Trees felled in illegal logging area in Novo Progresso, Pará. By Ibama from Brasil (Operação Onda Verde, 2014) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
This article was originally published on Phys.org
“Over the past few decades the international community has watched as the destruction of Earth’s largest forest has intensified. Deforestation has been eating away at the Amazon’s fringes, mainly for commercial cattle ranching and agricultural plantation. The agriculture, livestock, mining and infrastructure sectors have been promoted due to powerful financial and development pressures for high profits and economic growth.
Meanwhile, indigenous peoples, traditional communities and smallholders have had their livelihoods imperilled, while carbon emissions have increased, water quality and quantity have declined, forest fires have increased, and wildlife has been lost.
Although almost 40% of the Brazilian Amazon is conserved by protected areas and indigenous lands, some 428,721 sq km – an area the size of Sweden – has been deforested over the past three decades.
As part of its international climate targets, Brazil’s government has pledged to restore more than 12 million hectares of native vegetation by 2030, including 4.8 million hectares (48,000 sq km) in the Amazon.
The scale of this target has catapulted restoration ecology from an academic discipline to the forefront of international debates about how conservation goals can be delivered alongside economic, human, and social interests.
Brazil has established a range of national policies, programs and commissions to pursue the target. At the 2017 UN climate summit in Bonn, the Brazilian government announced the creation of a US$60 million Amazon Fund for restoration projects. The fundraising is mostly supported by international donations from the Norway Government for the reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases from deforestation…”
Read on at: Phys.org
