Ending Amazon deforestation: 4 essential reads about the future of the world's largest rainforest

“Because of policy interventions and the greening of agricultural supply chains, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell after 2005, reaching a low point in 2012, when it began trending up again because of weakening environmental governance and reduced surveillance,” they observed. “In our view, the global community can help by insisting that supply chains for Amazonian beef and soybean products originate on lands deforested long ago and whose legality is long-standing.”

Road building in the Amazon, which increased dramatically during Bolsonaro’s tenure, brings development and related threats like wildfires into wild areas. University of Richmond geographer David Salisbury also saw it as an existential threat to Indigenous communities.

Indigenous residents of the Brazilian-Peruvian borderlands where Salisbury worked “understand that the loggers and their tractors and chainsaws are the sharp point of a road allowing coca growers, land traffickers and others access to traditional Indigenous territories and resources,” Salisbury reported. “They also realize that their Indigenous communities may be all that stands in defense of the forest and stops invaders and road builders.”

Several Indigenous women won office as federal deputies in Brazil’s recent elections, and Lula has pledged to protect Indigenous people’s rights. Salisbury saw it as crucial to ensure that Indigenous defenders of the Amazon receive “the support and educational opportunities needed to be safe, prosperous and empowered to protect their rainforest home.”

A small handful of highly lucrative commodities are the main causes of deforestation in the Amazon and other tropical regions around the world. In Brazil, much of the land is cleared for raising beef cattle or cultivating soy. In Indonesia and Malaysia, palm oil production is spurring large-scale rainforest destruction. Wood production, for pulp and paper products as well as fuel, is also a major driver in Asia and Africa.

“Making the supply chains for these four commodities more sustainable is an important strategy for reducing deforestation,” wrote Texas State University geographer Jennifer Devine. But Devine also found a fifth factor interwoven with these four industries: organized crime.

“Large, lucrative industries offer opportunities to move and launder money; as a result, in many parts of the world, deforestation is driven by the drug trade,” she reported. In the Amazon, for example, drug traffickers are illegally logging forests and hiding cocaine in timber shipments to Europe.

“Promoting sustainable production and consumption are critical to halting deforestation worldwide. But in my view, national and industry leaders also have to root organized crime and illicit markets out of these commodity chains,” Devine concluded.

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archive.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Jennifer Weeks, The Conversation. If you found it interesting, you could subscribe to our weekly newsletter.