Brazil: growth, adaptive capacity & new green technologies

environmental opportunities and antagonisms for Brazil in the 21st Century

Archive for amazon

Latest Amazon deforestation

Amazonas Inpe’s figures show that last month 541 km2 were cut down or degraded. 233km2 in Mato Grosso and 218km2 in Para, and 8% down on September’s figure. Inpe caution that the results are not wholly accurrate as the real-time satellite images show up clouds, obscuring detail of the land below.

Last week Inpe released figures for the period August 2007- July 2008. Almost 1,100 km2 was cut down or degraded, a 2.8% increaseon the preceding year.

Amazon Deforestation Aug 07 – Aug 08 (inpe)

Audio interview: Problems for Amazon

Audio interview (eng) with Paulo Moutinho, Director of the Insitute for Environmental Research of Amazonia (IPAM). Lack of a cost attached to destroying standing forest as the overarching problem facing the region. Other topics broached include the dessicating impact of El Nino in excarcebating the problems of the spread of Amazonian forest fires.

Integrar para nao entregar 2008

The Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics has announced that it will release new maps of the Amazon in 2009 which will be 20 times more precise than their previous maps first put together in the 70s and last updated in 2004. Currently they cover… Read the rest of this entry »

WWF deforestation video

What’s left of the Mata Atlantica, Cerrado and Amazon

satellite image of the Cerrado Last night Jose Padua, Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, spoke about the cultural /historic logic of deforestation. His recent research has been looking at the almost total destruction of the Mata Atlantica (7.5% remaining) since colonization. The legacy of ideas of abundance still colour all conversations about deforestation. How to square this with fragility of ecosystems in Brazil will take concerted effort involving stronger institutions, better enforcement and a plan to  control the frontier capitalism that characterises current Amazonian deforestation. Jose also touched on how we are at the start of a process of working out how to stop deforestation and are there with almost  all the forest still intact. What chance/implications for the Cerrado?