It’s even worse than we thought.
Brazilian government officials claim some success in the reduction of deforestation. Between 2005 and 2006 about 6,450 square miles were cleared – an 11% decrease from the previous year – a seemingly significant reduction for such a short time period. But numbers can be deceiving, especially when the official numbers do not reflect the actual numbers.
Unfortunately, supported by a vast network of new roads, loggers continue to destroy the rainforest at an alarming rate. Satellite imagery recently produced for the state of Para – where the Trans-Iriri Highway is located – shows deforestation has increased by upwards of 50% since 2004, numbers in direct contradiction of national figures.
You won’t find the Trans-Iriri Highway on any legitimate map of Brazil even though it cuts through hundreds of acres of primeval Brazilian Amazon called the Terra do Meio or "Middle Land." Officially, the highway doesn’t exist. Nor does the newly opened petrol station, the motorbike shop, or the nearby supermarket stocked mostly with cachaca spirit bottles.
This from Saturday’s Guardian:
Illegal roads or viscinais - often built by illegal loggers looking to cash in on the world's largest rainforest - represent one of the biggest challenges to the Brazilian government in its fight against deforestation. It is estimated that there are more than 105,000 miles of viscinais in the Amazon region - illegal dirt tracks that meander through indigenous territories, government land and ecological reserves and which pave the way for the continued destruction of the world's largest rainforest.
The main highway cuts westward about 130-miles, across the Middle Land from its origin at Sao Felix do Xingu – the municipality that for the fifth-year running remains Brazil’s center of deforestation with around 300-square-miles cleared between 2005 and 2006.
Hemmed in by the Xingu and Iriri rivers, the Middle Land - an expanse the size of Scotland - is at the centre of this destruction. Since the 1990s loggers have swept along the Trans-Iriri highway, cutting secondary paths - picadas - into the forest and gradually replacing rainforest with sprawling cattle ranches.
Since 2005, the Brazilian authorities have created two huge preservation areas in this region, known as conservation units. Environmental protection areas have also been created along the Trans-Iriri highway, and the army was sent in to patrol the region.
Despite the military presence, clamping down on the loggers and their symbiotic partners the ranchers has proven to be more difficult a task than expected. Environmentalists say that while conservation areas do temporarily reduce logging, the destruction is once again gaining momentum. In other words, it’s a losing battle.
"The presence of the army in 2005 genuinely did have some effect," said Marcelo Marquesini, a Greenpeace activist. "However, two years later the operations continue sporadically. The government has not managed to establish a presence in the region. When they go away the people just come back."
Tarcisio Feitosa da Silva, an environmentalist who received the prestigious Goldman environmental prize last year because of his work to protect the rainforest, said the secrecy surrounding roads such as the Trans-Iriri helped cloak the continuing wave of destruction.
"Officially this road does not exist. It never received permission from the government," he said. He claimed that in the absence of government, local ranchers employed an illegal police force of gunmen in order "to maintain this structure of invisibility."
"That is why nobody speaks about the road," said Mr Feitosa, who has received death threats because of his work. "It continues like this because it is here that you find the biggest ranchers."
The Middle Land is a species of autonomous zone - a black hole over which authorities exert little control. Catia Canedo, the environment and tourism secretary in Sao Felix do Xingu, admits for example that she has never visited the illegal road even though it starts a few miles from her office. And with little enforcement (the environmental agency in Sao Felix do Xingu recently closed) the illegal logging continues.
Compounding the problem in the Middle Land is lawlessness, including the logger’s widespread use of slave workers. In fact, the region’s impoverished Brazilians have a completely different name for the area. Instead of Terra do Meio, they call it Terra sem lei or "land without law."
The Middle Land is not totally without hope. Just recently, the Brazilian Environmental Ministry said they would start using a new satellite imagery system known as Detex to identify Illegal logging quicker, allowing rapid intervention by Ibama, an environmental agency.
Activists remain skeptical – and who could blame them?
"The state must intervene first with some kind of police action to stop the land grabbers," said Mr Feitosa. "It cannot continue to act as if the road does not exist."
A recent study by another environmental group, Imazon, confirmed the activist’s worst fears; Brazil’s network of illegal roads continues to expand at a pace of around 1,200 miles of new roads built each year.
I’m not even going to go into the debilitating effect this is having on Planet Earth. The facts are all too well known. Let me just say this:
With Bush's environmental record the way it is in the U.S., him recently visiting Brazil to make more freakin’ free trade deals is not a good sign for the rainforest. I wouldn’t dismiss the chance that in some obscure but significant way, we’re helping to finance its destruction – and ultimately, our own.
If we don't stop him, Bush will surely pave the road to perdition for all of us -- one wooded mile at a time.
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