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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (5051)	5/21/2005 9:40:11 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36921

Amazon Deforestation up 6 Percent in 2004 The Associated Press Thursday 19 May 2005 Trees cut from virgin Amazon rainforest lie waiting to be cut into lumber at a sawmill in the Amazon town of Vila Rica in Mato Grosso State, one of the Brazilian states of greatest deforestation. (Photo: Rickey Rogers / Reuters) Brasilia, Brazil - Deforestation in the Amazon rain forest in 2004 was the second worst ever, figures released by the Brazilian government showed Wednesday. Satellite photos and data showed that ranchers, soybean farmers and loggers burned and cut down a near-record area of 10,088 square miles of rain forest in the 12 months ending in August 2004, the Brazilian Environmental Ministry said. The destruction was nearly 6 percent higher than in the same period the year before, when 9,500 square miles were destroyed. The deforestation hit record numbers in 1995, when the Amazon shrank a record 11,200 square miles, an area roughly the size of Belgium or the American state of Massachusetts. The Amazon forest - which sprawls over 1.6 million square miles and covers more than half the country - is a key component of the global environment. The jungle is sometimes called the world's "lung" because its billions of trees produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Environmentalists were shocked with the new figures, which were announced nearly a year after the Brazilian government announced a $140 million package to curtail destruction. "It's a tragedy, a demonstration that more needs to be done by the government," said Paulo Adario, the head of Greenpeace's Amazon program. "Clearly, Amazon deforestation is not one of the government's priority right now." Government officials were expecting an increase in destruction of only about 2 percent. "We will intensify our actions to fight illegal deforestation in the most critical areas," Environment Minister Marina Silva said in a statement. She noted that deforestation in several Amazon states decreased compared to the previous period thanks to the government's efforts to implement "more lasting and effective" measures. Brazil's rain forest is as big as western Europe and covers 60 percent of the country's territory. Experts say as much as 20 percent of its 1.6 million square miles has already been destroyed by development, logging and farming. Last year, the government announced that 9,170 square miles of rain forest had vanished in 2003, but on Wednesday it corrected the figure to 9,500 square miles. World's Biodiversity Declining at an Alarming Rate By Phil Couvrette The Associated Press Friday 20 May 2005 Montreal - The world's biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate, threatening human well-being and future development and requiring important efforts and new thinking on conservation, a sweeping international report released on Thursday says. The report is the second of seven reports billed as the world's largest study of changes to Earth's ecosystems and their impact on humans. It is the result of five years of collaboration between 1,360 experts from 95 countries around the world. Human activity is responsible for a reduction of biodiversity, which degrades ecosystems and penalizes other groups of people, especially the poorest who depend most on them, according to the report presented at McGill University in Montreal to mark the International Day for Biological Diversity. Entitled "Ecosystems and Human Well-being: the Biodiversity Synthesis Report," it was prepared by the U.N. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment with the cooperation of the Convention on Biological Diversity. "The loss of biodiversity is a major barrier to development already and poses increasing risks for future generations," said Walter Reid, the director of the Millennium Assessment, "However, the report shows that the management tools, policies, and technologies do exist to dramatically slow this loss." According to the report changes in biodiversity due to human activities were more rapid in the past 50 years than at any time in human history, and over the last 100 years species extinction caused by humans has multiplied as much as 1,000 times. Some 12 percent of birds; 23 percent of mammals; 25 percent of conifers and 32 percent of amphibians are threatened with extinction, and the world's fish stocks have been reduced by an astonishing 90 percent since the start of industrial fishing. "We will need to make sure that we don't disrupt the biological web to the point where collapse of the whole system becomes irreversible," warns Anantha Kumar Duraiappah, of Canada's International Institute for Sustainable Development, one of the co-chairs of the report. The report notes that while efforts have helped reduce the loss of biodiversity more action is needed as little progress is foreseen in the short term. "The magnitude of the challenge of slowing the rate of biodiversity loss is demonstrated by the fact that most of the direct drivers of biodiversity loss are projected to either remain constant or increase in the near future," the report says. The report blames biodiversity change on a number of factors including habitat conversion, climate change, pollution and over-exploitation of resources. -------