The fires ravaging the Amazon are "a watershed" for the survival of this forest, said Wednesday the boss of the International Tropical Timber Organization (Itto), calling on the world to redouble efforts to safeguard it .
"It will alter the climate"
The situation is "very urgent," insisted Gerhard Dieterle, executive director of this intergovernmental agency for the sustainable management of tropical forests, interviewed by AFP on the sidelines of the Ticad, an international conference on the development of Africa organized at Yokohama, Japan. "Many experts fear that this is a turning point" for the largest tropical forest in the world, he said, while tens of thousands of fire starts were recorded in Brazil, despite the use of the army to fight them. More than half of these fires are located in the vast Amazon basin.
Some of these fires have natural causes, but most are voluntary fires, triggered by farmers to gain land, according to Gerhard Dieterle. "If dense tropical forests are burned, they will need many, many years" to regenerate. "This will alter the climate" at the regional level and affect the climate at the global level, he warned.
"Alarming" rate of deforestation in Africa
The G7 countries have proposed $ 20 million to Brazil to help fight these giant fires, an offer that the Brazilian right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro initially refused, then accepted Tuesday after a global outcry. This help is "a start, but it would take a lot more," said Gerhard Dieterle. "I think the world would be willing to provide more resources" if Brazil asked for it, he added.
Earlier in a speech at Ticad, the expert also recalled that deforestation and forest degradation continued "at an alarming rate in many African countries". Africa could miss a day of wood, while the continent's population is expected to reach 4.4 billion people by the end of the 21st century, compared with 1.2 billion today. "We need to focus more on the role and use of producing forests before it's too late," he said.