It is now generally established that the coronavirus pandemic is quite substantially a consequence of Man’s systematic destruction of Nature. Not wholly unrelated was the cyclone last month. And the dreadful scourge ought never to distract us from the core issue, most particularly the destruction of the rainforest in the Amazon.
The tropical forest might seem distant, but we can scarcely afford to be impervious to the deforested land, most importantly in Brazil, a Latin American country where the coronavirus spread has been awesome enough. Not that there has been no realisation of the need for international cooperation, but the machinations of the fossil fuel lobby have been catastrophic thus far, with the full extent yet to unfold.
The catastrophe unleashed by Covid-19 has made such a future seem less remote and action to prevent it more necessary. Nowhere is this danger greater than in Brazil. South America’s most populous country is responsible for 2.25 per cent of global emissions (by comparison, the US, with a population 50 per cent bigger, emits seven times as much).
But accelerating deforestation places Brazil, which has 60 per cent of the Amazon rainforest within its borders, at the heart of the struggle to prevent runaway global heating. It needs to be underlined that the Amazon is the planet’s biggest terrestrial carbon sink and plays a crucial role in the water cycle, as well as providing a home to more species than anywhere else on land. In June 1992, the UN framework convention on climate change was opened for signature in Rio de Janeiro.
But ever since Brazil’s far-right President, Jair Bolsonaro, took office 18 months ago his government has sabotaged years of work by environmentalists and indigenous activists aimed at protecting the rainforest, and instead stoked the flames of its destruction by illegal loggers, miners and cattle ranchers.
Until July 2019, losses rocketed to 9,800 sq km and research predicts that the rainforest is on course for a tipping point that would see it become a carbon emitter in the mid-2030s. Now there are fears that the coronavirus pandemic may speed this up. The outlook is much too fearsome to contemplate.
Last Thursday, Brazil surpassed Italy to become the country with the third-highest Covid- 19 death toll (behind the US and UK). A daily record of 1,743 fatalities took the total to more than 34,000. While Mr Bolsonaro continues to attack public health measures and even courts the industrial lobby, the indigenous population of the Amazon region appears increasingly under threat from violence as well as disease.
It will take a huge international effort to preserve the Amazon rainforest. Agribusiness is responsible for more than one-fifth of Brazil’s GDP. If the cattle industry is to face curbs, the action must be matched with incentives. Ergo, international trade and climate negotiators have a pivotal role to play.