GR: Growing global inequity is fueling resentment and despair. As inequity and the human population grow, resources decline, poverty spreads, and criminal destruction and harvest of wild plants and animals may increase.
“In the Amazon, Illegal land clearing hits highest levels since 2008 as environmental policies come under attack.”
People burn parts of the Amazon to make way for farms or ranches.
“Illegal deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has spiked since 2015, bringing the rate to its highest level in 8 years. The finding has raised fears that the country could lose a decade’s worth of progress in forest protection.
“In an analysis of satellite data released on 29 November, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in São José dos Campos estimates that 7,989 square kilometres of land — nearly the size of Puerto Rico — was cleared between August 2015 and July 2016. The total was 29% above the previous year and 75% above the 2012 level, when deforestation hit a historic low of 4,571 square kilometres (see ‘Going up’).
“The current trends illustrate a growing sense of impunity as well as betrayal among landowners who have yet to benefit from the sustainable-development agenda, says Daniel Nepstad, a tropical ecologist who heads the Earth Innovation Institute, an environmental organization in San Francisco, California. “There’s been a lot of talk about improving the lives and the bottom lines of farmers and ranchers if they stop clearing the forest,” Nepstad says, “and they are still waiting.” –Jeff Tollefson (Continue reading: Deforestation spikes in Brazilian Amazon : Nature News & Comment)
