Skip to footer

Can we put an end to deforestation? Brazil is already leading the way.

A talk Tuesday with a focus on deforestation in the United Nations climate summit in Paris has one experienced member – Brazil, a nation that has cut down on illegal deforestation by 80 percent in just over a decade. 

|
Nacho Doce/Reuters
Edivaldo Fernandes Oliveira stands next to his cows before milking in Rio Pardo, Brazil, Sept. 1. Rio Pardo rises where only Amazon jungle stood 25 years ago. Brazil's goal is to eliminate illegal deforestation, but enforcing it in remote corners like Rio Pardo is far from easy.

It's early in the United Nations international climate change summit in Paris, but deforestation is already on the chopping block with discussion scheduled for Tuesday.

A special meeting Tuesday with Prince Charles and leaders from South America is set to draw attention to shrinking forests and how they impact climate and the environment, but Brazil can enter talks with some confidence.

Brazil has cut down on illegal deforestation by 80 percent since 2003, according to a study published Monday in the Journal, "Global Change Biology." Using a combination of public policy, market incentives, and stepped-up enforcement, the country reduced its carbon dioxide emissions due to deforestation from 1.76 gigatonnes in 2003 to 0.428 gigatonnes in 2012.

Brazil's progress may serve as a model for other nations. Much of its work has been offset by rising deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Peru, and other tropical countries. Before the meeting, Peru's Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal said new action by private companies must be part of the talks about limiting deforestation. 

Brazil has successfully used private companies in its multi-pronged work to slow deforestation. One striking example is the cattle industry, where a series of binding agreements committed slaughterhouses to refusing cattle grazed on deforested land, The Christian Science Monitor's Pete Spotts reported. Business has boomed – the largest company expanded from nine slaughterhouses in 2008 to 32 in 2015 – but the same large company stopped buying cattle from ranches using deforested grazing land. While 36 percent of the ranches used deforested land in 2009, only 4 percent did by 2013.

Experts say stopping the last of the Amazon's illegal deforestation requires more creativity. Enforcement of existing laws contributed the most to dropping rates of deforestation, Daniel Nepstad, executive director at Earth Innovation Institute, a research organization for sustainable farming methods, told the Monitor in mid-October. Small-scale operations are the remaining culprits, meaning they may respond best to more "carrots" – positive incentives to the farmers and ranchers who abstain from clearing land. 

The climate talks may need to inspire Brazilians and other officials into the next phase, as 15 nations with tropical rainforests have pledged to decrease by half their carbon emissions from deforestation by 2020. 

This report includes material from the Associated Press and Thomson Reuters Foundation.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Can we put an end to deforestation? Brazil is already leading the way.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2015/1201/Can-we-put-an-end-to-deforestation-Brazil-is-already-leading-the-way
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe