Sloth (Bradybus variegates) in forest of Peru.
While much of the Amazon rainforest falls within the borders of
Brazil, it also reaches into regions of Guyana, Venezuela,
Colombia, Suriname, French Guiana, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.
It is thought to be the most diverse ecosystem on Earth. It is
home to nearly 10 percent of the world's mammals and a staggering
15 percent of the world's known land-based plant species, with as
many as 300 species of tree in a single hectare.
The Amazon in Brazil alone is home to more than 20 million
people, including an estimated 220,000 people from 180 different
indigenous groups. These people rely on this ancient forest for
their way of life. It provides almost everything from food and
shelter to tools and medicines as well as playing a crucial role in
people's spiritual and cultural life. The Amazon forest also plays
a vital role in keeping the world's climate stable.
The Amazon rainforest is not only one of the richest and most
biologically diverse regions on the planet, it is also one of the
most threatened.
Many solutions are needed to protect the Amazon Rainforest and
its resources. Effective solutions must maintain people's quality
of life and ensure long-term protection for the forest and its
unique plants and animals. But these can only be achieved if sound
environmental and economic alternatives replace the current
destructive models.
Amazon destruction
Fifteen percent of the Amazon rainforest has already been
destroyed. Since the 1970s, an area of ancient rainforest the size
of France has been lost. Between August 2003 and August 2004,
26,130 square km, 2.6 million hectares of rainforest in the
Brazilian Amazon were lost to illegal and destructive logging,
mining, industrial agricultural plantations and other human
industries such as road building.
A significant part of what remains is under direct threat - as
are the forest plants, animals and people who depend upon the
forest. One of the greatest dangers to the Amazon rainforest is
illegal and destructive logging.
Logging is one of the principal causes of the destruction of the
Amazon Rainforest. By building logging roads into pristine
rainforest, the logging industry also opens the door to further
devastation of the forest ecosystem through clearing for cattle
ranches and soya plantations, over-hunting, fuel wood gathering and
mining.
Fuelled by the demand for cheap supplies of tropical timbers for
both the Brazilian domestic market and the international market,
the illegal timber trade represents a major factor in forest
degradation. Between 60 and 80 percent of all logging in the
Brazilian Amazon is estimated to be illegal. And of all the timber
that is cut, as much as 70 percent is wasted in the mills.
Greenpeace exposes illegal logging
Illegal and predatory logging plays a central role in the
destruction of the Amazon.
Since Greenpeace set up an office in the heart of the Brazilian
Amazon in 1998, we have seen a steady stream of illegal log rafts
heading downstream. Greenpeace has worked with local communities
and the federal environmental agency IBAMA, tracking illegal
activity, mapping logging areas, investigating companies and taking
direct action against companies within Brazil and in the
international marketplace.
This work has included:
- Using a small Cessna airplane for surveillance to locate
massive illegal log rafts and reporting these to the government
authorities
- Developing a technique to track illegal logs back to the
exporting companies using ultraviolet paint, and researching the
origin and destinations of tens of thousands of cubic metres of
timber
- Completing a map with all the "legal" forest operations, a
powerful tool to be used by local authorities for monitoring
All of this research points to an illegal logging industry out
of control.
Greenpeace also discovered that one transnational logging giant,
WTK, purchased 313,000 hectares of land from a private landowner,
150,000 hectares of this illegally overlapped with indigenous
territory. The Deni people who live in this region began the
physical demarcation of their territory in 2001 to guarantee that
WTK and others will be prohibited from logging on their land. This
is now completed and they are recognised under Brazilian law as the
legal owners of their lands.
Despite the high rate of illegal logging, important timber
importing nations such as the US, UK, Spain, France and Japan have
taken few, if any, steps to ensure that products they import come
from legal, let alone ecologically well-managed sources.
There are ways to save the Amazon
Certified logging operations offer an important way forward for
the logging industry in the Amazon. Greenpeace believes that the
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is currently the only socially and
ecologically responsible certification system that independently
verifies logging operations to a set of international recognised
standards. Some companies in the Amazon, such as Precious Woods and
Gethal Amazonas, have already received FSC certification and are
now selling timber from their operations to countries around the
world.
In practice, the only way to ensure that wood and wood products
in the Amazon come from legal and well-managed sources is to demand
that all such products have been independently certified to at
least the standards adopted by the Forest Stewardship Council.
Indigenous groups are dependent on the forest for preserving
traditional ways of life, and while Brazilian law provides for the
complete protection of all indigenous lands by 1993, up to 2005
only half of the indigenous lands in Brazil have been demarcated.
Greenpeace has been working with Indigenous groups to increase
demarcation.
Rubber tapping has been a traditional way of life for many
people living in the Amazon Rainforest - today as many as 63,000
families depend on rubber tapping, a livelihood that does not
destroy the trees from which the latex is extracted.
Extractivist Reserves - protected areas of forest established by
the Brazilian government to allow the rubber tappers to maintain
their traditional way of life - cover perhaps one percent of the
Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. Greenpeace has been working with the
rubber tappers and other groups to demand an increase in the area
under Extractivist Reserves to ten percent of the Brazilian
Amazon.
With the protection of indigenous lands through demarcation and
other initiatives such as the creation of more Extractivist
Reserves, as much as 30 percent of the Amazon would be legally
off-limits to industrial logging and large-scale industrial
development.
Take action and learn more:
- Learn about buying forest friendly timber, and the Forest
Stewardship Council (FSC) in the What you can
do section
- Visit the Greenpeace
International website to learn more about the amazing Amazon
ecosystem and for more information about the threats facing this
forest habitat