SIXTY percent of the Amazon rainforest lies in Brazil, making that country practically the caretaker of what is considered the “lungs of the planet.”
The world’s biggest rainforest is home to 3 million species of plants and animals. It produces oxygen and absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, allowing the Earth to “breathe.”
How well Brazil performs its caretaker function depends largely on who is running its government. The Amazon has been constantly threatened by deforestation, but the threat loomed even larger during the time of President Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro was not exactly an environmental advocate. He rejected the concept of climate change. He disdainfully suggested that people should “poop every other day” as a way to save the planet.
After assuming power in 2019, he slashed the budget of state environmental agencies and fired climate experts. He opened Indigenous lands in the Amazon to mining.
Bolsonaro set back by years Brazil’s efforts to protect the Amazon. Between 2020 and 2021, more than 13,235 square kilometers of rainforest were destroyed, the highest loss since 2006.
When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took over from Bolsonaro last year, he quickly moved to revive Brazil’s “Save the Amazon” program, vowing to end deforestation by 2030.
He went after illegal loggers and involved Indigenous tribes in the Amazon to protect the forest from further degradation.
Lula’s efforts are paying off. During his first year in office in 2023, deforestation in Brazil’s rainforest was slashed by half from the previous year to its lowest level since 2018.
Lula’s initial success in saving the Amazon should provide a new impetus to the global fight against deforestation, which has hardly gained traction since 2014, when a pledge to conserve the world’s forests was made during a climate summit in Peru.
That pledge “failed to slow deforestation at all,” climate advocates lamented.
Global deforestation peaked in the 1980s and has slowed since. The world, however, is still losing its forests at an alarming rate as more trees are felled to give way to agricultural and urban expansion.
The Glasgow climate summit in 2021 sought to re-energize the flagging forest conservation drive. At least 140 countries signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use that seeks to stop and reverse forest loss by 2030.
The declaration called for $19.2 billion of public and private funds to be raised, the bulk of which will go to developing countries to reforest land and support indigenous communities.
Initially hailed for its vision, the declaration is now being criticized for failing to establish “mechanisms to foster global accountability.”
For the declaration to succeed, an article on the World Resources Institute website said, “Countries and companies must be accountable for following through on their pledges. They should develop clear implementation plans, specify measurable performance indicators, and set specific milestones of achievement on the pathway to 2030 goals.”
There are no signs that these are happening. At the climate summit in Dubai last year, there were concerns that the global reforestation agenda did not get the push that it needed from participating countries and multinational companies.
The Philippines has been grappling with its own forest loss problem. It is losing 47,000 hectares of rainforest every year. As of 2020, only 24.1 percent of the country’s land area was forested.
As a signatory to the Glasgow declaration, the Philippines has been trying to calibrate its forest policy to jibe with global climate protection goals.
The National Climate Change Action Plan aims to cut emissions due to deforestation and forest degradation by combining forest protection with objectives of climate protection, biodiversity conservation and improvement of local livelihoods.
One project in Ilocos Norte, financed by the Asian Development Bank, combines tree planting with watershed development and cooperative organization.
Similar projects have been launched or are in the pipeline. But more needs to be done if the Department of Environment and Natural Resources expects to meet its goal to reforest one to two million hectares before the term of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ends in 2028.
The country’s forest development planners could draw inspiration from Brazil’s success in conserving the Amazon rainforest.