, the trees in the Amazon play a vital role in harvesting heat from the Earth's surface and transforming water vapour into condensation above the forest. This acts like a giant sprinkler system in the sky, Nobre explains..</p><p>When the trees go and this system breaks down, the climate alters not only in the Amazon region but over a much wider area.</p>
Time Running Out
<p>"We used to say the Amazon had two seasons: the wet season and the wetter season," Nobre says. "Now, you have many months without a drop of water."</p><p>Nobre spent many years living and carrying out research in the rainforest and is now attached to <a href="http://www3.inpe.br/50anos/english/presentation.php" target="_blank">Brazil's National Institute for Space Research</a> (INPE).</p><p>The vast majority of Brazilians, he says, are against deforestation and are concerned about climate change — but while he believes that there is still hope for the rainforest, he says that time is fast running out.</p><p>Many leading figures in Brazil, including a group of powerful generals, have been shocked by the international reaction to the recent spate of fires in the Amazon and fear that the country is becoming a pariah on the global stage.</p><p>Nobre is angry with his own government, but also with what he describes as the massive conspiracy on climate change perpetrated over the years by the oil, gas and coal lobbies.</p><p>Ever since the late 1970s, the fossil fuel companies' scientists have known about the consequences of the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.</p><p>"They brought us to this situation knowingly," Nobre says. "It's not something they did out of irresponsible ignorance. They paid to bash the science."<em></em></p><p><em>Jessica Rawnsley is a UK-based environmental journalist. She has written stories on the Extinction Rebellion movement and police tactics connected with demonstrations. She has a particular interest in campaigning groups and their influence on government climate policies.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://climatenewsnetwork.net/rainforest/" target="_blank">Climate News Network</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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According to a new study the Amazon rainforest could die in 49 years and rapid deforestation is seen as the main culprit. luoman / E+ / Getty Images
Bigger ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest and the Caribbean coral reefs could be in danger of collapsing more rapidly than was previously assumed, a study has found.
<p>The findings, published Tuesday, also indicated that larger ecosystems may disintegrate at a faster rate than smaller ones.</p>
<p>"The messages here are stark. We need to prepare for changes in our planet's ecosystems that are faster than we previously envisaged," said Professor John Dearing of the University of Southampton, who led the study published in the journal Nature Communications.</p><p>According to the study, once the threshold is passed, the Amazon rainforest could die in 49 years, while the Caribbean coral reefs would take less than 15 years to collapse completely. In the first case, rapid deforestation is seen as the main culprit, while pollution and acidification is the main factor affecting the health of the corals.</p><p>"These findings are yet another call for halting the current damage being imposed on our natural environments that pushes ecosystems to their limits," Dearing concluded.</p>
<p>While large ecosystems take longer to reach their tipping point because of their size, once this point is reached, the deterioration occurs at a faster pace than smaller systems, the study found.</p><p>It studied 42 different ecosystems - including terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems - that varied vastly in size. Critics of this study, however, think that this was not enough, as there was no tropical rainforest included in the terrestrial ecosystems studied.</p><p>"It is very unlikely, if not dystopian, to expect that an area half the size of Europe will experience a complete shift in vegetation in just 50 years," Erika Berenguer, a senior research associate at the University of Oxford, told the Reuters news agency.</p>
<p>"While there is no doubt that the Amazon is at great risk and that a tipping point is likely, such inflated claims do not help either science or policymaking," she added.</p><p>However, the study's authors think that humanity may need to prepare for change sooner than expected, as the Amazon rainforest could reach its tipping point as early as next year.</p><p><span></span><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/amazon-ecosystem-could-collapse-in-less-than-50-years/a-52716809?maca=en-VAM_volltext_ecowatch-28485-html-copypaste" target="_blank">Deutsche Welle</a>.</em></p>
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Mexico Is Letting an Oil Company Destroy Protected Mangroves for an $8 Billion Oil Refinery
06 March
Energy
Planet Labs / Quartz
Mexico's president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ordered state-owned oil company, Pemex, to build an $8 billion oil refinery. So, the company has followed orders and razed protected mangrove trees to clear way for the controversial project, according to Quartz. Satellite images posted on Quartz show the cleared land to accommodate the construction.
<p>Mangrove forests, which straddle land and sea, provide enormous environmental benefits. Not only do the sequester carbon, pulling greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere, they reduce flooding and erosion from storms, serve as nurseries for fish and filter pollutants from water. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel_Alongi2/publication/274116107_Carbon_sequestration_in_mangrove_forests/links/556b926408aec22683037b84.pdf" target="_blank">Research shows</a> that, tree-for-tree, mangroves trap three to five times more carbon than rainforests can. </p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjg1NTE1Ny9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwODAyMTY4NH0.1zSqj2MYqKw9L3DmEZT0nSGbAdI-n36HufDDO8MPXzA/img.png?width=980" id="7afb9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6a83cf35829c01fd729be0953c7dc663" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Pemex's Dos Bocas refinery site. Planet Labs / Quartz
<p>Lopez Obrador approved the project in Tabasco, his home state, to revive the state-owned oil giant, which has suffered from dysfunction recently. Shortly after the president approved the project, a third party uprooted large swatches of mangroves, even though they are protected and vital to Mexico's economy, according to Quartz. </p> <p>The complex ecosystems the trees create provide almost 6 percent of Mexico's GDP, according to the University of California, San Diego, as Quartz reported. While the mangroves are supposed to be protected, the satellite imagery shows that they continue to be felled to make way for roads. Pemex, or a third-party, defied a <a href="https://www.gob.mx/asea/prensa/asea-expide-autorizacion-condicionada-del-proyecto-de-construccion-de-la-refineria-dos-bocas-tabasco" target="_blank">government order</a> by cutting down the mangroves and is now asking for permission to raze more so it can build a bridge. </p> <p>The actions have environmental advocates worried about Mexico's commitment to a sustainable future, especially since the government canceled a $700,000 fine for a company accused of destroying thousands of acres of mangroves. </p> <p>"The administration promotes an oil refinery, and to build it destroys threatened mangroves even though Mexico is part of the Paris accords," Alejandra Rabasa, an environmental lawyer in Mexico City, <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/scenes-crime-mexico-monarch-butterfly-defenders-murder" target="_blank">said to Sierra Club</a>.</p><p>Gustavo Alanis-Ortega, president of the <a href="https://www.cemda.org.mx/acerca-del-cemda/" target="_blank">Mexican Center for Environmental Law</a>, told Quartz that there should be an investigation into Pemex's role in the deforestation, "If they are indeed breaking the law [at Dos Bocas], this shows that there is no real commitment to legality and the rule of law" in Lopez Obrador's government,</p>
<p>The area where the deforestation has taken place is home to many endangered animals, including a jaguarundi wild cat, and protected species of snakes, iguanas and birds, as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-oil-refinery/wild-cats-boas-are-obstacles-in-mexican-presidents-refinery-race-idUSKCN1QA1JA" target="_blank">Reuters reported</a>. Futhermore, Pemex executives actually proposed that the area be made into a protected nature preserve about a decade ago, according to Reuters. </p>
<p>Now, a little over a year into office, Lopez Obrador seems to be following in the footsteps of the presidents of other large countries in the Americas, mainly President Trump and President Bolsanaro in Brazil, by reversing environmental progress. He has put the kibosh on renewable energy projects, tried to cut subsidies to renewable energy companies, and usurped a government plan to bolster investments in green infrastructure, according to Quartz. </p>
<p>"Environmental issues are completely relegated—they don't figure in this administration's agenda," Alanis-Ortega told Quartz.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the economic benefit of the Pemex refinery is questionable, since economists say it would be more cost effective to import oil than to build this refinery. Furthermore, mangroves have a proven economic benefit. According to <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2018/05/new-study-finds-mangroves-may-store-way-more-carbon-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">Mongabay</a>, researchers estimate that mangroves provide "ecosystem services" equal to $194,000 per hectare annually. Multiplied by their global span, that means the world's mangroves provide around $2.7 trillion in services every year.</p>
<p>Mangroves also store much more carbon than scientists had previously thought, according to a study by 20 researchers around the world published in <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabe1c/pdf" target="_blank">Environmental Research Letters</a>. </p>
<p>"Protecting, enhancing and restoring natural carbon sinks must become political priorities," Jonathan Sanderman of the Woods Hole Research Center and lead author of the study said as Mongabay reported. "Mangrove forests can play an important role in carbon removals because they are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems in the world, and if kept undisturbed, mangrove forest soils act as long-term carbon sinks."</p>
<p>As Quartz reported, Mexico prioritized protecting its mangrove forests as part of Paris climate agreement <a href="https://www.mangrovealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/WWF-IUCN-Mangroves-Global-legal-Assessment-v10.pdf" target="_blank">commitments</a>. Mexico has the <a href="https://gma-panda.opendata.arcgis.com/" target="_blank">fourth-largest</a> area of mangroves in the world. However, mangrove deforestation is rampant across Mexico, and, according to the University of California, San Diego at the current rate, the country may lose half its remaining mangroves in 50 years.</p>
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Aerial view of treetops in the Amazon rainforest. Ricardo Lima / Moment / Getty Images
The world's tropical forests are rapidly losing their ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere, worrying scientists that a major carbon dump will transform them into a carbon source, according to research published Wednesday.
<p>The study, which was published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2035-0" target="_blank">Nature</a>, found that in 15 years the Amazon could turn into a carbon source, due to wildfires, deforestation, and the excess greenhouse gasses pumped into the atmosphere, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/04/tropical-forests-losing-their-ability-to-absorb-carbon-study-finds" target="_blank">The Guardian reported</a>. </p>
<p>An international consortium of European and African scientists led by researchers from the University of Leeds studied more than 300,000 trees over the course of 30 years in the Amazon and the African tropics. The researchers found that climate models that typically predict that tropical forests will serve as carbon sinks for decades are inaccurate. Instead, the decades of analysis found that the uptake of carbon into the world's tropical forests actually peaked in the 1990s, according to a <a href="https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-03/uol-tfc030220.php" target="_blank">press release</a> from the University of Leeds. </p>
<p>"Our findings show that back in the 1990s intact tropical forests were absorbing 4.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year," Simon Lewis, professor of Global Change Science at University College London, and Lee White, the government of Gabon's Minister for Water, Forests, the Sea and Environment, wrote in <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/campaigns/GiantsClub/africa-tree-deaths-endanger-the-planet-a9372701.html" target="_blank">The Independent</a>. "This has slumped to an estimated 2.5 billion tons each year over the last decade. To put these colossal numbers in context, the decline of 2.1 billion tons each year is equivalent to five times the annual carbon dioxide emissions of the UK. Tropical forests have been helping us, but that help is starting to wane."</p>
<p>Manmade emissions continue to climb year after year, which is taxing already oversaturated tropical forests, which account for around half of all land-based carbon absorption. The oversaturation is threatening the forests' ability to provide people with medicine, food, shelter and water, as <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/african-forests-and-the-amazon-are-flipping-from-carbon-sinks-to-major-sources" target="_blank">ScienceAlert reported</a>.</p>
<p>"The cause of this is climate change impacts - in terms of heat stress and droughts - on these remaining intact forests," Lewis said, as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-forests-climate-change/global-warming-fast-shrinking-rainforest-role-as-climate-protector-idUSKBN20R2HD" target="_blank">Reuters reported</a>. "Humanity has been really lucky so far in that these forests have been mopping up our pollution, and they might not keep doing that for that much longer."</p>
<p>Many industrialized nations aim to offset their greenhouse gas emissions by restoring forests, but that might not be enough. However, the new research shows that preserving forests may not be enough in the absence of cutting emissions. </p>
<p>To conduct the research, the scientists combined data from two large research networks of forest observations in Africa and the Amazon. They also spent years in remote field sites. The researchers tagged individual trees and measured them and estimated the height of every single tree within 565 different patches of forest. The researchers returned every few years to repeat the process, enabling them to figure out the carbon stored in the trees that survived and the ones that died, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/04/tropical-forests-losing-their-ability-to-absorb-carbon-study-finds" target="_blank">The Guardian reported</a>. Their calculations showed that the African tropics have been more resilient than the Amazon, but both are now on a worrying trend line.</p>
<p>"There is a lot of talk about offsetting, but the reality is that every country and every sector needs to reach zero emissions, with any small amount of residual emissions needing to be removed from the atmosphere," Lewis said as The Guardian reported. "The use of forests as an offset is largely a marketing tool for companies to try to continue with business as usual."</p>
<p>Writing in The Independent yesterday, Lewis and White explained, "We need to see emissions declining fast, by almost half by 2030, in order to avoid reaching that feared point where critical carbon sinks become carbon sources and climate change begins to run out of control."</p>
<p>Their thoughts were echoed by Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, who said to The Guardian, "For years, we have had scientific warnings about tipping points in the Earth system and they've been largely ignored by policy and decision-makers. That forests are now seemingly losing the ability to absorb pollution is alarming. What more of a wake-up call do we need?"</p>
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Pope Francis celebrates an opening Mass for the Amazon synod, in St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2019. Massimo Valicchia / NurPhoto / Getty Images
Pope Francis, in an effort to reignite his influence as a global environmental leader, released an impassioned document Feb. 12 entitled Dear Amazon — a response to the historic Vatican meeting last autumn regarding the fate of the Amazon biome and its indigenous people.
<p>In a 94-page "<a href="https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2020/02/12/200212c.html" target="_blank">exhortation</a>," Francis argued for the ecological importance of Amazonia — the world's largest and most biodiverse tropical rainforest — describing the ecosystem services the biome provides, the region's greatly beneficial weather, and the climate change mitigation the forest offers via carbon storage. The pope stressed that those best suited to protect the Amazon are the indigenous people who have lived there since time immemorial.<em></em></p>
<p>The document comes as the Amazon faces "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/world/americas/amazon-rainforest.html" target="_blank">deforestation at breakneck rates</a>," driven by illegal logging, mining, ranching and agribusiness in <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/03/record-levels-of-deforestation-in-peruvian-amazon-as-gold-mines-spreads/" target="_blank">Peru</a>, <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/disaster-strikes-in-bolivia-as-fires-devastate-unique-forests/" target="_blank">Bolivia</a>, <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/01/for-colombia-2019-was-a-year-of-environmental-discontent/" target="_blank">Colombia</a> and <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/deforestation-in-brazil-continues-torrid-pace-into-2020/" target="_blank">Brazil</a>, a nation that has also seen a sharp <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/murders-of-indigenous-leaders-in-brazil-amazon-hit-highest-level-in-two-decades/" target="_blank">spike in killings</a> of indigenous activists.</p><p><em>Dear Amazon</em> isn't only addressed to Catholics, but "to all persons of good will." It sums up the findings of a three-week Vatican synod, a formal meeting held last October that brought together for the first-time hundreds of Catholic bishops, indigenous leaders and environmental activists from nine South American countries with territory in the Amazon. Francis' post-synod response is organized into four "dreams:" societal, cultural, ecclesial and ecological.</p><p>His plea in defense of the rainforest is at once scientific, humanistic, political, and spiritual: "If the care of people and the care of ecosystems are inseparable, this becomes especially important in places where the forest is not a resource to be exploited; it is a being, or various beings, with which we have to relate," Francis writes in the ecological section. "When indigenous peoples remain on their land, they themselves care for it best, provided they do not let themselves be taken in by the siren song and self-serving proposals of power groups."</p>
<p>Francis joins with Amazon scientists and activists in their alarm. Rapidly escalating deforestation in the biome is already <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/bolsonaros-brazil-unlikely-to-achieve-paris-agreement-goals-experts/" target="_blank">threatening the key goal</a> of the 2015 Paris Agreement — keeping the world from overshooting a 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) rise since the preindustrial era. The Paris accord specifically cites the carbon-sink-and-sequestration capacity, and vital importance, of large, intact forests as a reliable way to slow global warming.</p><p>Top scientists are already warning that climate change and deforestation could be causing the Amazon to cross a critical rainforest-to-savanna <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/the-tipping-point-is-here-it-is-now-top-amazon-scientists-warn/" target="_blank">tipping point</a>, at which time the biome could begin <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/01/impending-amazon-tipping-point-puts-biome-and-world-at-risk-scientists-warn/" target="_blank">releasing vast sums of stored carbon</a>, pushing the world toward climate catastrophe.</p><p>That warning comes as Brazil, which includes much of the Amazon basin, has been beset by <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/10/as-2019-amazon-fires-die-down-brazilian-deforestation-roars-ahead/" target="_blank">wildfires</a> and <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/bolsonaros-brazil-2019-brings-death-by-1000-cuts-to-amazon-part-one/" target="_blank">aggressive land grabbing</a>. The Brazilian Amazon lost 3,475 square miles of forest — seven times the size of New York City — in 2019, a staggering 85 percent increase over 2018.</p><p><span></span>But as <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/02/12/whats-pope-francis-apostolic-exhortation-amazon-synod" target="_blank">reported</a> in the Jesuit magazine <em>America, </em>"Pope Francis' words will certainly not please Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro who, on the eve of the exhortation's publication, sent a <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/bolsonaro-sends-congress-bill-to-open-indigenous-lands-to-mining-fossil-fuels/" target="_blank">proposed law</a> to the Brazilian Congress that would permit mining activities within the reserves of indigenous peoples, including the Amazon region, without the people's consent."</p>
Defending Nature — Again
<p><em>Dear Amazon</em> stands as an emphatic complement to <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2016/02/top-vatican-official-climate-change-action-is-a-moral-imperative/" target="_blank"><em>Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home</em></a>, a papal encyclical released in June 2015 with the express purpose of spurring a positive outcome to the United Nations negotiations that resulted in the landmark Paris Agreement that December. An encyclical is a Catholic teaching document of the highest order, possessing "moral authority."</p><p><em>Laudato Si</em> established Francis on the world stage as an ecumenical leader and advocate for environmental protection. He bluntly blamed human activity for global warming and castigated rampant consumerism and unbridled capitalism as hastening the destruction of the earth.</p><p>Myriad faith communities around the globe were inspired to organize and act on the pope's urgings. However, the controversial manifesto met with <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2015/08/popes-environmental-encyclical-arrives-in-peru-to-mixed-reviews/" target="_blank">mixed reviews</a> in Latin America where some see conservation as a hindrance to economic growth and the relief of the poor in developing nations. Vatican officials have since touted climate action as a "<a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2016/02/top-vatican-official-climate-change-action-is-a-moral-imperative/" target="_blank">moral imperative</a>."</p><p>The message of<em> Dear Amazon</em> seems even more urgent than the 2015 encyclical<em>, </em>coming in response to the rapidly worsening Amazon emergency: "We are water, air, earth and life of the environment created by God," Francis writes. "For this reason, we demand an end to the mistreatment and destruction of mother Earth. The land has blood, and it is bleeding; the multinationals have cut the veins of our mother Earth."</p><p><em>Laudauto Si </em>was released when the progressive pope was at the height of global popularity, and it was heralded and cited for months by international media. But the urgent call of <em>Dear Amazon</em> has so far been largely ignored. Mainstream media accounts in the past week instead focused almost exclusively on Francis' decision to not allow the marriage of priests serving in the Amazon as a way of boosting their dramatically diminished numbers.</p><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/world/europe/pope-married-priests.html?searchResultPosition=1" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> — which like other accounts stressed the Catholic church's progressive and conservative political divide — went so far as to report that "his closest advisers have acknowledged that the pope's impact has waned on the global stage, especially on core issues like immigration and the environment."</p>People of Faith Respond
<p>Francis won't likely be standing down without a fight. He calls on Latin American governments to enforce their environmental protection laws, return land rights to indigenous peoples, and recognize that Amazonian rainforests are more than an economic resource to be monetized for "extraction, energy, timber and other industries that destroy and pollute."</p><p>"The equilibrium of our planet depends on the health of the Amazon region," Francis writes. "Together with the biome of the Congo and Borneo, it contains a dazzling diversity of woodlands on which rain cycles, climate balance and a great variety of living beings also depend."</p><p>Faith leaders contacted by Mongabay looked past Vatican politics and cheered the pope's message in <em>Dear Amazon, </em>saying that it is invigorating their conservation work and strategies.</p><p>"Protecting rainforests is fundamentally an ethical issue, where care for creation and the realization of social justice for indigenous peoples and forest communities are part of one moral fabric," said Joe Corcoran, the UN project manager for the <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/interfaith-leaders-step-up-to-protect-the-worlds-sacred-rainforests/" target="_blank">Interfaith Rainforest Initiative</a> (IRI), an NGO which lobbies for governmental climate action in six rainforest countries.</p><p>"Through IRI, we are seeing that not only is the leadership of Pope Francis rallying Catholics to act, but [it is] also inspiring religious leaders from other faiths to protect rainforests around the world," Corcoran said.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjc3NTY1Mi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzOTM4NjI4M30.Y5pTtZz6P7myoTw2aH0NakqmBCrEZKzMsVPXFs7xkG0/img.jpg?width=980" id="fb23d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="762322d8e30b479449d744a68ac6644e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/pope-makes-impassioned-plea-to-save-the-amazon-will-the-world-listen/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mongabay</a>.</em></p>Seeing the Amazon gravely at risk, the Vatican has called on governments and the people of the world to protect the world's largest remaining rainforest. Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay
<p>Laura Vargas leads IRI's <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/cop25-laura-vargas-inspires-with-power-of-faith-in-defense-of-forests/" target="_blank">initiatives in Peru</a>: "I believe <em>Dear Amazon</em> marks a turning point for the whole life of the church in the Amazon and beyond its borders. If we believe everything is interconnected, we realize that what happens to the largest tropical forest in the world affects the entire planet."</p><p>Meanwhile, at London-based Christian Aid, a global environmental activism organization, spokesman Joe Ware said, "The pope remains one of the most popular and loved pope's with significant influence not just over one billion Catholics, but of many others, too."</p><p>Ware stressed that 2020 is a crucial year, the year the Paris Agreement <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank">goes into force</a>. The agreement remains dangerously <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/cop25-self-serving-g20-spites-youth-humanity-world-at-climate-talks/" target="_blank">incomplete</a> as leaders of the industrialized world continue dragging their feet to establish aggressive carbon emission-reduction policies, even as time runs short to dramatically begin decarbonizing the global economy — the UN itself <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/2018/10/08/summary-for-policymakers-of-ipcc-special-report-on-global-warming-of-1-5c-approved-by-governments/" target="_blank">warned</a> in 2018 that the world's nations have just 12 years to act to avoid climate catastrophe.</p><p>"It's vital," Ware said, "that we have the voice of the Catholic Church and people of faith around the world pushing political leaders this year to make the boldest decisions possible."</p>From Your Site Articles
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UN Biodiversity Chief: Humans Risk Living in an 'Empty World' With 'Catastrophic' Consequences
20 January
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Logging state in the U.S. is seen representing some of the consequences humans will face in the absence of concrete action to stop deforestation, pollution and the climate crisis. Mark Newman / Lonely Planet Images / Getty Images
Talk is cheap, says the acting executive secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, who begged governments around the world to make sure that 2020 is not another year of conferences and empty promises, but instead is the year to take decisive action to stop the mass extinction of wildlife and the destruction of habitat-sustaining ecosystems, as The Guardian reported.
<p><a href="https://www.cbd.int/secretariat/executive-secretary/" target="_blank">Acting Executive Secretary Elizabeth Maruma Mrema</a> warned that the absence of concrete action to stop <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/deforestation" rel="noopener noreferrer">deforestation</a>, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pollution" rel="noopener noreferrer">pollution</a> and the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis" rel="noopener noreferrer">climate crisis</a> will mean that humanity has given up on the planet. </p>
<p>Mrema who grew up in Tanzania near Mount Kilimanjaro has seen the streams near her childhood home dry up, turning a fertile forest into bare land, she said to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/humans-risk-living-in-an-empty-world-warns-un-biodiversity-chief-aoe" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.</p>
<p>Her stark assessment of an empty world came just ahead of the Davos World Economic Forum, which starts on Wednesday. The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/davos-thunberg-trump-climate-change-2644863489.html" rel="noopener noreferrer">climate crisis is expected</a> to take center stage.</p>
<p>The World Economic Forum said this year that climate-related risks overshadow all other risks, and it placed loss of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity" rel="noopener noreferrer">biodiversity</a> as the third biggest risk to the world, ahead of infectious diseases, terrorism and war between countries. It was only outranked by other climate-related threats, with <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather" rel="noopener noreferrer">extreme weather</a> as the top threat, followed by a failure to adapt and mitigate the climate crisis, according to the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/what-s-missing-from-the-2020-global-risks-report/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</p>
<p>"For the first time in the history of the Global Risks Perception Survey, environmental concerns dominate the top long-term risks by likelihood among members of the World Economic Forum's multistakeholder community," according to the executive summary of the Forum's <a href="http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-report-2020/executive-summary/" target="_blank">2020 Global Risks Report</a>. </p>
<p>Mrema is tasked with creating an international agreement to protect nature on the scale of the 2015 <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris agreement</a>. She noted in urgency that the disappearance of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coral-reefs" rel="noopener noreferrer">coral reefs</a>, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rainforests" rel="noopener noreferrer">rainforests</a> and other life supporting ecosystems will lead to an "empty world" and have "catastrophic" consequences for societies, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/humans-risk-living-in-an-empty-world-warns-un-biodiversity-chief-aoe" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Guardian</a>.</p>
<p>"People's lives depend on biodiversity in ways that are not always apparent or appreciated. Human health ultimately depends on ecosystem services: the availability of fresh water, fuel, food sources. All these are prerequisites for human health and livelihoods," she said to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/humans-risk-living-in-an-empty-world-warns-un-biodiversity-chief-aoe" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Guardian</a> in an exclusive interview. </p>
<p>Scientists have warned that human-activity is fueling the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sixth-mass-extinction" rel="noopener noreferrer">sixth mass extinction</a> in history as animals and plants are disappearing at rates tens to hundreds of times faster than at any point in the last 10 million years. In fact, researchers predict that nearly 1,000 species will be lost over the next century and animal size will decrease 25 percent, as conditions favor smaller more adaptable animals, according to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-shrinking-animals-2638682794.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">EcoWatch</a>. </p>
<p>In October, governments will meet in China to formalize an agreement on protecting biodiversity. The draft proposal released last week calls for a modest commitment to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/un-biodiversity-sixth-mass-extinction-2644807009.html?rebelltitem=1">protect at least 30 percent of the planet</a>, controlling invasive species and reducing pollution from plastic waste, according to the draft from the <a href="https://www.cbd.int/conferences/post2020/wg2020-02/documents" target="_blank">Convention on Biological Diversity</a>, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/humans-risk-living-in-an-empty-world-warns-un-biodiversity-chief-aoe" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> reported.</p>
<p>Mrema told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/humans-risk-living-in-an-empty-world-warns-un-biodiversity-chief-aoe" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> she hopes the attendees will negotiate a more rigorous and ambitious agreement. However, if this modest one fails, the consequences will be dire.</p>
<p>"The risks will be major," she said to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/humans-risk-living-in-an-empty-world-warns-un-biodiversity-chief-aoe" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Guardian</a>. "One is that we will not have listened to the science and the evidence provided. Because we will not have listened, it means the global community will have said: let biodiversity loss continue, let people continue to die, let the degradation continue, deforestation continue, pollution continue, and we'll have given up as an international community to save the planet. I hope that's not where any of us would want to be."</p>
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DiCaprio Responds After Brazil's Bolsonaro Claims He Is Contributing to Amazon Fires
02 December 2019
Popular
(L) Leonardo DiCaprio. JB Lacroix / Getty Images (R) Jair Bolsonaro. Jeso Carneiro / Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0
Right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has found a new person to blame for the record number of wildfires that have ravaged the Amazon rainforest this year: actor and environmental advocate Leonardo DiCaprio.
<p>"Leonardo DiCaprio is a great guy, isn't he?" Bolsonaro said Friday, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/30/world/leonardo-dicaprio-bolsonaro-amazon-fires-trnd/index.html" target="_blank">as CNN reported</a>. "Donating money to set the Amazon on fire."</p><p>This is not the first time that Bolsonaro has blamed environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for intentionally starting fires in order to raise money. While indigenous and environmental groups have blamed Bolsonaro's pro-development rhetoric and policies for the uptick in illegal burns in the Amazon, the president has pushed back by <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/bolsonaro-statement-amazon-wildfires-2639952410.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">shifting blame</a>. This August, as the news of the fires sparked international outrage, he claimed that "everything indicates" the fires were started by NGOs, though he did not provide any proof.</p><p>His accusations against DiCaprio come as four volunteer firefighters have been arrested for allegedly starting fires in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/brazil" target="_self">Brazil</a>'s northern Pará state in order to attract NGO donations, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-50613054" target="_blank">BBC News reported</a>. Specifically, the <a href="https://www.wwf.org.uk/" target="_blank">World Wildlife Fund</a> (WWF) has been accused of paying the firefighters for photographs of burned forest. WWF denies these claims, and human rights and environmental organizations said the arrests were politically motivated and an attempt to harass environmental groups.</p><p>Bolsonaro first connected DiCaprio with the fires in a webcast Thursday discussing the accusations against WWF.</p><p>"So what did the NGO do? What is the easiest thing? Set fire to the forest. Take pictures, make a video. [WWF] makes a campaign against Brazil, it contacts Leonardo DiCaprio, he donates $500,000," Bolsonaro said, according to BBC News. "A part of that went to the people that were setting fires. Leonardo DiCaprio, you are contributing to the fire in the Amazon, that won't do."</p>
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f70250e9826e2a5a9511c512cf69b13f"><div class="fb-video" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/jairmessias.bolsonaro/videos/533820083864876/" data-allowfullscreen="true"></div></div><p>DiCaprio responded with a statement posted on Instagram Saturday.</p><p>"At this time of crisis for the Amazon, I support the people of Brazil working to save their natural and cultural heritage," DiCaprio wrote. "They are an amazing, moving and humbling example of the commitment and passion needed to save the environment."</p>
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font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;"> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; 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overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B5fsQ_vFUN3/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Leonardo DiCaprio (@leonardodicaprio)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2019-11-30T15:48:58+00:00">Nov 30, 2019 at 7:48am PST</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script><p>DiCaprio has a history of promoting environmental causes. He promised in December 2018 to match every donation made to the group <a href="https://www.amazonfrontlines.org/who/" target="_blank">Amazon Frontlines</a> for all of 2019, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/world/americas/Jair-bolsonaro-amazon-fires-Leonardo-DiCaprio.html?auth=login-google&login=google" target="_blank">The New York Times reported</a>. His <a href="https://www.leonardodicaprio.org/" target="_blank">Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation</a> works to protect vulnerable wildlife and ecosystems.</p><p>However, he said in his statement that he had not supported the groups currently being accused, though he said they were "worthy of support."</p><p>"I remain committed to supporting the Brazilian indigenous communities, local governments, scientists, educators and general public who are working tirelessly to secure the Amazon for the future of all Brazilians," DiCaprio said.</p><p>WWF also said in a statement that it had not received any money from DiCaprio, The New York Times reported.</p><p><a href="https://www.globalwildlife.org/" target="_blank">Global Wildlife Conservation</a> and <a href="https://www.iucn.org/species/about/species-survival-commission" target="_blank">IUCN Species Survival Commission</a>, two of the largest environmental organizations currently working in the Amazon, also spoke out generally against the accusations, CNN reported.</p><p>"As an umbrella organization committed to biodiversity conservation, we are concerned that there are increasing and targeted attacks on people and groups working to protect nature in the Amazon," IUCN said. "Environmental defenders, whether in local communities, NGOs, or government agencies, should be afforded with the highest protection of the law in Brazil."</p><p>As a carbon sink, the Amazon rainforest is considered an essential part of the fight against the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a>, The New York Times pointed out. However, experts are concerned that if it continues to burn, it <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-rainforest-could-be-two-years-from-dangerous-tipping-point-2641087910.html" target="_self">could reach a tipping point</a> and transform from rainforest into grassland.</p>
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