Los Angeles Times - 26.08.2019

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(800) LA TIMES

Founded Dec. 4, 1881

Vol. CXXXVIII No. 266

LOS ANGELES TIMES (ISSN 0458-3035)

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ic consequences not only for
people in South America,
but also for everyone around
the world.
“We might be very, very
close to the tipping point,”
said Carlos Nobre, a climate
scientist at the University of
Sao Paulo in Brazil. And if
we cross it, he said, “it’s irre-
versible.”
The trend is particularly
alarming because it comes
after more than a decade of
progress toward preserving
the world’s largest rainfor-
est. Many blame the anti-en-
vironmental rhetoric of Jair
Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new far-
right president, and fear
that it will put global climate
efforts in jeopardy.
Left to nature, the Ama-
zon rarely burns. But INPE
has counted more than
25,000 blazes in the Amazon
in August alone. The smoke
grew so thick it cast the city
of Sao Paulo, which lies more
than 1,000 miles away, into
daytime darkness.
The fires have sparked an
international outcry. But
they came as no surprise to
those who keep a close
watch on the Amazon. Satel-
lite images in May, June and
July showed an uptick in de-
forestation. It was only a
matter of time before the
flames followed, said Doug
Morton, chief of the Bio-
spheric Sciences Labora-
tory at NASA’s Goddard
Space Flight Center.
“This is the expected one-
two punch,” he said.
Instead of axes and ma-
chetes, people now use bull-
dozers and giant tractors
with chains to pull down the
Amazon’s towering trees. A
few months later, they torch
the trunks. It’s the only real-
istic way to remove such
huge amounts of biomass,
Morton said. “It’s slash and
burn, 21st century.”
Thousands of acres at a
time are being cleared for
large-scale agriculture, he
added. The land is primarily
used as pasture for cattle —
one of Brazil’s major exports
— or for crops such as soy-
beans.
This marks a troubling
reversal in the fight to end
deforestation, long a linch-
pin of global climate policy.
In 2004, the Brazilian gov-
ernment began cracking
down on forest destruction
by designating more pro-
tected areas and reserves for
indigenous people. Violators
were fined or arrested and
forest loss declined 75% by
2012.
What’s more, the coun-
try’s agricultural production
continued to increase, dem-
onstrating that develop-
ment and conservation
could go hand in hand, said
Nobre, who has been study-
ing the Amazon for more
than 35 years.
“It was a big success,”
he said. “Everybody was
happy.”
However, deforestation
rates have increased sharply
since May, a few months af-
ter Bolsonaro took office. So
far, more than 2,000 square

miles of forest have fallen

this year.

Bolsonaro has railed

against protections for in-

digenous land and promised

to boost the country’s econ-

omy. He has also weakened

the government’s capacity

for oversight and indicated

he would not go after far-

mers, loggers and miners

who seize and clear forest.

Some say his words have

been enough to trigger a

burst of deforestation. (Gov-

ernment representatives

did not respond to requests

for comment.)

“This actually gives a sig-

nal to people on the ground

that they can do whatever

they want and they won’t be

punished,” said Ane

Alencar, director of science

at the nonprofit Amazon En-

vironmental Research Insti-

tute.

President Trump’s trade

war may also play a role by

making Brazil a leading sup-

plier of China’s soybeans.

“This is, to some extent,

driven by global demand for

commodities, because that’s

what potentially gives the

land value to farmers and

ranchers,” said ecologist Ol-

iver Phillips of the University

of Leeds in the U.K.

Bolsonaro has called IN-

PE’s deforestation figures a

“lie” and recently fired the

agency’s director. He has

also claimed, without evi-

dence, that environmental

groups started the fires to

embarrass his administra-

tion.

But scientists said

there’s no question that the

blazes are linked to deforest-

ation. The burns are clus-

tered near roads along the

so-called arc of deforest-

ation, and they line up with

the areas of greatest land

clearing earlier in the year,

Morton said. The power of

the fires also betrays their

origins.

“Big towering columns of

smoke need a big fire be-

neath them,” he said. This is

not farmers burning fields or

clearing overgrown pas-

tures. “This is burning enor-

mous piles of wood.”

As bad as they are, this

year’s fires are not off the

charts. Between January

and August, scientists have

counted more than 40,

blazes in the Amazon re-

gion; in 2010, during a severe

drought, they spotted 60,

blazes over the same period

of time.

The weather this year is

pretty normal, so that’s not

what’s driving the fires, said

Luiz Aragao, a scientist at

INPE. Instead, the pattern

resembles the years of the

early 2000s, when deforest-

ation peaked. Back then, sci-

entists tallied nearly 80,

fires between January and

August, and the burns

closely tracked the area of

cleared forest.

“This is eerily familiar,”

Morton said.

And it’s not over yet. It’s

common to let felled trees

dry before burning them, so

the spike of deforestation

that INPE recorded in July

will bring more fires in Sep-

tember, Alencar said: “We

still have two months to go.”

The fires — and the defor-

estation behind them — are

an immediate concern for

global warming. Already,

Brazil’s blazes have released

200 million tons of CO2 into

the atmosphere — about

three times as much as all of

the wildfires in California

last year, according to Eu-

rope’s Copernicus Atmos-

phere Monitoring Service.

Aragao estimates that by

the end of the year, green-

house gas emissions will be

similar to those in 2009,

when clearing and burning

the Brazilian Amazon re-

leased about 500 million

tons of CO2. That’s equiva-

lent to roughly 1% of the

world’s total emissions in a

year. (If the fires spread from

piles of toppled trees into in-

tact forests, emissions could

be higher, he said.)

Much more worrying

than the fires themselves is

the perilous state of the Am-

azon, scientists said.

Climate models suggest

that the combined effects of

deforestation and global

warming could push the

Amazon past a critical tip-

ping point and turn two-

thirds of the rainforest into a

kind of degraded savanna,

Nobre said.

That’s because the Ama-

zon creates its own weather.

And if it loses that power,

everything could change.

The moisture that sus-

tains the Amazon evapo-

rates off the Atlantic Ocean

and falls as rain when it

reaches land. Normally, that

would be the end of the story.

But in the Amazon, bil-

lions of trees conspire to put

some of that water back into

the air, making rain for the

rest of the forest and the ag-

ricultural areas downwind.

Every leaf releases small

amounts of water when it

opens its pores to take in

CO2, a key ingredient for

photosynthesis.

Take away enough trees,

however, and that cycle will

collapse.

Rising CO2 levels will

also choke off Amazonian

rainfall, said Abigail Swann,

a climate scientist at the

University of Washington.

With more of the gas in the

air, trees don’t need to open

their pores as often to bring

in the same amount of car-

bon. This alone accounts for

about half of the decline in

rainfall projected by models,

according to a 2018 study by

Swann and others.

Global warming adds to

the problem by making the

climate hotter and drier,

stressing trees and increas-

ing the risk of uncontrolled

wildfires that could threaten

large areas of forest.

The ultimate fate of the

Amazon is still up for debate.

“This is a huge question lots

of people are trying to an-

swer,” Swann said.

If scientists’ worst fears

come to pass, it could be-

come all but impossible to

meet global climate goals

aimed at limiting the worst

effects of global warming.

The Amazon plays a key

role in offsetting our emis-

sions and sequestering car-

bon. But already, climate

change has suppressed the

forest’s ability to suck up

CO2 by one-third, and in the

worst years, fires release

about as much carbon as the

forest traps. Now, Nobre and

others fear that if large

swaths of the forest trans-

form, about 50 billion tons of

stored carbon — roughly 10

times the world’s annual

emissions — could escape.

Damage to the Amazon

could reduce its powerful

cooling effects too. When wa-

ter evaporates from tree

leaves, it removes heat from

the atmosphere. As a result,

tropical forests act like giant

air conditioners, both locally

and globally. According to

one analysis, protected

forests in the Brazilian state

of Mato Grosso were 3 de-

grees Celsius (5.4 degrees

Fahrenheit) lower than sur-

rounding pastures and

farms.

There’s also the potential

for changes in the Amazon

rainfall to disrupt weather

patterns around the world.

One study found that defor-

estation of the Amazon

would affect precipitation in

North America, including in

California and the Midwest.

Residents of South

America would suffer some

of the most dire effects of a

transformed forest. Millions

of indigenous people live in

the Amazon and depend on

the forest for survival. (So do

10% of the world’s plant and

animal species.)

Agricultural areas to the

southeast would be hit hard

too; they rely on the Amazon

for most of their rain, Swann

said.

Scientists already see

worrisome changes. In the

southeastern Amazon, the

dry season lasts three weeks

longer than it did 40 years

ago, Nobre said.

His research suggests

that a tipping point could oc-

cur when deforestation hits

20% to 25%. The Amazon

has lost between 15% and

17% of its trees, and at cur-

rent deforestation rates, the

rainforest could cross No-

bre’s threshold in 15 to 30

years.

“We are almost seeing the

tipping point before us,” he

said.

Most Brazilians want to

see the forest protected. A

recent survey by the Brazil-

ian Institute of Public Opin-

ion and Statistics and the

activist group Avaaz found

that 96% of respondents

would like the government

to combat illegal deforest-

ation. The percentage was

the same among Bol-

sonaro’s supporters.

But while domestic poli-

cies are important, Nobre

said a big part of the solution

lies elsewhere. For instance,

countries that import goods

from Brazil should refuse to

buy products that contrib-

ute to forest loss, he said.

(Finland is urging the Euro-

pean Union to consider a

ban on Brazilian beef.)

Nobre also argues that

the world must help the re-

gion develop a new kind of

economy that “keeps the for-

est standing.”

“It’s not a fight of Amazo-

nian countries,” he said.

“This is a global fight.”

Special correspondent Jill

Langlois in Sao Paulo

contributed to this report.

Alarms from Amazon rainforest fires

SMOKErises from the rainforest near Porto Velho, Brazil. Deforestation rates have risen sharply since May.

Carl de SouzaAFP/Getty Images

A MAP from NASA Earth Observatory shows the fire areas in South America.

The Amazon region has seen more than 40,000 fires between January and August.

Joshua StevensAFP/Getty Images

[Amazon,from A1]

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