Chopping Down Brazil
How much of Brazil’s rainforest has been lost and what has replaced it?
December 3, 2015
1. 18% is the share of the Brazilian Amazon that had been cut down by 2013 compared to pre-1970 levels – the period before massive clear-cutting began.
2. This has played a crucial role in Brazil becoming the world’s seventh-largest greenhouse gas emitter.
3. The Amazon rainforest is being cleared for timber, mining, soybean farming, sugar plantations and cattle grazing.
4. Another cause of Brazilian deforestation is simply for asserting legal claims to property by showing “development” on the land.
5. This claiming by cutting has been reduced somewhat by legal reforms clarifying who owns which property in non-public forests.
6. To compare Brazil’s recent deforestation against world history, 30% of global forest cover by land area has been fully cleared, according to the World Resources Institute.
7. Just 15% of global forests remain entirely intact. The remaining forests still partially exist, but in a more fragmented state than before human intervention.
8. Brazil’s climate action plan released in September 2015 is a continuation of its recent strong emissions cuts.
9. Brazil’s deforestation pledge in the climate plan only addresses illegal logging, however, not vast legal timber harvests.
Sources: The Globalist Research Center, World Resources Institute, ThinkProgress, Mongabay, USAID
Takeaways
18% is the share of the Brazilian Amazon that had been cut down by 2013 compared to pre-1970 levels.
Deforestation has contributed to Brazil becoming the world’s seventh-largest greenhouse gas emitter.
30% of global forest cover by land area has been fully cleared, according to WRI.