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The Amazonian forest basin, nicknamed "the lungs of the planet" at the top of the Earth, is ill and seriously threatened, as evidenced by violent fires that have provoked many reactions around the world. Recent scientific assessments indicate its poor state of health, aggravated by deforestation four times higher than last year. Many initiatives in Brazil and abroad are trying to counter the current policy of the Brazilian government, which is considered very destructive for this unique ecosystem, which has the largest reservoir of global biodiversity and plays an important role in climate regulation.
Tropical forests account for about one-third of the world's 3,000 billion trees. Amazon alone accounts for more than half of the remaining tropical forests on Earth. Its area, 63% of which is in Brazil, is 5 500 000 km2. Sick, undermined by many attacks and destroyed by many fires, the future of the Amazon is seriously threatened. Since 1970, it has lost 17% of its surface, because of global warming and human activities. Some experts predict that beyond 20% loss, it could reach a point of no return.
Signs of forest exhaustion
Regardless of destructive and irresponsible human initiatives, these large tropical forests are running out of steam. More and more sick, because of the multiple pressures that they undergo, they risk not being able to contribute to the planetary equilibrium and perhaps in the long term, to disappear.
Forests and oceans absorb between 35% and 30% of the planet's greenhouse gases (GHGs). By sequestering CO2 (carbon dioxide), forest trees act like carbon sinks, helping to limit GHG emissions responsible for global warming. However, several factors, including deforestation, raise fears that carbon sinks may no longer play their role. A scenario that would greatly aggravate the climate change and worries the United Nations climate experts, the IPCC, which notes " the uncertainty related to the future of the terrestrial carbon sink " in their latest report, published early August 2019.
Already in 2017, a study published in the journal Sciences had sounded the alarm, ensuring that the tropics emitted more CO2 (carbon dioxide, main GHG) than they captured, because of deforestation. But other factors would intervene. The increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is supposed to stimulate photosynthesis, so a priori more trees and more CO2 capture, but things are not so simple. According to several studies published this summer, photosynthesis is limited by other factors such as temperature increase and lack of nutrients. For example, a recent study in Nature Geoscience estimates that soil phosphorus depletion in the Amazon limits tree growth despite additional CO2 input. As satellite data shows, Jean-Pierre Wigneron of the French Institute for Agronomic Research published an article published in late July in the journal Nature Plants: the biomass of the tropical zone is not increasing, it is has remained stable since 2010. Another study published in mid-August 2019 in Nature Communication goes further and believes that the tropics have become a net contributor to CO2.
These worrying scientific findings on the role of tropical forests and the future of the Amazon are, however, qualified by other research. A study published in mid-August 2019 in Nature Climate Change estimates that CO2 will continue to stimulate plant biomass despite the binding effects of soil nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen. This would mean, as explained by AFP Cesar Terrer of Stanford University, that " plant biomass is expected to grow by 12% by 2100, increasing its carbon absorption by the equivalent of six years emissions ". An optimism that does not remove concerns about the future of its tropical forests because, as Philippe Clais of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences at AFP points out, " in the northern hemisphere, sequestration carbon in the forest is more important in the last 30 years ". The question being: " Can they compensate for the weaknesses of the tropics? ".
The figures of deforestation
Beyond all these scientific debates on the health of the forest and its ability to store some of our GHG emissions, the first priority is already to keep these forests alive and to preserve them from all the destructive to begin. The main danger being their killing by deforestation. However, this chronic deforestation knows in the Amazon a new alarming peak. The Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the body responsible for measuring deforestation in the Amazon, reported that the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon (63% of the Amazon) in July (2019) was 2,254 km2 against 596.6 km2 in July 2018, an increase of 278% over one year. The INPE, which had already indicated an 88% increase in deforestation in June 2019, has seen that deforestation over the last 12 months has reached 6,833 km2, an increase of 40% over the previous year.
Other figures from the INPE, concerning fires, report 2,500 fire starts in 48 hours in Brazil in recent days. Between January and 21 August, the INPE has 75 336 forest fires, 84% more than last year at the same time, and more than 52% are in the Amazon.
Jair Bolsonaro and the Amazon
Brazil's extreme right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, a notorious climate-skeptic, has fiercely disputed positions on the Amazon in Brazil, mainly by indigenous peoples and NGOs, and internationally by many countries where his last days of multiple demonstrations to cries of " Stop the destruction now.Save our planet ".
Defenders of the forest accuse Jaïr Bolsonaro of wanting to sacrifice the Amazon to satisfy the interests of the lobbies of the mining, agri-food and forestry industries that supported him during his election campaign.
Since the beginning of his mandate, Jaïr Bolsonaro has increased his actions on the Amazon to promote its exploitation, by opening more to agricultural and mining investments, by relaxing the environmental regulations put in place by his predecessors, and reducing the fines. imposed on the offending operators. He had, for example, reacted strongly to the spread of deforestation figures by the INPE by dismissing his director, Ricardo Galvao, accusing him of giving information " false ... that harms the image of Brazil ... ( and) that do not correspond to reality, to play the game of NGOs ", by appointing in the place of the dismissed scientific director a retired colonel (Darcton Policarpo Damaiao). NGOs in the line of fire, recently accused by the president of being responsible for fires. The same president who was pleased to open the territories reserved for indigenous peoples to mineral exploration, under the pretext of " integrating the natives into society " without leaving them " confined as in a zoo ".
Faced with the many criticisms, Jair Bolsonaro had this formula on July 19, 2019: " If all this devastation that you accuse us was real, the Amazonian forest would be already a great desert ".
International pressures
On July 10, alerted by the figures on the intensification of deforestation in Brazil since the arrival of Jair Bolsonaro, the German government has suspended part of its subsidies to projects to protect the Amazon rainforest, or 35 million dollars. until the figures become encouraging again.
In mid-August, the main donor, Norway, also puts an end to its aid, considering that "Brazil does not want to stop deforestation any more". Norway contributed 93.5% of the approximately 760 million euros paid between 2008 and 2018 to the Amazon Fund, while Germany contributed 5.7%.
On August 19, 2019, it was the governors of the Amazon states who criticized the president's initiatives at a regional meeting in Salvador de Bahia, in the presence of delegations from 24 countries, in preparation for the United Nations summit on climate (23 September in New York) and the Cop25 (from 2 to 13 December in Chile) which must put in order of battle the Paris Agreements.
The multiple developments of this crisis in recent months and the wave of fires that has recently raised many reactions around the world have led France and Ireland to threaten to block the trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur , doubting environmental commitments made by Jair Bolsonaro.
A subject, now international, who has been invited to the G7 summit in Biarritz.
Some figures to remember about the Amazon
The green continent
The Amazon spans 5.5 million km². It easily encompasses 2.5 DRC, yet the largest country in Africa - and also one of the greenest. If one takes into account its basin, it is 7.4 million km². It crosses right across the width of South America: 40% of the surface.
The Amazon is the largest tropical forest on the planet. Its basin - the Amazon River and its many tributaries - is international because it is spread over nine countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and Guyana ( La France). About 60% of its surface is located in Brazil, hence the major role expected of this state in its preservation.
A lung gangrene by deforestation
The Amazon also concentrates one third of the primary forests of the planet. Carbon sinks, the forest absorbs more CO2 than it rejects: it stores 90 to 140 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, or about 15% of global emissions, which helps to regulate global warming in the world . This lung is also ours: 20% of the air we breathe comes from it.
This luxuriance is notably allowed by the Amazon River, the longest in the world, almost 7000 km. With its tributaries, it carries 20% of the unfrozen fresh water of the planet.
Disappointed, this CO2 absorption capacity is falling - and strongly according to some scientists - due to deforestation (see above). The main causes of deforestation are agriculture, to make way for soybean or grazing fields, hydroelectric dams and road infrastructure construction, mining, forest fires and timber traffic.
A strong demographics
It is believed to be inhospitable and uninhabited, with only creepers and hummingbirds. Nothing is more wrong: 34 million people live there. If it were a country, it would be among the 40 most populous of the globe!
Who are its inhabitants? The forest has been inhabited for only 11,000 years. Today, two thirds of these people live ... in the city, especially in Manaus (up to 1.8 million) or Belem (2 million).
Nearly three million Indians form some 420 tribes, according to the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (Octa). About sixty of them live in total isolation. The Amazonian Indians speak 86 languages and 650 dialects. The largest Amazon tribe is the 40,000-member Tikuna who live in Brazil, Peru and Colombia, according to the NGO Survival International.
One of them is world famous: the Brazilian Indian chief, of the Kayapo tribe, Raoni Metuktire. He has been traveling since 1989 for the preservation of the forest and indigenous peoples.
An inestimable treasure of biodiversity
The forest, of which 2.1 million km² are protected areas, is home to a unique biodiversity in the world: a quarter of the world's species are present, some 30 000 species of plants, 2500 fish, 1500 birds, 500 mammals, 550 reptiles and 2.5 million insects, according to the OTCA. Since 1999, more than 2,200 species of plants or animals have been discovered