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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Americas/2001-01/amazon190101.shtml

The Independent (UK)

Death sentence for the Amazon

Scientists say $40bn project is set to destroy 95 per
cent of rainforest by 2020

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

19 January 2001

The most detailed investigation of the fate of the
world's greatest tropical rainforest estimates that as
little as 5per cent of the Amazon may remain in its
pristine, wild state by 2020.

This pessimistic scenario is painted by a team of
Brazilian and American scientists who have analysed
how the delicate Amazon ecosystem will respond to a
new $40bn road development project.

Although the Amazon now accounts for about 40 per cent
of the Earth's rainforest, the scientists believe that
within 20 years this will have dwindled alarmingly as
a direct result of an ambitious scheme, known as
Avanca Brasil, to "Advance Brazil" by building roads,
railways and hydroelectric dams.

The scientists accuse the Brazilian government of
fast-tracking the project by keeping out environmental
agencies ­ including its own Environment Ministry ­
thus accelerating logging and deforestation.

"Once a road or highway is built, a Pandora's box is
opened which is almost impossible for a government to
control," said William Laurance, of the Smithsonian
Tropical Research Institute in Panama, who led the
study. "Once you build a road into a pristine forest
you start an inevitable process of illegal
colonisation, logging, land-clearing and forest
destruction."

Using satellite pictures, the team developed computer
models to predict the course of forest destruction
based on what has happened to the Amazon over the past
20 years of road building and development.

"We used the past as a guide to the future. We looked
at the entire network of roads and highways in the
Amazon to see how deforestation occurs in the region
of a new road," said Dr Laurance. "There's really
nothing that has been done that approaches the scale
of what we've done. Our computer model is very
comprehensive."

The study, published today in the journal Science,
shows two possible scenarios: "optimistic" and
"non-optimistic" futures. Both suggest that the Amazon
will be drastically altered by current development
schemes. Under the less optimistic scenario, more than
95 per cent of the Amazon will lose its untouched
status and 42 per cent of the forest will be totally
denuded or heavily degraded by 2020. Even under the
more optimistic view, well over half of Amazonia will
no longer be in a pristine state and about 30 per cent
will be lost forever.

The Amazon is already experiencing the most rapacious
destruction seen in any rainforest in the world, with
the loss of almost 5 million acres a year. However,
the Avanca Brasil plan will increase this rate of loss
by between 14 per cent and 25 per cent each year,
according to the study. "At stake is the fate of the
greatest tropical rainforest on Earth," the scientists
say.

Dr Laurance said that road building is by far the most
potentially destructive aspect of the development
programme because of the way it fragments the
rainforest into smaller and increasingly unviable
segments. "To eat a pie efficiently you chop it into
smaller pieces, which is what these development
projects have been doing to the Amazon," he said.

Several international and domestic attempts are under
way to preserve the Amazon, including a $340m grant
from the G7 nations, but these efforts "pale in
comparison to the scale of the ongoing and planned
development activities" ­ currently funded to the tune
of $40bn from 2000 to 2007, the scientists say.


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