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Illegal Logging Is Depleting the Amazon Rainforest 29% Faster Than Last Year
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This is what kills me. Not the quantity, but the diversity. Who knows what cures, curses, and curiosities exist there.
It's definitely a tragic and complex issue. You have a country going though development, following the same forest cover decline, which is seen in the history of developed nations. You can essentially think of it in the same way America developed, i.e. cut everything down and leave, or plant crop lands. This is essentially what is happening in Brazil, you have large groups coming in and illegally logging, or you have people clearing land for farming in order to survive. Luckily, there are people who see this trend and trying to skip this decline in forest cover.
REDD+ was developed to curb this destruction by providing funds and education to create active land managers in the region and to instill social responsibility to the land. This can be limited by the relative instability of the government, or the ability of people to take action against those who seek to exploit these lands. It means nothing if the people who wish to be responsible land managers, if can't protect their lands.
*Also, the article is just suggesting illegal logging. The actual source only states deforestation, which can be for subsistence farming or other land clearing efforts as well.
Question, what are the usual reasons for illegal deforestation? I know of the need for space for crops, cattle grazing, and just industry but does that stuff usually fall under illegal activity? I'd imagine not if the land is able to be legitimately used for those purposes?
Shitty farming techniques are a huge part of it. Desertification is super common and a re-occurring problem in Brasil because the idiots over-farm and mistreat the land so the same 'farmers' will end up cutting down a lot more forest than they'd usually need because they screw up the areas they had previously deforested. As for why they aren't fined for cutting down trees which are technically protected by the government, that's a bit more complicated.
I can't speak for the rest of South America but I will say that in rural areas in Brasil there is very little accountability. Small town I worked in had a police to populace ratio of about 1:5000 and they weren't good cops. Government officials aren't all that reliable either, we literally had one brazenly ask for bribes under threat of putting the company on a 'dirty list'. Factor in general rampant corruption and a total lack of accountability and it's a recipe for ecological disaster.
Basically, while Brasil has a lot of beauty it also has(talking last 10-15 years here, may have changed for the better recently) one of most corrupt and useless governments of the region. And trust me: that's saying something.
EDIT: ration--->ratio
Another issue with the farming techniques used there is that most the nutrients are not held in the soil, but the trees themselves- cutting them down and removing them just leaves you with shitty useless soil that is extremely susceptible to land slides and the like since there are no tree roots holding it together.
My peruvian friend told me it's because certain trees make great artwork or furniture and when this rare tree is found, people will cut down any tree that is in its way just to get to the rare tree that can be sold for top dollars. this is hard to be stopped by the government because this happens in the jungle and the jungle is a HUGE place..and most of these illegal activities are run by the mafia (brazilian). it's very depressing....
Yeah, just to put it into perspective it is like the ivory trade. There is such high demand for these rare woods in the states like authentic "Brazilian rose wood" which are illegal to export and can fetch the poachers top dollar for harvesting them.
Wait, you're telling me my Brazilian rosewood floors helped fuck up the Amazon? The fuck.
I can't tell if you are fucking with me or not.
Assholes with money ruin everything.
Money ruins everything.
Not just assholes with money really. Everybody wants nice wood. For much of the previous century nobody gave a shit where their wood came from as long as they had nice floors and furniture.
Looking back to my childhood there's so many types of wood that used to be common and are now considered rare and expensive. That's not even mentioning the woods that are downright illegal to use.
Some 25 years ago I helped my dad build a pergola out of woods that you don't see anywhere today. At the time it was just the easiest way to get maintenance free hardwood that wouldn't rot.
Loggers in the U.S. will jack up a perfectly good forest for a few straight hardwood trees and leave tree tops and giant skidder ruts as well. Sloppy loggers make it difficult to hunt in the woods when there's shit everywhere and it's like a 10 year old drove a tank around.
I guess all the replanting initiatives and protected forests settled down all the craze about deforestation in North America. But we are still logging NA like it's fucking nothing too. I see first hand BCs forest is also getting decimated, even while lumber is down and stockpiles are overflowing. They log trees off the sides of mountains that people wouldn't even imagine would be possible. Sometime if you drive through BC and an alpine tree area looks like it was toppled by an avalanche, it was actually probably just a helicopter and a few chainsaws.
Yes its all illegal, but theres little accountability.
1 is animal agriculture. it takes 12-15 times the land to grow crops to feed cows as it does just to grow the same amount of plant food for humans.
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Not to mention the water and other resources. A single pound of beef takes 1,847 gallons of water to produce. Your quarter pounder at McDonald's takes 460 gallons of water for the meat alone.
It's quite a bit. I wouldn't say the problem is meat, simply the ratios of meat that we consume. Something like chicken or pork is about half compared to beef. Evil soybeans are approximately 20 times more efficient as a source of protein. Here's a good chart:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_protein_per_unit_area_of_land
Edit: also, it would be curious to do a comparison as to the efficiency of particular feedstocks. Certain areas with pastureland might not be suitable for agricultural crop development, but might be conducive to grazing.
Well ownership out there may be hazy at best in some places, or the state may own a large section and not be able to enforce the area. So people are cutting on government land, or you have the problem of the "tragedy of the commons" where people are logging and leaving. There are of course have areas where ownership is clearer and people actively manage wood products with the help of forest managers.
I don't know fully about property rights in Brazil, so don't quote me on it.
This does however being up another point, which is about what happens after logging takes place. Often times these places will be further be degraded or cleared due to access roads created by the illegal logging.
~ u/failedirony
lol
His username only makes this better.
Exactly, it sucks, but it's what happens to developing nations.
Look at the British Isles. Pull up google maps and just look at them from the satellite view. I always wondered what the islands would have looked like a few hundred years ago, now they're almost completely farmland.
Granted there was no such thing as illegal logging back then. People need to eat, thus people need to create farmland. According to what I've read online, even as far back as 1086AD only 15% of the UK had forests. Which then dove to 5% by the 1900s.
Now with modern population growth and modern forestry practices, the Amazon could be deforested in a matter of decades, not centuries.
Thanks for the UK perspective.
We can only hope global efforts to effectively educate and support these countries so they can learn from the mistakes we made. We can't just tell people living in poverty to save biological diversity, or leave the trees for CO2 sequestrations when they are farming just to live, while modern societies consume most of the world resources.
The UK's forest cover is quite interesting as it was nearly entirely de-forested around the time of the romans, the re-deforestation that took place after that was on more recently grown trees.
It's why even the 'old' woodlands here are made of up loads of random trees rather than the large samey forests you get pretty much everywhere else in Europe.
I'd love to have seen what the forests were like the way they originally grew, the wet and mild climate must have produced some great woodland.
I'd recommend reading the wiki page about English longbows. Specifically the construction and materials section. Basically, all the mature yews were consumed, which spawned a huge import market that ended up devastating yew populations in other countries. Seems relevant.
And oaks for ship building.
Slash and burn techniques also create temporary fertility in the soil that is being farmed, but eventually the soil nutrients become depleted from farming and the soil is left dead. Then many subsistence farmers move onto the next section of rain Forrest and repeat the process.
And in a place like Brazil you think all these land managers are on the up and up? It's so depressing that everything in this world is about a fucking dollar..How many of us would have great lives if money wasn't such an issue or struggle for so many of us..sigh
I get that it's developing nations following the paths that developed nations took to get there, so it seems a bit hypocritical to call them out on it. However, not to claim too much ignorance of the nuances of their situations, but we KNOW that what they're doing is insanely destructive. Just giving it a pass nowadays because "that's what developed nations did" is pretty shitty.
We know it's bad and that there are better options. Unfortunately, governments are nutless and bought by interests that are getting too wealthy off not caring.
I think what we lose sight of in developed countries is that we are economically forcing people off their land. Timber, cattle and fruit companies lay claim to peoples ancestral lands, which were previously held in commune. Then, without sufficient land base to support a semi-nomadic foraging/hunting lifestyle, people have to cut down trees to grow food on an ever-shrinking landbase. Our insatiable desire for cheap beef, cheap cotton, cheap lumber, tropical fruit, coffee, and cocoa (not to mention the ecological devil itself, palm oil) has a lot more to do with deforestation than the third world being ignorant or selfish.
As far as I know places like McDonald's are big consumers of deforestation beef. That is partially the reason they can sell you two double cheeseburgers for $3. The other reason being they subsidize the losses on the 'value' menu by making very high profit margins on fries and drinks. The point is cheap beef is critical for their business model and a subsistence farmer in Brazil will sell his B and C grade cattle cheaply.
So if you want a real way to affect change stop eating beef from unknown places. If you drink coffee know the source. Short of donating money as a groupfund to purchase land in the rainforest, boycotting rainforest farm products with your wallet is a good start. Which reminds me, I wonder what ever happened to those early 90's campaigns where they were like 'Donate $5 and it saves 3 square feet of land in the rainforest'. Is it still held in trust? Sold? We'll never know.
McDonalds explicitly doesn't use deforestation beef. The UK operation uses British and Irish beef, the US operation uses US beef plus some imports from Australia and NZ.
They actually seem to have pretty aggressive sustainability practices. presumably because of these sorts of rumours.
Most of those were scams. Just like many big organizations today, many will take your money, give pennies to the actual cause, and the rest goes into the pockets of the higher ups and to "functioning costs."
I totally agree. We have many choices we can make with our wallets to, in the realm of capitalism, reduce the incentives to be so destructive.
Unfortunately, we're very instant gratification-oriented beasts and unable to think about our greater impact and the bigger picture. It will likely be our downfall.
Its also not the same, not even close. The rainforest is almost useless for farming and can't be replanted. On contrast, some people estimate there are more trees in North America now than there were at the time of EU settlement because of how easy it is to sustainably harvest temperate trees. There are tree farms in America and Europe that have been sustainably harvested and cultivated by the sane corporation for 200 years.
This is a failure of lack of long term rights in the land.
As a woodworker, this bothers me greatly as well. I see too many places selling exotic woods regularly without much concern that the species is threatened. Sure they put the sustainability sticker next to it like required, but most don't care. There's a need to protect all these species so we can log some of them forever, without losing them or reducing them too much.
There's some great species of wood that are sustainable, but aren't greatly pursued because they don't have the prestige of Rosewood or Kingwood. Time to grow up people (looking at you wealthy folks who can afford to get these things new).
Unfortunately, being a selfish dick is a quality that can help make one rich.
Sales Representative for a supplier in your industry here. Those stickers aren't bs. In Canada and with the 2 distributors I worked with everything we carry is FSC certified. NAUF (no added urea formadehide) and many different designations to ensure its harvested responsibly and sustainable. There are back door was to import lumber and veneers through the black market that's true. The establishments that deal in those are well known and generally avoided in my area. Next time a sales rep visits you or you go pick up material ask them about all this they should have plenty of info.
I'm glad to hear this. I'm only a small timer working on my own, so my experience is going to the hardwood retailer and being told how great said wood is because it's essentially what everyone wants.
Like ebony for example (not an amazon wood, but a popular wood because of it's color and hardness). Yeah it's almost black and super hard, but there's other woods like Katalox that can be substituted so often. Ipe is more sustainable than Ironwoods and almost as good.
Black Locust should be more utilized here in North America. It's basically rot proof hickory that grows like a weed.
Compare:
Black Locust
Shellbark Hickory
Bitternut Hickory
Shagbark Hickory
Only the shagbark hickory is actually stiffer and stronger than black locust. Hickory tends to spalt and rot easily. Black locust makes the best fence posts because the heartwood just doesn't rot very much if at all. I make tool handles with black locust when trees go down near me. Hickory doesn't grow here (Canada), so it's a less versatile tree climate wise.
Maybe people don't like the more greenish color of the wood, or that it turns from green to brown over time (like how Padauk turns from Orange to Brown over the years), I'm not sure, or maybe it's because it has an odd name, but it should be more utilized.
There are also plenty of cultivars that produce very exotic-like wood. Photinia is very creamy in color, grows fast, and is extremely hard and heavy. Never seen a piece of it for sale, even privately. Cherry/English Laurel is very similar in properties to Yew, but is almost pure white like Holly. It can grow quite tall and quite fast, and probably up to 18" in trunk diameter. It makes my favourite mallets and tool handles. Flowering cherry varieties can be extremely hard, and can have incredible figuring. It makes a wonderful wood for turning projects, instead of some of the tropical woods being sold.
The problem is use of these woods leads to demand, same as having an ivory coke straw. People say, "hey, I wish I had a bad ass coke straw like that" and it creates a market. Your supplier may be sustainable and ethical, but it creates a market for the the shadier players.
As long as the demand is there, the rainforest will continue to deplete.
Not necessarily. The demand for biodiversity could get so high that billionaires or trillionaires decide to buy the rainforests outright.
Would solve a lot of problems.
It's kind of surprising to me that there haven't been large scale efforts to sell it with caveats. Billionaires would have a vested interest in protecting the potentially valuable species there and as long as it's regulated in the way that species are studied and harvested there's definitely a potential for huge leaps.
Ten years after they make such a purchase some 2 bit populist/ dictator will nationalize the property in the "public interest" or "equality". 20+ year investments South America (or Central Africa) are a fools errand.
I suppose that's true. It has happened countless times with oil resources.
Until something like a worldwide One Child policy is adopted, we're fucked. We're so far past the long term carrying capacity for the planet it's ridiculous. The best thing that could happen for the planet would be a plague that wipes out 90% of humanity or more.
It isn't about "carrying capacity." The important aspect is carrying capacity at what standard of living. If it is western standard of living, then yes it is exceeded. If it is at african standard of living then it has not been exceeded. The vast majority of resources are flowing to the top 1 billion wealthiest people (ie. western people) while the rest are just scraping by on a meager existence.
Thats very deterministic.
When the fog covers the earth and none of the antibiotics can fight against infections, the people will care about the deforestation.
When that day comes, it will be too late.
Yea, all I could think of is this while reading the article. This Vice documentary really opened my eyes up to the problem... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xOPKl169SU
Whatever exists there is intriguing. The Amazon has likely been the most diverse place on earth for hundreds of millions of years. That they slash and burn it to drive off natives and plant fucking soybeans is a disgrace of the highest order. What kills me is once the diversity is gone you can't get it back.
What about the fact that it kills the planet's ability to breathe, while simultaneously adding the #1 leading cause of GHGs; cows. Seriously. Methane emissions from agriculture are fractionally higher than oil and gas. Maybe we need to re-evaluate our propensity for beef.
An unfathomable amount of those things have already been destroyed. We fucked the rainforest big time. We may save or recover some aspects, but never completely. It is devastatingly sad when you really stop and think about it.
The sad part is that they're deforesting for cattle ranches. A simple 30 minute research on the damages of cattle ranching will demonstrate why this makes it severely worse.
Just to add on the cure thing, I remember reading a story about a flower found in Madagascar that bumped the survival rate for childhood leukemia from 20% up to 80%. Sad thing is its now extinct in the wild.
Sounds fake.
madagascar periwinkle
Here is a link to an article with details http://www.rsc.org/eic/2015/12/rosy-periwinkle-cancer-vinblastine
I wonder this with the original forests of America. It's depressing to think of the biodiversity loss at the hands of humans that we don't even realize.
Let he who will stop using every product produced through that deforestation post the first non-hypocritical comment.
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I'd rather watch this than Cops tbh.
People shooting people to defend trees? Sign me up
CROPS
The show you all know and love, but with the safety of trees hanging in the balance!
THIS THURSDAY
FOX
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Libtard here. Use bullets. Poachers are scum of the earth.
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Putin would only fund it if he could do the shooting.
There is Greenpeace going after whalers.
Koch Brothers, you have failed this
cityplanet! thwit thwitEasy for you to say... Tell that to a poor guy who gets offered a ridiculous sum of money to kill something that lives in a nearby forest.
Are you really not using "libtard" sarcastically? Can't tell.
That word always made me laugh, it's not even clever
Dark? You want dark? Remote control drone technology where you can pay by the half hour to pilot armed drones hunting poachers over wildlife parks in Africa, from the comfort of your lounge chair in the western world. Any human target in the park is fair game.
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On next week's episode of Black Mirror...
I love how easily you just had me agreeing to murder.
When it comes to poachers, think of it less as murder and more of as a really late term abortion, where we already know the person is going to take more from the world than contribute to it.
until some idiot like me just kills everyone in the area.
I don't think logging can be considered poaching. Can it?
Anyway, we shouldn't be prosecuting the grunts who chop away at the forest. They're poor and just trying to make a living. We should prosecute the fucks at the top who came up with the idea as well as the complicit managers, and prosecute the politicians who took the bribes from the company to turn a blind eye to their actions.
Killing poachers won't do anything... someone else will take their spot. You have to kill the industries poachers are funded by. Look at what the rare wood in these forests is used for; musical instruments is one of the largest markets for his shit.
So before you start calling for killing the poor dudes chopping a trees down for a living with probably very little knowledge on the global effects start thinking about the people buying this stuff.
True. It worked pretty well for Shark Fin soup in China, just because their megastar basketball player helped spread the world that it's a bad idea.
At the same time, humans aren't Hydra. You don't cut off one and 2 heads spawn to replace them. Just like it's better to deal with the root cause of terrorism, that doesn't mean killing terrorists does nothing. If you were to kill most of ISIS, then you'd have fewer terrorists. Captain obvious statement of the day. Same deal with poachers, minus the whackjob religious bs and central authority of leaders. Poachers can operate on a more individual basis.
We can do both. Have bounty programs for poachers and crack down on the industry with education programs and border controls.
Poach the poacher
That's correct, but logging for the sake of lumber has an effect that is pretty much insignificant compared to the amount of rainforest land that is cleared for the sake of growing feed crops and grazing cattle. Yes we should refuse to buy responsibly-sourced wood, but we'd make much more of an impact if we stopped consuming meat and animal products.
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/758171468768828889/pdf/277150PAPER0wbwp0no1022.pdf
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM
Exactly. The biggest issue I see is that the rainforest is a carbon sink and we are cutting it down to replace it with animals that produce greenhouse gases that produce significantly more potent greenhouse gases.
If we are to help reduce global warming, moving to a plant-based diet is pretty much a requirement. If you don't do that then it is like saying we want to stop global warming but we don't want to give up burning oil,coal, gas etc.
I like it.
The most dangerous game
Also combine it with forced relocation/resettlement for farmers. You want a livelihood? Here, go to a city. Educate your kids. Don't slash and burn rainforest. Don't wanna go? You get the poacher treatment!
Same goes for the heads of companies caught logging. Everyone on down the management chain gets turned into fertilizer to regrow the lost trees.
I'd totally watch that show.
Far too many indigenous people who speak out against the horrible practice of both legal & illegal logging down here in South America get murdered. It's really difficult to go up against companies with as much backing as the logging companies have and hope to win, let alone survive.
One of the double negatives that is a huge problem with the rampant deforestation is that so much of the area that is clear cut is used for rearing cattle, so there's less plant life to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and more carbon monoxide and pollution being produced by the cows constantly exhaling out of both ends. Our addiction to beef will eventually be the death of us.
Damn straight, and a lot of those murders are carried out by those countries' cattle industries, which makes sense since most of the deforestation down there is for the sake of animal agriculture.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/08/brazilian-murder-dorothy-stang
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/758171468768828889/pdf/277150PAPER0wbwp0no1022.pdf
Like with sweat shops wonder how many US fast food companies benefit from not asking too many questions about the land or cattle they get from these places.
Our demand for cattle meat created this practice. Also lets not forget palm oil which is in lot of products
This is what's amazing when people say "Assholes are killing the planet." like no. Eating meat has a ton to do with it.
Well, cow assholes have a lot to do with it, but they're there by our doing to satisfy our "needs".
It's the assholes that will kill the planet..
Nah, the planet will be fine. Anything that needs oxygen to breathe however wont fare as well. or at all.
If it makes you feel better, the US has more reforestation than it does deforestation. There are more trees in the US now than there were a century ago. There are always news stories about the deforestation because it gets clicks, but never anything about the reforestation.
The situation in Brazil could be worse than it is in the US though. I don't know much about Brazil.
It's not only about trees. Entire ecosystems that will not suvive, mass extinction of displaced animals/plants/insects/etc
Above poster was talking about oxygen, which I was responding to. Of course deforestation destroys habitats.
except we're also fucking the ocean, the biggest contributor to our atmosphere's oxygen.
If it wasn't strong enough to survive us, it wasn't strong enough to survive. We are a species too. At least we occassionally try to do what we can. Volcanos, tsunamis, wild fires, earthquakes, and asteroids aren't so forgiving and have wiped out vast sections of ecosystem for millions of years.
We do need to think about these things and mitigate our damage, but no one should think that mother nature is a nice lady to any species. We are an apex omnivore, one of the smartest and most sophisticated killers that has ever existed.
We are so smart we think about our damage so we can ensure that there is always bounty. Even cavemen were environmentalists. They hunted big game to extinction then took up farming and here we are now.
Google Earth has a little timelapse thing where you can watch the Amazon being completely rekt over the last 40 years or so like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsIB81sLe2w
Edit: It's worth mentioning, the video only shows a small patch of the Amazon, if you actually go on Google Earth and look for yourself you'll see it's not just one small patch.
That might be the worst thing I've seen today :(
old growth != new growth && reforestation != restored ecosystems
I know that the US, India have some decent re-forestation projects. The quality of the CO2 sequestered and the O2 output of the rainforest is going to be different than one in North America, or India. I really want to belly ache more about the diversity of life lost in the de-forestation but I'm not going to have many people as concerned than if they realize that we could end up killing ourselves.
All that means is that we're shifting the demand for products that require large areas of forests to be cleared to other countries.
I would like to believe you, but I live in a beautiful area that is being suburbanized.
I'm constantly listening to the sounds of chainsaws making room for pools and decks that will never be used. I plant trees on my little plot, but they take years to grow and I only have room for about 10 of them. It hardly combats what I see around me.
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I live in a very small trailer that's surrounded by trees. I don't have a lawn.
The houses I'm fine with. The unused lawns, pools, decks, ect. are what make me sad. If you're going to deforest the area, at least have some use for it.
I feel like you're not giving phytoplankton any credit.
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Because Reddit is an echo chamber.
Yeah I was thinking this same thing scrolling down to your comment.
Someone says something sobering or ironic about how we're killing our planet, then another always needs to specify, "the PLANET will be fine... we're just a fever it'll burn off."
But these exchanges are so derivative of each other its eerie.
The rainforests arent really all that important for the oxygen actually, the plancton in out seas are. What the rain forrests do is keep moisture in the area. If too much of the rain forets go down, most of south america will turn into a desert.
It's the arseholes who create demand, hardwood floors don't grow on tree's
Oh....
It's easy to say that when you've lived in a house your entire life and never gone hungry.
Your part of the blame for buying products with palm oil.
Do you eat meat? That's way more of a contributer.
According to this study, 93% of the Amazon deforestation is for the animal agriculture industry, so the amount for palm oil must be relatively small:
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/758171468768828889/pdf/277150PAPER0wbwp0no1022.pdf
If it wasn't palm oil, it'd be canola or whatever other crop. The problem is demand for cheap vegetable oils and lack of concern for where they come from or what is destroyed making them.
Palm oil, properly managed, is a great crop compared to many of the alternatives. Efficient, less water needed, etc.
Clearing the Amazon to make room to grow it, though... that's the problem. And the often poor and desperate people doing it are only part of the problem. It's that people don't give a shit what's in their products.
The planet is fine, it's the people that are fucked. ~~ George Carlin
No, no. President Trump will fix it................
Logging for the sake of lumber has an effect that is pretty much insignificant compared to the amount of rainforest land that is cleared for the sake of growing feed crops and grazing cattle.
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/758171468768828889/pdf/277150PAPER0wbwp0no1022.pdf
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM
I'm glad to see all the people pointing this out.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 87%. (I'm a bot)
Extended Summary | FAQ | Theory | Feedback | Top keywords: forest#1 Brazil#2 Deforestation#3 Amazon#4 government#5
Please remember that the majority of the land is cleared is for Beef. Eat less meat, eat local when you do, and you can minimize your impact. Plant trees to offset your footprint more. Don't just blame bad guys. You are part of the problem. I am too.
Fuckin nice, bot
This bot is fucking amazing. How does it work?
Presumably machine learning and a large amount of data collected over the years. This is the API used to do a majority of the work
Thought this might be interesting to some of you guys and gals:
https://rfcx.org
He's using a really inventive way to fight against illegal logging with used cell phones and custom solar panels.
Absolutely this. I have two smartphones that I can't wait to send their way. These people are doing amazing work.
That's brilliant
Reduce meat intake.
I read somewhere only 10% of the crops are destined to direct human consumption. The other 90% are for cattle.
Its seriously one of the biggest problems on Earth and nobody wants to admit it because meat is just too dear to people. God forbid they make any real sacrifice. It doesn't matter what you think about animal ethics. The quantity of meat consumed on Earth is far greater than it can support, and it is having disastrous effects. Trying to keep our lives on Earth sustainable will require a significant reduction in meat consumption, period.
The # 1 driving force behind deforestation of the rainforest is animal agriculture. not so much for grazing as for growing soy to feed cows.
Logging, Amazon. I thought I was reading a tech article and got really confused.
First the fake reviews. Now someone left the debug setting for the logger in prod!
I just ordered another rainforest on Amazon. No worries guys, I have prime.
But your purchase was logged illegally.
I actually thought this was a technical article at first then I read rainforest and was confused.
Always amazes me when people upvote threads like this but when i start talking about the effect of animal agriculture everyone downvotes/turns a blindeye. Even though animal agriculture is just as bad or worse as illegal logging. Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the exhaust of the entire transport industry. Ever car, plane, train, truck, bus, EVERYTHING GLOBALLY, contributes less to global greenhouse gases than animal agriculture. Helping the environment starts at the dinner table.
It's a pretty uncomfortable truth I guess. Much easier to get outraged and blame big business and other people than it is to leave the hamburger off your plate.
exactly. nobody wants to hear they have to change the way they eat, thats too hard.
What are people doing to go after both the culprits of deforestation and its buyers? It seems you have to tackle both or there will always be an incentive for someone else to capitalize on.
Asshole humans
ITT: "but how can they do something so evil and not feel guilty?"
Look at your hardwood floors, your desks, your back yard porches, your caskets...
Edit: yea look at the food you eat as well.
Hardwoods do not generally grow in hot, humid environments like jungles. Jungles are generally slashed and burned to make room for grazing land. Which only lasts a few years.
Enjoy your decks and floors guilt-free.
That cheeseburger on the other hand...
They do grow rubberwood in rainforest and almost every cheap piece of furniture you buy is made out of that shit.
Glad to see I'm not the only one here who gets that.
My understanding is that in a lot of countries wood used to make those things comes from sustainable sources. Logging companies have a lot of restrictions placed on them, and have to replant trees they cut down.
Depends on the wood, hard to get hardwood as it grows slowly, replanting pine after cutting it down is just business.
Illegal loggers can laundry illegal wood. A lot of wood sold in Europe as if it comes from sustainable sources actually nobody knows where it comes from.
Well even worse. Look at your plate. Most of the rain forrest being choped down is to grow soy to feed the live stock that will produce meat. About 85 percent of the world’s soybean crop is processed into meal and vegetable oil, and virtually all of that meal is used in animal feed. If we ate the soy straight away, we could feed a lot more people than the meat will feed. The chain of resource waste is quite riddiculous. It's soy -> cow -> human. We could generate a fourth step that would be that we eat the human that ate the cow that ate the soy. But we could also go straight to the 2nd step and eat the plant-based crop, just the way our "meat" does.
Better yet, look at what's on your plate. Logging for the sake of lumber has an effect that is pretty much insignificant compared to the amount of rainforest land that is cleared for the sake of growing feed crops and grazing cattle. Yes we should refuse to buy responsibly-sourced wood, but we'd make much more of an impact if we stopped consuming meat and animal products.
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/758171468768828889/pdf/277150PAPER0wbwp0no1022.pdf
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM
I don't think that's it. It's more land clearing to make way for palm oil production, sugar cane, cattle grazing, etc.
Haha, no, look in your fridge. The biggest cause of deforestation is animal agriculture, with over an acre per second being cleared just to meet demands.
As someone else said, the main cause of deforestation in the Amazon is slash and burn to create agricultural land. One cause of this is believed to be the fact that exporting wood was made illegal (un sanction I believe?). This made it so these forests had no economic benefit to anybody.
So what does someone do with a bunch of land that is filled with stuff that isn't making him money? You slash and burn and turn it into agriculture land. Whereas if you could make money from the trees, there would be an incentive to keep that source of money for a long time, thus promoting more sustainable forestry.
Musical instruments is one of the largest markets for rare woods
Lol your hardwood floor and typical desk is not of rain forest lumber. It is usually pine fir etc. Some is nicer oak etc. Lots is just chipboard or pressboard which are scraps glued together. Like the hot dog of wood.
Lots of rain forest wood and foliage is just burned. They want the land for farming not for the wood. And then sadly they don't follow a rotation cycle for their grazing and the land becomes dead within a few years and so they need more.
Brazil beef is also crap. Alberta and Texas should be supplying them with beef but Brazil has tariffs on almost everything so I wouldn't be surprised if beef is projected as well.
Brazil is pretty much a terrible incompetent and corrupt country in almost all regards. Did you know that the startup phase Facebook CFO and co founder made most of his funds to help FB by essentially insider trading futures on Brazil's market? Insider trading is way more lax there because corruption runs abound.
How has this not been stopped by now? You'd think the whole generation raised on captain planet would be doing something about it.
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We'll have to get mad at it, forget about it a few days later, and then continue to contribute to it until the same article with a higher rate appears next year!
These idiots that own the logging company's will not have a world to spend all there money in once they destroy it.
How does this actualy happen....I mean it is illegal so is there NO ONE watching like forest rangers and such....I just can't think it is so easy and even profitable ...is this not in the realm of blood diamond type shit?
Just wait until it's all gone , then what? Do people not think this way? To me it's common sense.
This is a double edged sword. Not only is there deforestation but there are multinational companies that run their cattle ranches where there use to be rainforest so that's thousands of cows farting and releasing methane 24/7 so people in the global north can enjoy a Big Mac whenever they want.
Lots of comments here about the developed world's hypocricy trying to call Brazil on knowing it will be destructive and doing it anyway, but the thing is, this is an EXTREMELY vital part of the world. We can't afford to fuck the Amazon up like smaller, less diverse lands that we've carelessly developed in years past. There's a reason this place is called Earth's Lungs folks. Obviously the problem is greed, so the only feasible solution is developing some sort of multinational crowdfunded effort to keep these places/people safe. Lobbying and lawyers I guess?
Tbh tho it gives us a lot of cheap products like guitars, trying to see the bright side.
Damned illegal woodchuckers
When did Amazon buy a rain forest?
Did you know that more land is cleared in the amazon for raising cattle than it is for logging. This is often over looked. Watch cowspiracy it really sheds light on how lur agricultural system is so inefficient and how it harms ecosystems around the world
*undocumented logging.
The article says
A model my ass.
I'm Brazilian and I can assure a lot of data from Brazil is highly suspicious. The previous governments were pretty known by their "creative accountancy".
Brazil received a lot of money from Norway to keep the forest, but they can't. What they do? Fake numbers, so they can keep the money running.
I'm not surprised the numbers are bigger this year (the government changed), but I'm quite sure it's not because logging is faster, but because the last years numbers were pretty underestimated.
We need to build a wall around the forest. boom. problem solved.
Time Lapse of the Amazon deforestation, it's pretty damn ugly.
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We talk a lot about how much CO2 we generate but much less about how much our flora removes, and how much "CO2 removal capacity" we've lost. This is potentially even more destructive because we can quickly shut down coal power plants etc. but reforestation takes decades if not longer.
what's terrible is that the rate of change in Amazon greenness is in the "depletion" direction on a consistently increasing basis.
In other news, making things illegal doesn't stop what it made illegal
And how do you stop someone who isn't directly accountable :(
In the defense of mankind's hubris; we only need natural ecosystems to exist. Nbd.
They should treat illegal deforestation like poaching and have armed teams taking initiative to stop loggers. As stated REDD+, an education and funding program for land managers can help them to report suspicious activity, then they should send legit armed infantry to stop this shit. Unnaceptable.
Sting got ridiculed for his attention to this in the 80s.
Damn. Amazon owns a forest, too?
I was learning about deforestation 25 years ago in elementary school. The countries involved are to blame for not protecting the forest.
Amazon has a grocery store without employees - soooo take that rainforest.
But let's put restrictions on coal /s
-Americans
How do they get away with this? Isn't logging a big operation? It's not like they can just hide a giant truck when someone gets close.
Much of the Amazon rainforest is bulldozed and turn into pasture for animal grazing, and fields of grain to feed said animals. Governments around the world should be trying to push for the consumption of less meat.