07 May 2009 - Manaus,
Brazil — Ten years ago, we set up an office
in Manaus, a city inaccessible except by
boat or plane, in the heart of the Amazon
Rainforest, and began exposing illegal logging.
Just three years later our campaign heralded
the end of the illegal mahogany
trade in Brazil. Since then we have been
uncovering further forest crimes and persuading
the Brazilian government and corporations
like McDonald's to take action against forest
destruction - and in so doing, protect our
planet from runaway climate change.
As we celebrate our
10th year working in the Amazon it is more
important than ever before to end deforestation.
It is estimated that
80 percent of logs from the Amazon are cut
down illegally. But even the majority of
logging considered to be 'legal' is highly
destructive and has poor processing technology,
which leads to enormous wastage. On average
it is estimated that only around one third
of wood logged in the forest actually ends
up in the final product.
Cattle ranching in the
Amazon is responsible for the majority of
Amazon destruction, and is now the biggest
occupier of deforested land, with 79.5 percent
of deforested land used for cattle pasture.
Since 2003 Brazil has become one of the
world’s largest meat and leather exporter.
But agricultural use for soya production
has also been a major threat.
Big Mac 'n' trees!
In 2006, we exposed
the seemingly unstoppable expansion of soya
farming into the world´s largest rainforest
to satisfy spiraling demand for animal feed
in Europe and China. Once we linked leading
international companies using soya to the
destruction of the Amazon Rainforest, we
were able to form an alliance of food producers,
supermarkets and fast-food chains and other
civil society organisations to call for
a change. In response to this pressure,
all the major soya traders operating in
Brazil announced a moratorium on trading
soya from newly deforested land in the Amazon,
effective as of July 2006. In June 2008,
the moratorium was extended by another year.
Our report ‘Eating up
the Amazon’ exposed how McDonald's was feeding
its chickens soya products grown in the
ashes of newly deforested land. After a
global campaign, thousands of supporters
wrote to McDonald’s European headquarters
demanding they stop. McDonald's not only
agreed, but in an unlikely partnership they
now work with us and other big food retailers
to help end deforestation in the Brazilian
Amazon.
The soya moratorium
provides a window of time in which the necessary
economic, environmental, and political framework
can be established to guarantee that soya
cultivation doesn’t contribute to the destruction
of the Amazon rainforest. We continue to
pressure the industries involved in soya
planting and trading in calling for a further
extension of the moratorium until there
are permanent forest protection measures
in place.
Dead forests, dead planet
While the issues surrounding
the Amazon are complex, they boil down to
a very simple economic principle. Today,
it is worth more to a logging company or
a farmer to clear rainforest than to let
it stand. There is currently no economic
value in saving the forest. Essentially,
the market views trees as worth more dead
than alive. Yet when it comes to stopping
climate change, the value of the Earth's
rainforests is beyond measure. To reverse
this, we're fighting for a ‘Forest for Climate’
fund.
The battle to save the
Amazon is also about the battle to protect
ourselves. Forest destruction fuels climate
change and ultimately climate change threatens
our ability to survive. Scientists are telling
us that we are almost out of time to prevent
catastrophic climate change. They also tell
us that protecting the Amazon is critical
to stabilising our climate and that we have
no time to lose. So while government negotiators
hammer out a deal for forests at the UN
Climate Summit in Copenhagen this year,
they are in effect negotiating a deal not
just for the trees but for the protection
of everyone on the planet! It’s that important
and it’s that urgent.
Bailing out the Amazon
We have been working on the ground for a
decade to protect the Amazon. This year’s
climate summit in Copenhagen is our best
chance ever to save our forests. Tree huggers
who have been fighting for 40 years to save
our forests will tell you that this is it.
This is the best chance we have to save
them. We either get a historical deal that
protects our forests or we’ll descend into
rampant forest destruction because there
will be no mechanism in place strong enough
to stop it.
The 'Forests for Climate'
fund would pay countries like Brazil to
preserve the Amazon and provide better monitoring
and enforcement. This fund would be paid
for by industralised countries around the
world and needs to be agreed upon in Copenhagen.
The climate emergency requires urgent action
and the 'Forests for Climate' funding mechanism
would provide it.
A royal welcome
We're supporting the
efforts made by the Prince of Wales and
his Prince's Rainforest Project to highlight
and fill the funding gap that severely limits
forest protection from now until the proposals
negotiated in Copenhagen are implemented.
At the earliest, a mechanism agreed in Copenhagen
will start providing resources to halt deforestation
in 2013, but our forests are disappearing
right now, and making a huge contribution
to climate change. In order to avoid the
catastrophic consequences of climate change,
global emissions need to be on a downward
trajectory by 2016, and this will be impossible
without coordinated, well-resourced international
action to halt deforestation; that action
needs to start now.
The Prince’s Rainforest
Project recently gave an award to Daniel
Beltra for his outstanding photography of
the world's most important and threatened
rainforests. Daniel has spent years working
with our Amazon campaign. In a video message
at the awards night, in Cannes, France -
HRH The Prince of Wales, said “Photographic
imagery can tell a compelling story about
the truth of the situation and, the truth
is, if we lose the fight against tropical
deforestation, then we lose the fight against
climate change.”
