The importance of the Amazon goes beyond the borders of Brazil. The rainforest, which is a strategic biome for biodiversity and the people who live there, also has global implications in climate regulation. With the current ever increasing deforestation rates, the forest as we know it will not remain so for long.
The municipalities in the Northern region where Bolsonaro led the first round of elections in 2022 are concentrated in the "arc of deforestation," a region dominated by land grabbers, ranchers, loggers, and illegal gold miners. This is the engine of illegal deforestation in the Amazon, which has been increasing since 2015. A more pronounced increase started to occur in 2019 with the inauguration of the current president and the endeavor against what he refers to as "Ibama's penalty industry". In the last three years the average increase in deforestation, according to INPE's Prodes system, was 20% per year.
Professor Dr. Carlos Nobre, one of the most respected climatologists in the country and a member of the IPCC panel, was one of the mentors of the "point of no return" (or tipping point) theory. In short, a series of spatial and field studies over the decades point out that if the Amazon reaches a 25% loss of its original cover, the negative implications on the rainfall cycle will permanently affect the forest's capacity to regenerate, leading to its savannization.
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Deforestation should be analyzed not only in relation to the area, but also in relation to the place where it occurs. The discontinuity of forests in eastern Amazônia, a predominantly Bolsonarista region, can interrupt the transportation of moisture from the oceans to the interior of the continent. We would have, in this case, the interruption of the rainfall cycle that transports moisture to other regions. The people of São Paulo who also chose Bolsonaro as their representative and gave almost three times as many votes to Ricardo Salles as opposed to Marina Silva, may not be aware of how important the Amazon is for the rainfall in the Midwest, Southeast and South of Brazil.
If re-elected, with the new Senate providing him with greater support, Bolsonaro will find it easy to dismantle the rest of the environmental protection policies, leading to even more worrying increases in deforestation levels. We have estimated the current increase under his administration at 20% per year for a hypothetical second term of Bolsonaro, followed by a more moderate increase of 15% per year for the following three years.
In this context, the Brazilian Amazon with its 4,196,943 km2, would reach in 2029 an accumulated deforestation of 1,068,504 km2, or 25.5% of its original cover lost. This is indeed a reductionist prediction since it does not consider the Amazon area belonging to the other eight countries that share it, with their deforestation rates much lower than those of Brazil. However, if anyone doubts the capacity of forest predation, just look at what happened to the Atlantic Forest in Brazil, which reached levels of 93% change.
Annual Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon - Realized and projections (km²)
Thus, a vote for Bolsonaro is a vote of support for the deforestation of the Amazon. If this area of the arc of deforestation increases, and it will, if Bolsonaro is reelected, we may soon see the savannization of a considerable part of the Amazon, especially in its southern and eastern regions. This is a phenomenon amplified by deforestation, reaching areas of forest that are still intact.
And the forest already shows signs of weakening in these regions with increasingly longer and hotter dry seasons. A change in the floristic composition of these areas is also observed, in which hygrophyte species (dependent on high humidity) are already being replaced by species with greater resistance to drought, originally more common in biomes such as the Cerrado, with savanna characteristics.
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In summary, with the reduction of forest cover in the Amazon, the transportation of rainfall to other regions of the country is compromised, resulting in losses to agriculture as well as compromising the level of water in reservoirs in hydroelectric plants, which means more expensive electricity and imminent risks of blackouts. Climate extremes such as uncontrolled and concentrated rainfall in a short period of time will also become more frequent with the worsening of the El Niño phenomenon. It is worth pointing out that all these signs are already perceived and will tend to become more frequent, in greater intensity, and irreversible if we reach the point of no return.
However, all is not lost. The world is watching and last month the European Parliament approved a new anti-deforestation law with the objective of controlling the entry of products linked to forest destruction and human rights violations in forest areas around the world. For Brazil, the measure could represent serious economic sanctions or could help close the doors to deforestation and violators, while bringing more security to companies that produce without deforestation and responsibly.
The Amazon is a matter of national security, economy, sovereignty, survival for current and future generations, and is under enormous internal threat. In this catastrophic scenario we need to end the cycle of destruction, replacing the current government (it is worth remembering that all the other opposition candidates for the presidency with significant votes, above 1%, defend zero illegal deforestation), restoring the Amazon Fund, thus raising resources and, in the framework of the decade of ecological restoration promoted by the UN, foster initiatives such as those of Professor Carlos Nobre himself, the Amazon 4.0 project, which aims to innovatively promote socioeconomic development in the Amazon region under the premise of the standing forest.
*Camilo T. Pedrollo - Biologist, Master in Botany from the National Institute for Amazon Research (INPA), is currently completing his PhD in Natural Resource Management at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in partnership with researchers from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). He was a consultant on productive chains of Amazonian sociobiodiversity products.
**José Luiz Purri da Veiga Pinto - Forestry Engineer, MSc from the National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA), conducted research on root biomass, soils and hydrology in the Amazon, worked with forest management, logging, FSC certification, training of rubber tappers, with experience in the states of Amazonas, Pará, Acre and Rondônia.
***This is an opinion piece. The vision of the authors does not necessarily express the editorial line of the Brasil de Fato newspaper.
Edited by: Flávia Chacon e Rodrigo Durão Coelho
