The Brazilian government was on Wednesday set to announce near record deforestation rates in the Amazon rainforest, the world’s leading source of biodiversity and fresh water.
The rates of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest had reached its near record in 2004, with at least 22,000 sq km deforested in the 12 months to May 2003!
For decades, illegal logging had been robbing the earth of its one of the world’s great treasures of biodiversity.
Once unacceptable and worrisome, the alarming deforestation problem in recent years has been found to have fallen by about a third in the 12 months through July.
The Brazil government seems to have undertaken stringent and effective measures to impose more controls on illegal logging and improved certification of land ownership. Various economic development projects were also of great help in pulling down the forest’s deforestation rates.
In the year ended July 31, an estimated 9,600 square km (3,707 sq miles) of the world’s largest rain forest were cleared. This is a considerable low rate of deforestation compared to a revised 14,039 sq km (5,417 sq miles) the previous year.
Environment Minister Marina Silva told a news conference in the capital Brasilia said,
It’s a great achievement for Brazilian society. It reflects a new environmental governance.
Is it the success of the ministry’s using new methodology to revise the historical data or a more scientific, ingenuous and more importantly ‘veracious vigilance’ on the part of the same government that led the deforestation to its lowest in three decades?
