Leaving the rainforest of the Amazon standing has obvious benefits to the environment, as the living forests absorb and store carbon dioxide that would otherwise contribute to global warming. But cutting down the forests has been assumed to be the only route to economic development for the local people, as it provides work in the timber industry and then clears the way for farming and cattle raising. Now, a new study has found that deforestation brings only short-term and temporary economic benefits, in what researchers call a boom-and-bust cycle.
The researchers say the boom is probably due to a number of factors, including better roads and therefore better access to healthcare and schools. For a short while, the community benefits from the natural resources of the forest, and makes money off the timber and the farms that are set up in the cleared lands. But the soil is rapidly degraded making farming and cattle ranching unsustainable. “A lot of that land ends up being abandoned” [New Scientist], says study coauthor Robert Ewers.
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Tropical rainforests are often considered one of the world’s greatest protections against global warming, as the lush forests can absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas behind climate change. But shifting weather patterns can transform the rainforest from an ally to a hindrance: According to an international study, a 2005 drought in the Amazon rainforest killed trees and released more greenhouse gas than the annual emissions of Europe and Japan [Reuters].
Researchers say that the 2005 drought slowed the growth of trees, thereby slowing their absorption of carbon dioxide, and also killed off trees, which emitted carbon dioxide as they rotted. Researchers say that if global warming brings more dramatic weather patterns and dryer conditions to the Amazon, as some climate models predict, the rainforest could even accelerate global warming. Says lead researcher Oliver Phillips: “For years, the Amazon forest has been helping to slow down climate change. But relying on this subsidy from nature is extremely dangerous…. We cannot take this carbon sink for granted” [CBC].
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Trees continue to fall due to illegal logging operations in the the Amazon rainforest, and Brazil’s environmental officials have discovered that those logging companies hired not just lumberjacks to get the job done, but also hackers. The hackers went to work in the Brazilian state of Pará, where the local government has launched an online system for issuing permits to logging companies. The system tracks their total output and simply refuses to issues more permits, which are checked when the wood is hauled out in trucks [Ars Technica].
But instead of abiding by the limits on the amount of timber they could haul out of the rainforest, more than 107 companies allegedly hired hackers to access the government records and increase their timber allocations. Andre Muggiati, a Greenpeace official in Brazil, said that “by hacking into the permit system, these companies have made their timber shipments appear legal and compliant with the forest management plans” [Wired News]. The Brazilian government has already arrested more than 30 people involved in the scandal.
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