Amazon Destruction Rises Sharply

Brazil last year trumpeted a drop in Amazon deforestation, but the new numbers appeared to indicate that the situation has been reversed.

With commodity prices soaring and little progress being made in dealing with rural and urban poverty in other parts of Brazil, farmers are flocking to the country’s Amazonian states.

Hopes that a beefed up monitoring system had begun to roll back deforestation have proved illusory, as the power of the global economy – and the lure of profits from biofuels production in particular – have overwhelmed the protectors of one of the planet’s most precious bioregions.

The rate of Amazon deforestation rose sharply during the last five months of 2007 as land was cleared for soy and cattle, prompting a top-level emergency meeting Thursday by government officials to deal with the problem.

Environment Minister Marina Silva and other ministers headed to the presidential palace Thursday morning to meet with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva after the report on deforestation was issued late Wednesday.

Silva’s ministry said 1,287 square miles of rain forest were cleared from August through December, a big increase from the same period a year earlier.

Officials are still analyzing the satellite imagery used to calculate the deforestation, and said the amount of jungle cut down and burned during the period could rise as high as 2,702 square miles, Brazil’s O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper reported.

Posted by Szamko
Just tries to tell the truth.

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