Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon dropped 45.7 percent from August 2008 to July 2009, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced yesterday during a meeting with state governors and mayors in Brasília.

Data based on analysis of satellite imagery by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) suggests that 2,700 square miles (7,000 square kilometers) of forest were cleared in Brazil during the 12-month period, the lowest rate since the government started monitoring deforestation in 1988.

Photo of Amazon forest courtesy of Brazil's Ministry of Environment

"The new deforestation data represents an extraordinary and significant reduction for Brazil. Climate change is the most challenging issue that we face today," Lula said.

Photo of Brazil's President Lula at yesterday's event by Ricardo Stuckert/PR

The slowing deforestation levels are primarily a result of the Action Plan for Deforestation Control and Prevention in the Amazon, a set of cross-government policies and measures launched in 2004 to improve monitoring, strengthen enforcement, define conservation areas and foster sustainable activities in the region, said a statement from Brazil's Secretariat for Social Communication (SECOM).

"With the support of 13 government agencies, the plan played a major role in helping reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 74.8 percent from 2004 to 2009."

Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon 

Surveillance and enforcement

The INPE data indicates that the projected 32 percent increase in government inspections over the last year inhibited illegal deforestation in the Amazon, the statement added.

"Satellite images from INPE's near real-time deforestation detection system enabled government inspectors to focus their efforts where deforestation is most critical and act quickly to prevent new areas from being cleared.

"As a result of this surveillance, the Brazilian Environment Institute apprehended around 230,000 cubic meters of wood, 414 trucks and tractors, and embargoed 502,000 hectares [1,240,000 acres] of land linked to illegal deforestation activities in the region over the period from August 2008 to July 2009, leading the government to issue over R$ 2.8 billion reais [U.S.$ 1.6 billion] in fines.

"In addition to fines, the government used other tools to financially constrain those whose activities contribute to the destruction of the forest. This includes a resolution enacted by the National Monetary Council in mid-2008 that requires farmers and ranchers in the Amazon to meet environmental criteria in order to obtain loans from public and private banks."

Brazil is home to 60 percent of the Amazon. The "Legal Brazilian Amazon" ("Amazonia Legal Brasileira") is an administrative region that spreads across the states of Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima and portions of Tocantins, Maranhão and Goiás. It represents 53 percent of Brazil's total land area (about 2 million square miles or 5 million square kilometers), has a population of 25 million people, and generates just under 8 percent of Brazil's total GDP.

Around 43 percent (800,000 square miles or 2.1 million square kilometers) of the Amazon land falls within Protected Areas or Indigenous Lands Around 21 percent of the Amazon are federal or state public lands outside Protected Areas and Indigenous Lands. There are about 400 identified and demarcated indigenous lands in the region, home to between 170,000 and 200,000 indigenous people.

Image and caption courtesy of Brazil's Ministry of Environment

Conservation and sustainable activities

Federal and state governments also worked to create around 50 million hectares [123 million acres] in new conservation units in the Amazon from 2004 to 2008, while another 10 million hectares [25 million acres] in indigenous lands were granted recognition in the same period, SECOM said. "Today, 43 percent of the Legal Amazon is federally protected."

The government also initiated a concession scheme for sustainable management in public forests. The first concessions were granted in August 2008, enabling three private groups to carry sustainable logging and extraction activities in 237,000 acres (96,000 hectares) of the Jamari Public Forest, in the state of Rondônia.

Deforestation and climate change

Deforestation in the Amazon region is the main source of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions, SECOM said. According to the first National Inventory of Greenhouse Gases, up to 75 percent of Brazil's emissions come from deforestation and land-use change.

"For this reason, tackling deforestation is at the center of Brazil's strategy to combat global warming. Launched in December 2008, the National Plan on Climate Change sets targets to cut deforestation rates by 80 percent by 2020, which would avoid 4.8 billion tons in CO2 emissions during this period.

"To meet these goals, the plan sets out a number of actions and programs to combat illegal logging and provide sustainable economic alternatives to the people living in the Amazon, among other measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in different sectors," SECOM said.

Photo of Amazon forest courtesy of Brazil's Ministry of Environment

Further action required, conservationists say

Although it is essential to recognize the efforts made by the federal and state governments as well as Brazilian society in general, further action is required, said WWF-Brazil CEO Denise Hamú.

"Deforestation needs to continue falling in a sustainable manner and must take place in other Brazilian biomes in addition to the Amazon, such as the Cerrado," she said in a statement issued by the conservation organization in response to President Lula's announcement.

Hamú also said that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in Copenhagen in December, will be a good opportunity for Brazil to defend the adoption of clear and ambitious emission reduction commitments by the participant countries.

"Deforestation numbers such as the ones showed today by President Lula strengthen Brazil's credentials to lead the climate negotiations and take the forefront in building a new development model for the world that respects the environment and the people."

"Deforestation numbers such as the ones showed today by President Lula strengthen Brazil's credentials to lead the climate negotiations and take the forefront in building a new development model for the world that respects the environment and the people", Hamú said.

"Among the other biomes, the most critical situation is found in the Cerrado," WWF-Brazil said. "While deforestation in the Amazon has finally fallen below 10,000 square kilometers, in the Cerrado it surpasses 20,000 square kilometers." The Cerrado is a vast tropical savanna region southeast of the Amazon.
 
36 football fields a minute

Despite conservation efforts, global deforestation continues at an alarming rate--13 million hectares per year, or 36 football fields a minute, WWF added. "It generates almost 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and halting forest loss has been identified as one of the most cost-effective ways to keep the world out of the danger zone of runaway climate change."

Apart from decreasing emissions caused by deforestation in the Amazon, Brazil needs to work on achieving reductions in the industry and transport sectors, and especially in energy generation and transmission processes, added Cláudio Maretti, WWF-Brazil's conservation director.

"After all, the planet urgently needs expressive greenhouse gas emission reductions", he said. 

The Akuntsu tribe in the Brazilian Amazon has lost its oldest member, Ururú, leaving the tribe with only five surviving members, Survival, a UK-based charity that supports tribal people worldwide, said this week.

"Ururú was the oldest member of this close-knit, tiny group and an integral part of it," Survival said in a statement.

In addition, the oldest-surviving Akuntsu, Ururú's brother Konibu, is seriously ill, Survival added.

© Marcelo dos Santos/courtesy of Survival

Altair Algayer, head of the FUNAI (Brazilian government Indian affairs department) team which protects the Akuntsu's land, said, "She was a fighter, strong, and resisted until the last moment."

"Ururú witnessed the genocide of her people and the destruction of their rainforest home, as cattle ranchers and their gunmen moved on to indigenous lands in Rondônia state," Survival's statement said. "Rondônia was opened up by government colonisation projects and the infamous BR 364 highway in the 1960s and 70s."

© Fiona Watson/courtesy of Survival 

"With Ururú dies a large part of the historical memory of this people."

"With Ururú dies a large part of the historical memory of this people," Survival said. While we shall perhaps never know the full horrors inflicted on the Akuntsu in the last half century, today's survivors say their family members were killed when ranchers bulldozed their houses and opened fire on them. The two surviving men, Konibú and Pupak, have marks on their bodies where bullets entered as they fled.

"FUNAI found the remains of houses which had been destroyed by ranchers who were clearing the forest for cattle pasture. The ranchers attempted to hide evidence of the crime, but wooden poles, arrows, axes and broken pottery were discovered."

© Fiona Watson/courtesy of Survival

When the Akuntsu were contacted by FUNAI in 1995 they numbered seven. The youngest, Konibú's daughter, died in January 2000.

Today they live in a territory officially recognized by the Brazilian government, where FUNAI protects their land from invasion by surrounding ranchers, Survival said.

© Fiona Watson/courtesy of Survival

21st Century genocide

Survival's director, Stephen Corry, said yesterday, 'With Ururú's death we are seeing the final stages of a 21st century genocide.

"Unlike mass killings in Nazi Germany or Rwanda, the genocides of indigenous people are played out in hidden corners of the world, and escape public scrutiny and condemnation. Although their numbers are small, the result is just as final.

"Only when this persecution is seen as akin to slavery or apartheid will tribal peoples begin to be safe."'

© Fiona Watson/courtesy of Survival

The story of the Akuntsu, their neighbours the Kanoê, and the elusive "Man of the Hole" is told in a new Brazilian film, Corumbiara. The Akuntsu also feature in Survival's short film, Uncontacted Tribes.

Visit Survival's Web site to find out more about the Akuntsu and how you can help them and the world's other other threatened tribes.

© Fiona Watson/courtesy of Survival

Most of the photos of the last of the Akuntsu on this page were made by Fiona Watson, a campaigner in Brazil for Survival. "Nothing prepared me for meeting the Akuntsu," she writes for the The Independent Web site. "It was at that first moment, when six solitary figures sitting in a forest clearing grasped our hands, that I fully understood the enormity of this encounter: I was witnessing the extinction of an entire people in my lifetime." Read more >> 

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Uncontacted tribes around the world are facing extinction, according to a Survival report. "Governments, companies and others ignore their rights, and invade and destroy their land with impunity."

The Amazon River originated as a transcontinental river around 11 million years ago and took its present shape around 2.4 million years ago, European researchers said yesterday.

Amazon River mouth picture courtesy NASA

The finding was based on analysis of two boreholes drilled near the mouth of the planet's largest river by Petrobras, the national oil company of Brazil.

One of the boreholes was nearly 3 miles deep (4.5 kilometers), allowing the scientists to get a look at the sediment that has accumulated on the ocean floor near the mouth of the river over millions of years.

NGS photo of Amazon River by Winfield Parks

"Until recently the Amazon Fan, a sediment column of around 10 kilometres [around 6 miles] in thickness, proved a hard nut to crack, and scientific drilling expeditions such as Ocean Drilling Program could only reach a fraction of it," the University of Amsterdam said in a statement.

"Recent exploration efforts by Petrobras lifted the veil, and sedimentological and paleontological analysis on samples from two boreholes, one of which [was] 4.5 kilometres below sea floor, now permit an insight into the history of both Amazon River and Fan.

"Prior to this publication the exact age of the Amazon River was unknown.

"This research has large implications for our understanding of South American paleogeography and the evolution of aquatic organisms in Amazonia and the Atlantic coast. It is a defining moment as a new ecosystem originates which at the same time forms a geographic divisor," the university added.

Sediment aprons in the proximity of major rivers often hold continuous records of terrestrial material accumulated by the river over time. These records provide a unique insight into the historic climate and geography of the land, , the university said. 

"The information released from this 4.5 kilometre borehole is a scientific breakthrough and stresses the value of cooperation between academia and industry."

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They and many other kinds of species of fish with weird teeth are featured in "Hooked," a new National Geographic Channel series that premieres on U.S. cable television tonight.

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Photos © Julia Dorn/courtesy National Geographic Channel

Rambaldi (lower photo) is being recognized for her leadership in conservation on the continent of South America. Jibrell wins for leadership in African conservation.

They will receive their U.S. $25,000 prizes at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., tonight.

Established through a gift from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the awards acknowledge the winners' outstanding work and lifetime contributions that further the understanding and practice of conservation in their countries.

Photos by Sebastien Viaud (top) and Roberto de Moraes