Lungs Of The Earth: Why You Should Care About The Amazon Rainforest

Beautiful and fragile

The Amazon rainforest covers an awe-inspiring 2.6 million square miles (6.7m sq km), spanning Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. It’s home to an incredible three million plant and animal species, as well as around 400 different Indigenous groups. Yet this ecologically- and culturally-rich landscape is under threat. We track the challenges that the Amazon rainforest has faced over the years.

Early settlers

According to some estimates, the first human settlers of the Amazon existed as far back as 32,000 to 39,000 years ago. Many of these communities lived in harmony with the forest and had nomadic lifestyles, staying in temporary settlements for a few years before moving on. Among the largest groups in the Amazon today are the Tikúna with a population of about 46,000; the Yanomami, who number around 38,000 in total; and the Kayapo, with a population of around 7,000.

Arrival of colonists

Everything changed in 1492, when Christopher Columbus arrived in the Amazon region, marking the start of European colonization. Up until then, there were an estimated 11 million Indigenous people living in Brazil, in around 2,000 tribes. However, around 90% of them were wiped out in the first century of contact due to diseases brought by the Europeans, but also enslavement. 

First global commodity

Indigenous people had been extracting latex from native rubber trees for centuries, using a process called rubber tapping. From the mid-19th century onwards, European colonists started to do the same. In 1839, American engineer Charles Goodyear invented vulcanization, a treatment that made rubber more durable, and this led to a spike in demand in Europe. In 1855, more than 2,100 tons of rubber was exported from the Amazon; by 1879 that figure had increased to about 10,000 tons.

A rise in deforestation

Deforestation eventually became an issue too. Between 1850 and 1920, an average of 30 million hectares of global forests were lost per decade; from 1920 to 1980, this figure increased fourfold, to a whopping 120 million hectares per decade. A booming global population and increased demand for timber, farming and livestock land were the key drivers of deforestation in the first half of the 20th century.

Battle for beef

Cattle ranching has been practiced in the Amazon since colonial times, but in the 1960s it really exploded. Brazilian government policies encouraged cattle ranching in the Amazon, and included building major roads into the forest and introducing tax incentives for large farms. So it's not too surprising that the number of cattle in the Amazon jumped from five million in the 1960s to 70-80 million in the early 2000s. Yet the industry involved clearing swathes of forest, and currently a shocking 80% of total deforestation in the Amazon is attributed to cattle ranching.

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Drilling for oil

In 1967, US oil firm Texaco found huge reserves of crude oil in the Lago Agrio region in the Ecuadorian Amazon and began drilling. When the company ceased operations in 1992, it entered a long environmental lawsuit. Chevron, which merged with Texaco in 2001, was charged $9.5 billion for widespread contamination and oil spills, which judges alleged had affected wildlife populations and led to a rise in cancer deaths, miscarriages and birth defects among Indigenous people. However, in September 2018 an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of Chevron.

A road enters the rainforest

In the 1970s, Brazil was under military rule and its leader, General Medici, proposed the building of a road through the rainforest to open it up to development. The 2,485-mile (4,000km) Trans-Amazonian Highway was built to support Brazil’s burgeoning logging, farming and cattle-ranching industries with the hope of linking major port cities including Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, in Brazil’s northeast, and Lima in Peru. 

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A controversial road

Yet the Trans-Amazonian Highway has ramped up deforestation by making it easier for industries to access previously untouched areas of forest: currently, around 80% of deforested areas in the Brazilian Amazon are within 19 miles (30km) of official roads. It was also devastating for Indigenous people: two entire Yanomami communities were killed by diseases that were brought in via the road, including flu and measles.

Concerns about the environment surface

In 1972, the book The Limits to Growth was published. In it, the authors argued that the Earth’s resources were finite and used computer modeling to suggest that the world could “overshoot and collapse” its resources by 2070 if we continued with business as usual. It wasn’t the first time environmental concerns had been raised, but this title certainly brought widespread attention to the issue. Scientists and activists also began to voice concerns about resource exploitation in the Amazon.

Devastation for Karipuna people

In 1976, the Brazilian government sent an expedition into the Amazon to help “assimilate” Karipuna people. Tragically, the Karipuna people were exposed to new illnesses and many of them died, with the few that survived fleeing further into the forest. In 1988 they were granted a territory of their own in Rondônia state. Today, there are thought to be just 58 Karipuna people left in the Amazon.

Another hot commodity

With the arrival of the new road, the mineral-rich regions of Tucumã and Ourilândia do Norte were opened up to miners, who began mining for gold, iron and nickel. A lucrative illegal gold trade also sprung up and today there are an estimated 450 illegal mines in the Brazilian Amazon. Yet the trade is lethal for the environment: according to a study from 2017, mining was responsible for 10% of deforestation in the Amazon between 2005 and 2015, with the vast majority of that activity being illegal.

Activists assemble

In 1977, Chico Mendes founded the Union of Rubber Tappers, an organization designed to protect the forest against deforestation. At that time, Brazil’s military dictatorship was opening up the forest to miners, loggers and cattle ranchers, but the Rubber Tappers were desperate to protect Indigenous people and traditional trades. Yet, on 22 December 1988, Mendes was assassinated by cattle ranchers Darly Alves da Silva and his son Darci Alves Pereira, who were enraged by his attempts to stop their activities in the forest. In 1990, da Silva and Pereira were convicted of first-degree murder for killing Mendes.

Logging makes inroads

In the late 1990s, Brazil’s timber industry ballooned and international firms wanted a piece of it. During this time, Asian firms invested more than $500 million in Brazil’s timber industry, yet in the late 1990s around 80% of this logging activity was found to be illegal. In order to harvest lucrative trees, many that aren’t commercially viable are lost as collateral damage and illegal loggers often operate on protected Indigenous lands too. 

A controversial dam

Back in the 1970s, a Brazilian energy company floated the idea of building a hydroelectric dam on Brazil’s 1,019-mile (1,640km) long Xingu River. Ever since then, an ongoing conflict between the Brazilian government and energy companies, versus Indigenous people and conservationists, has ensued. Despite backlash, the Belo Monte Dam was constructed between 2011 and 2016, promising to produce 11,233 MW monthly at “full operational capacity”. Yet since its completion the highest monthly energy output has been 6,882 MW. 

Opposition and protests

The building of the dam compromised an area of more than 579 square miles (1,500sq km) and forcibly displaced at least 20,000 people. The project was funded by BNDES, Brazil’s taxpayer-funded development bank, and cost around R$40 billion (US$9.5bn). Since the dam’s initial proposal in the 1980s, Kayapó people and other Indigenous groups have protested against it, claiming that it threatens a biodiverse ecosystem which they have managed sustainably for generations.

Successful curbs to deforestation

It hasn’t all been bad news for the environment in the last two decades. At the turn of the 21st century, international pressure to protect the Amazon rainforest mounted. The Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) began to give out tough fines to illegal ranchers and loggers, which were effective in reducing forest clearing rates. Between 2004 and 2012, deforestation fell by an impressive 83.5%.

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Landmark initiatives

In 2006, Greenpeace released a report showing an undeniable link between deforestation and soybean cultivation – roughly 70–90% of which is used to feed livestock. Following global uproar, charities, NGOs and soy companies forged an agreement called the Amazon Soy Moratorium (ASM). This essentially forbade firms from buying soy that contributed to deforestation, used slave labor or threatened protected Indigenous territories. It’s been broadly successful: a report released last year showed that the ASM had prevented between 3,475 and 6,950 square miles (9,000–18,000sq km) of deforestation in its first decade.

Forest clearing rises again

Unfortunately, deforestation has been on the rise again since 2012. It’s no coincidence that this was the year that Brazil’s Forest Code was weakened, essentially making it easier to get permission to clear forests. On top of this, the building of major dams including Santo Antônio, Jirau and Belo Monte has contributed to forest clearing, while the opening up of new markets for Brazilian beef also added to the surge. In 2016, there was a sharp increase.

A new political era

The election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 sounded alarm bells for those concerned about protecting the Amazon. The Brazilian president ran a campaign focused on rolling back protections, reducing Indigenous rights and declaring the rainforest open for business. A report published by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) showed that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose by 9.5% between August 2019 and July 2020, compared to the previous year, which was found to be a direct result of Bolsonaro's policies.

New protections introduced

Over in Colombia, increased protections tell a different story. The Chiribiquete National Park, which was established in 1989, was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 2018. That same year, the Colombian government announced that the park would be extended by a massive 1.5 million hectares. Straddling the Caquetá and Guaviare provinces, the protected region has a high level of biodiversity and is home to unique table-top mountains called tepuis.

Fires raging

The Amazon caught the world’s attention in August 2019, when images of a burning forest began to circulate. During that month alone, Brazil recorded more than 80,000 fires – the highest number ever and an 80% increase compared to the same period in 2018. More than half of these were in the Amazon rainforest. While wildfires are a natural occurrence, the unprecedented scale of these fires was linked to deforestation: many of them had been set intentionally to clear land. On 20 August, the smoke was so bad that the sky darkened during the daytime in São Paulo. 

Blazes continue

Sadly, the blazes of 2019 were actually surpassed by the fires of 2020. In the Brazilian Amazon, fires increased by 13% in the first nine months of 2020 compared to the same period the previous year, according to INPE data. The region’s dry season last year was more severe due to the warming of the tropical North Atlantic, which drew moisture away from the continent. Worryingly, not only did the blazes affect previously cleared swathes of land but virgin forest too.

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Drought poses threats

It’s not just fire that poses a threat to the rainforest biome. As is clear from this photograph – taken at Aleixo Lake, in the rural area of Manaus in Amazonas, Brazil in 2015 – the region has experienced severe drought. In October 2010, the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon river, reached a historic low of 45 feet (13.63m) with parts drying up completely. The drought is thought to be caused by global warming, the increase in ocean temperatures and deforestation. This meant that villages on the river, which depend on the waterway for food and transportation, were forced to rely on aid.

Floods ravage the region

At the opposite end of the spectrum, flooding has wrought havoc on the Amazon basin. According to a study released in 2018, the incidence of severe floods in the Port of Manaus on the Rio Negro and the Óbidos on the Amazon main stem has risen steadily since 1970. While light, seasonal flooding is normal in these regions, extreme flooding has disastrous consequences: it ravages cropland and pastureland, separates communities from their homes and contaminates water supplies.

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Tipping point

The chopping down of the rainforest and global heating are closely interlinked. Trees play an essential role in storing carbon and emitting water into the atmosphere, so cutting them down means higher temperatures and less rainfall. According to a study published in Nature Communications, up to two-fifths of the existing Amazon has already reached a point where it could turn into savannah. When it reaches this “tipping point”, as scientists have called it, the ecosystem's unique ability to support biodiversity and absorb carbon dioxide will be lost. 

Reasons for hope

There are some signs of positive change on the horizon, however. In the summer of 2019, an Ecuadorian court successfully blocked the government’s attempts to sell off more of the forest for oil exploitation, instead choosing to protect a 500,000-acre region that has been inhabited by Waraoni people for centuries. Landmark events like this one offer glimmers of hope for the future of the Amazon. 

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