There is little that is being played in the Amazon jungle. The lung of the world should not be a chip on a casino roulette wheel. This emporium of biodiversity has about 7 million km2, it is 12 times the size of Spain, it has 80 thousand kinds of trees, 140 thousand species of plants, 20% of the world's species, the longest and mightiest river in the world, whose volume contains 15-20% of the world's fresh water and a delta that is 240 km wide.
The Amazon rainforest has been burning for almost three weeks and the fire has not yet been controlled. The matter is so serious that for several days it has been monopolizing the headlines of the world's media. On the other hand, millions of people and entities have sent tens of millions of tweets in recent days, seeking information and expressing their concern about the problem, something that we have not seen until now.
We have been warning for years that the same thing that happened to the Borneo jungle, the once lung of Southeast Asia, could happen to the Amazon rainforest between 1970 and 2000. (see list of our articles at the end). Unfortunately now the same thing is happening to the great South American jungle.
Deforestation, the main cause of fires in tropical forests
The felling of trees, in order to supply raw material to the wood and paper industry, leaves an immense amount of log bases, roots and a large amount of weeds on the land that has been deforested. After some time, after this plant material has dried, the area is cleaned. The void left is generally filled with the planting of oil palm, soybeans and grass for cattle raising, if we look at the experience of Borneo and that of the Amazon itself.
The most widely used method for these clean-ups is the so-called “controlled fire”, but it sometimes gets out of control, with devastating effects, as happened so many times in Borneo. Perhaps it is also the origin of the current fire in our beloved Amazon.
A little about Borneo
Borneo, located in Southeast Asia, with its 743,330 km2, occupies the third position among the largest islands on Earth and is larger than France. Borneo (Kalimantan in Indonesian) has a political subdivision into three countries: Indonesia owns 72.6%, Malaysia 26.7% and Brunei less than 1%.
Until 1950, 96% of the island of Borneo was primary forest, while today only 44% remains. The destruction does not stop, but increases its speed, as WWF points out. Some scientists claim that what happened in Borneo is the biggest and fastest man-made ecological catastrophe in the history of mankind. In May 2007, 1,500 scientists from 70 countries drafted a document calling the situation in Borneo "critical" and urging immediate action. However, little attention has been paid to them so far.
Before the massive deforestation to which it was subjected, Borneo's rainforest was almost impenetrable due to the large number of trees and other plants that made it up. During hostile deforestation the island became the world's largest timber exporter, even above the Amazon and Africa combined. Well into the 21st century, the island became the number one exporter of palm oil. The short story is that as the forests were cleared, the spaces vacated by the felling of trees were used mainly for the planting of oil palm.
A succession of catastrophic fires
In the years of great deforestation in the former Borneo rainforest, NASA photographed up to 2,000 "controlled" fire outbreaks in a single day.
SGK-PLANET, in their article Homo predator in Borneo, refers: In 1994 a great fire destroyed four million hectares. However, the worst fires so far have been those of 1997 and 1998 in Indonesia. The disasters have devastated millions of hectares of forests, causing serious health problems for the population and affecting the tourism industry. According to the newspaper El País in Spain, since then a satellite surveillance program has been established, dependent on the UN, which allows locating the most serious sources and measuring the extent of the fires. But in 2001 the alarms went off again when a voracious fire broke out that threatened to overtake all the previous ones, but in the end it could be controlled. But those surveillance and control measures had little effect.So the smoke and fires came to Borneo to stay 365 days a year.
Preventing deforestation of forests is more difficult than ending CO2 emissions
It is not easy to end broadcasting, but at least there are realistic schedules and deadlines for it. Coal mines and coal-fired power plants are closing. There is progress in electromobility. There are cities where conventional public transport is being replaced by electric buses. The electric car is already produced by almost all factories. In terms of solar energy, photovoltaic panels are easy to install and are getting cheaper. In many countries they are becoming more and more popular. Something similar happens with wind energy. The tall towers crowned by wind turbines are already part of the landscape of many towns and cities. All this represents an important step towards a decarbonized and sustainable world. The circular economy is a certain possibility.
The same cannot be said about deforestation. In this field everything is the same or worse than in past decades. The vegetation cover is one in the list of nine limits of the planet established by the Stockholm Resilience Center, between 2009 and 2015, which according to UNESCO it would be extremely dangerous to cross.
Two major obstacles to reducing deforestation
- The demand. As long as there is demand there will be supply. Wood addiction is a complex matter. Its warmth, texture and beauty are not provided by any other material, and that is why wood is easy to fall in love with. But the love of wood is a dangerous love.
In addition, wood is not only used on a whim but out of necessity, and for now it does not have a substitute, since iron, bronze, other metals, plastics, granite stones or marble are not. But you will have to find a replacement or learn to live without wood.
- Illegality. Corruption and complicity, throughout the process of granting permits, logging, transporting and receiving logs and timber has not been avoided. The timber trade uses falsification of documentation in many places of origin and destination. Forbidden areas or sanctuaries in the Amazon are violated and the papers forged so that the truth is hidden in the shadows.
Conclusions
Deforestation of jungles and forests, vegetation fires, drought and desertification are links in the same chain. In our opinion, they are the gravest threats facing humanity and other species.
The massive fires that are happening today in the Amazon jungle, accompanied by the media effect, should help us to become aware of what is at stake, which is life itself. First of all, those of us who live in South America have to defend the Amazon and press for its destruction to stop. There are nine countries that share the Amazon. Your governments, instead of seizing their share, must become your rangers. It's your obligation.
May this great global media coverage of the danger facing the Amazon serve to create pressure on governments so that they do not continue to wield “national sovereignty” to do whatever they want with the jungle. Because if the Amazon belongs to its nations, the lung and the need to breathe belong to all of humanity.
