Breakthrough

As prices for agricultural products have skyrocketed over the past year, thousands of square miles of Amazonian rainforest have fallen. The rate of new deforestation is truly alarming: in the four months between August and December of 2007, 2,500 square miles of forest came down. According to the Brazilian Minister of the Environment Marina Silva, November and December were particularly bad, seeing 740 square miles cleared. All this, despite decades of well-intentioned environmentalists' conservation efforts and wide recognition of the potential disasters from continued deforestation. And while the link between commodity prices and deforestation is apparent, another equally important link - urban poverty and deforestation - doesn't even show up on most environmentalists' radar.

It's high time to realize that until Brazil's vast socio-economic challenges, as well as its aspirations to economic greatness, are dealt with, more of the same can unfortunately be expected.

The main drivers of Amazonian deforestation are socio-economic. Yet decades of environmental policy have failed to take this basic truth into account. As prices of commodities such as soy beans and meat - without mentioning biofuel inputs like sugar cane and corn - increase, more land is cleared to reap the profits of these crops. As more land is cleared more impoverished workers migrate north, hoping to work their way out of poverty (most find near-enslavement). This picture is further complicated when one takes into account the cost, in terms of carbon debt, associated with land-use changes. An unsophisticated account of this process goes essentially like this: existing vegetation and soil act as a carbon safe, which is released into the atmosphere when land is cleared. Recent studies have been able to quantify the carbon debt, and even when the crop planted is a biofuel input, the benefits of reduced carbon emissions take many decades - in some cases well over a century - to break even.

No one denies the benefit of preserving the Amazon as a tropical forest. At the present rate of deforestation, the forest's ability to function as a carbon sink is being seriously impaired. Yet, the loss of the forest's carbon-storage properties is only one potential disaster scenario. Changes in the composition of the forest could also lead to changed rain patterns throughout South America, which would, perversely, further drive up commodity prices and thereby lead to even great deforestation, not only in Brazil but worldwide.

With such serious consequences looming, why has the message of environmentalists failed to get through? Simply put, arguments that are premised entirely on the beneficial results of preservation are doomed, as the consistent failure to arrest deforestation makes clear. For one, these arguments are just too easy to counter: Brazilians who rightly see Amazônia as their sovereign territory can simply point to the massive forests of North America that were long ago cleared in the name of economic development. Try telling a favela dweller - or an ambitious Brazilian businessperson - that Brazilian economic development must take a backseat to nature conservation. The urgency of economic development is seen as far greater than the benefit of preserving the forest.

The fact is that Brazil will do what it believes necessary to develop its economy. After all, why shouldn't Brazilians strive for a higher quality of life for themselves and their children? Further, the recent discovery of massive oil fields off the Brazilian coast show that the resources deemed necessary will be harvested, be they petroleum or tropical forest. Fortunately, there are better ways to develop the country than plowing over the Amazon for crop and grazing land, as the lands to the more developed south are far more productive over the medium- and long-term. Environmental policy advocates interested in really working to save the Amazon must acknowledge the validity of Brazil's economic ambitions and the urgency of creating good jobs and better living conditions for Brazilians, even those in cities as far-removed from the jungle as Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.