The Amazon is burning: Understanding the politics and international stakes
Front Page, News September 6, 2019, Comments OffThis past week, social media ignited with news of the Amazon rainforest fires in Brazil.
The Amazon fires are a political and environmental concern. According to National Geographic, the 2019 blaze is an 80 percent increase compared to 2018. Despite that figure, this year’s fires are not the largest in the last decade. A part of this is because restrictions on logging and agricultural use of the rainforest are a relatively recent development that is constantly in flux.
The Problem
The current president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, ran on the populist promise that he would open the Amazon to greater economic opportunities. The fires are largely man-made for the purpose of increasing cattle ranching or logging efforts.
Beyond the economic consequences, the Amazon is home to over 300 indigenous groups with many uncontacted by the rest of the world. Survival International, a human rights group that tracks the loss of indigenous territory around the world, cites their lands are threatened by expanding agricultural efforts. Tribes are rapidly losing territory to cattle ranches, soy farms and sugar plantations. The fires pose a threat to their livelihood and foreshadow further reduction of the lands they call home.
The outcry on social media is hard to ignore, but the question looming over the western world is: what say do we really have?
The Bolsonaro administration declined $20 million in aid proposed by the environmental G7 summit. Emmanuel Macron, a representative at the G7 conference and president of France, previously commented that Brazil did not have sovereignty over the Amazon because the forest was an international treasure producing oxygen for everyone on the planet. Bolsonaro disagreed.
An International Treasure at Stake
“In terms of sovereignty… he’s not technically wrong. Brazil gets to decide,” Dr. Justin Leinaweaver said.
Dr. Leinaweaver is an assistant professor of political science on campus and the Director of Institutional Research and Effectiveness. He added, “Ultimately, what you do within your borders for the most part is up to you, and that is one of the few things that most countries in the world defend pretty vigorously.”
“Brazil has long tried to use the Amazon to grow itself. And as a country that is poor, that is developing… to use the resources that it’s got… I don’t blame them for feeling that it is hypocritical for countries like the U.S. to both use their resources, some would argue too much, but there be no international pressure on us to frack less, to produce less oil,” Dr. Leinaweaver said.
Dr. Ioana Popescu, an associate professor of biology here at Drury, explained, “It’s very easy for temperate-climate inhabitants to tell – or yell – at tropical-climate inhabitants, ‘don’t cut our lungs.’”
Only about 70 percent of forests survive in North America due to logging and agricultural expansion while only 50 percent remains in Europe.
“It’s easy for us to sit here and tell others, ‘don’t do what we have already done,’” she explained.
The sovereignty of nations is difficult to challenge, even with multinational consequences.
“I think ecologists will tell us that the Amazon is interconnected,” Dr. Leinaweaver said. “If you do damage to enough of it, you could wipe it out across borders. But that’s not necessarily analogous to how we think of forests as a resource and I think you’re going to have a harder time convincing states that harm is being done cross-nationally by allowing Bolsonaro to do what he was elected to do in his own country.”
International pressure has limited success when it comes to protecting the Amazon because there is no way to enforce regulations within Brazil once the government puts them in place.
“They have often responded to international pressure by putting laws on the books that make what’s happening illegal or threaten to harm companies that do these things, but the follow-through is lacking. And that is not new,” Dr. Leinaweaver stated.
Not Yet a Crisis
A popular quip in the face of the fires is that the Amazon produces 20 percent of the planet’s oxygen. This is false. Only about 6 percent of the air we breathe is a result of the rainforest and trees don’t compare to the contributions of marine life. Algae produces an estimated 330 billion tons of oxygen – about 40 percent of the global total.
“Keeping waters unpolluted, it’s at least as important if not even more because 40 to 50 percent of the oxygen [comes from] algae,” Dr. Popescu stated. “It’s more important than just the oxygen. It’s the biodiversity it gives us. We can find adaptations of species in the Amazon or anywhere else similar… that could survive in adverse conditions or on other planets.”
“They’re called million-year species. It took them millions of years to evolve to where they are and we could wipe it in one flash,” Dr. Popescu emphasized by snapping her fingers. “I think all of us have a very skewed perspective of the Amazon, not realizing that it’s more diverse than we think.”
The economic goals of the Brazilian government aim to support their population but burning the Amazon still may not provide the resources they hope for.
“As temperate-climate inhabitants, we’re envisioning rainforests in a totally different way than it is,” Dr. Popescu said. “[The ground] won’t maintain agriculture as long as temperate climate plains because in winter, they replenish themselves.”
The Midwest of the United States has rich soil that is easy to farm. In comparison, Brazil is starved for sustainable crop growth. There is no off-season in the rainforest because of constant rains and plants pulling nutrients from the ground year-round. Even as land is cleared for planting, it is not a permanent solution.
It’s frightening. With Brazil and the Amazon so far away, we can feel powerless. Global trends are indicative of the climate change that makes the fires more threatening. Europe experienced three record-breaking heatwaves this summer and Anchorage, Ak. recorded its first 90-degree day in history.
“We’re seeing trends that are bad happening outside the range of plausible outcomes the model told us should be happening. Humanity does not have a great track record of adapting to rapid change without breaking a lot of eggs,” Dr. Leinaweaver said.
This is not a doomsday scenario yet. Although climate scientists have changed their estimate of 12 years to reverse the environmental damage before it’s too late to a mere 18 months, prospects are grim only if we allow companies and leaders to maintain current production methods.
“We spend too much time trying to chastise each other for not making the best choice in the moment-to-moment. There’s a lot of literature that argues you let yourself off the hook through green-washing,” Dr. Leinaweaver said. “The kinds of change we need far exceed any one of us choosing to be vegetarian today. We should spend less time berating each other… and more time pushing for our leaders to know that these are the things we care about.”
The Solution?
In fact, in the past days Bolsonaro has worked to control and put out the Amazon fires because German companies stated they would no longer buy Brazilian beef and lumber under the current conditions.
“The causality could be way more complex than that, but if that narrative takes hold and companies are scared of us and we let them know what kind of products we want on the broad scale then… yeah, we have a lot of power,” Dr. Leinaweaver added.
For those of us that are not corporate leaders, education and voting are two ways in which the individual can make an impact.
Dr. Popescu’s reading suggestion for the Drury community is “The Future of Life” by environmentalist E.O. Wilson. The book, released in 2002, presents information and solutions still relevant to the climate problem we face today.
“Humans respond to disasters in a reactive way. We should respond more proactively, before the knife hits the bone,” she suggested.
Another proposal is to utilize the Amazon in a conservation effort that would still produce economic benefit for Brazil.
“They would make more money… if they would keep it as natural as possible and encourage tourism,” she proposed, citing a solution discussed in “The Future of Life.” “We don’t have their treasure, but we would love to visit. If we find a way to sell the grains at reasonable pricing so they don’t have to slash and burn, and if they find the means to protect those lands to open for visiting, everybody would be better off.”
Dr. Popescu’s outlook on the situation remains optimistic.
“Hopefully this is the tipping point. Let’s wake up – this is happening… climate change is happening. This is not shocking. This is not surprising,” she said.
Local and state elections are often determined by only hundreds or thousands of votes. Encouraging higher turnout can shift the outcome and prompt greater environmental legislation.
“I don’t want to overstate our power as consumers and voters, but at the same time I don’t want to understate it,” explained Dr. Leinaweaver. “It’s important to be realistic about the structural barriers to the system. But if that were to change, power would shift much more dramatically than people realize.”
Article written by Maclen Johnson.
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