Tracking the next pandemic: Deforestation of Amazon due to Brazil's new law could spell disaster, warn experts
The rainforests in Amazon have been subject to mass destruction via human activities for centuries now. As history entails deforestation in the Amazon was primarily done by farmers who cut down trees to procure empty land and cultivate crops for their families as well as for local consumption. Since the turn of the 20th century, there has been wide-scale damage caused to the forests and more than 289 square miles have been destroyed across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and the French Guiana since 1978, to make way for industrial activities, large scale agriculture and indigenous occupation. By the 2000s, nearly three-quarters of the rainforest clearing severed as cattle-ranching areas.
Then in 2004, Brazil stepped forward to launch a protection program that was successful and remained so for over a decade. The annual forest loss had drastically reduced by at least 80 percent. The decline was credited to factors such as the role of the law enforcement, satellite monitoring, pressure from environmentalists, private and public sector initiatives, new protected areas, and macroeconomic trends. Brazil's efforts though were not echoed by any other Amazonian regions, who have continued deforestation activities to an alarming extent. All of that changed in 2019 after thousands of man-made fires wiped out a large chunk of the forest and deforestation had reached a new high in the 11 years since the protection efforts.
Now, the Amazon rainforest faces deforestation, yet again, as the Brazilian government is issuing new occupation laws using the pandemic as a reason to invite an influx of occupation onto the indigenous lands. Campaigners, environmentalists and experts are warning them against this, alleging that any further damage to the environment can set off future pandemics.
The Amazon has been put at risk since the 2018 election of Brazil's far-right president Jair Bolsonaro who encouraged cattle ranchers, loggers and farmers to expand their businesses by tearing down vast areas of the Amazon. He weakened the environmental protection laws to do so. But with the novel coronavirus pandemic that is raging things have been turned upside down, yet Brazil's response to the contagion has been perplexing with Bolsonaro dismissing it as "a little flu". He also rejected all of the lockdown measures, despite the number of bodies piling up and the mass graves being dug in Sao Paolo to bury the fatalities.
COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China, and proliferated throughout the world so rapidly, but to many biologists and virologists the outbreak of a pandemic didn't come as a surprise. Experts assert that such disasters are the result of humans increasingly disrupting the ecosystem and wildlife, something that we've been doing a lot in the recent decade. High rates of deforestation reports across Asia insinuated that the world was at a risk of dangerous pathogens that could affect humans and scientists have been sounding the alarm bell. This is mostly because certain animals especially rodents, bats, and primates are pathogen carriers that are not familiar to the human immune system, and by clearing their habitat we risk their infestation, as it panned out in Wuhan. The existing proof of similar instances is SARS (2002-2003) and MERS (2012).
Amid the pandemic lockdown, most industries have ceased operations, however, data compiled by the government suggest that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon had increased by 30 percent in March, in contrast to the same month last year. The most recent data also suggest that this continued into April, as well. There have been reports of increased foraying into Amazonian lands by miners and land-grabbers with civil and official protection laws being lowered due to the fear of the contagion. Scientists are warning the government against these new occupation laws, saying that further ecological disturbances can increase the chances of a new infection plaguing humans, ie, 'zoonotic' diseases.
New research published by Annals of the Brazilian Academy highlights researchers' findings that deforestation in the Amazonian forests may not only aggravate global warming but it also poses a threat to the development of a new pandemic. "Amazonia has a prominent role in regulating the Earth’s climate, with forest loss contributing to rising regional and global temperatures and intensification of extreme weather events. These climatic conditions are important drivers of emerging infectious diseases, and activities associated with deforestation contribute to the spread of disease vectors," the researches said.
The findings in this research resonate with a 2019 statement disseminated by an international group of experts on zoonotic diseases. "The Amazon region of Brazil, endemic for many communicable or zoonotic diseases can, after a wildfire, trigger a selection for survival, and with it change the habitat and behaviors of some animal species. These can be reservoirs of zoonotic bacteria, viruses, and parasites," the authors wrote.
Dr P Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, co-authored a 2019 US government-backed extensive study which highlighted that HIV, Ebola and Zika virus are all “diseases causally linked to land change use”. He told Mongabay, "Approximately one in three outbreaks of new and emerging illnesses is linked to changes in land use, like deforestation."
“Where you have a huge biodiverse zone, the Amazon, and then you have an encroaching human footprint, through urbanization, road networks, deforestation, extractive industries like logging and mining, you have all of the ingredients for a virus spillover recipe,” said David Wolking of University of California’s One Health Institute to Greenpeace's Unearthed.
Wildfires, which are often caused by slash-and-burn deforestation techniques are also attributed to the emergence of new diseases. The Amazon's deterioration due to the 209 wildfires had more than a dozen international experts issuing cautions about the same. "The Amazon region of Brazil, endemic for many communicable or zoonotic diseases can, after a wildfire, trigger a selection for survival, and with it change the habitat and behaviors of some animal species," they wrote. "These can be reservoirs of zoonotic bacteria, viruses, and parasites."
Despite the warnings, the Brazilian congress could soon hold a digital election, using an emergency process to enable quick decision-making during the pandemic crisis on preserving temporary legislation into permanent law. Campaigners warn that it would legalize historic land-grabs and allow for new invasions, which could facilitate further deforestation. Environmentalists allege that the 120-day Provisional Measure (MP) 910 imposed by Bolsonaro in December 2019, could be enacted as a permanent measure in the next three weeks without any debate or scrutinization
According to the new occupation laws of the Bolsonaro administration, the new land ownership rules will give legal titles to farmers who have occupied federal lands in a "tame and peaceful way for many years”, enabling them to “rise above subsistence farming and improve their income." However, it asserts that the new law facilitates absolutely no land-grabbing or deforestation and added that the new landowners will be held accountable for the preservation of at least 80 percent of their land. However, policy analysts have concluded that the new legislation could allow huge areas of land that was illegally cut down and occupied before 2018, to be legally secured by land-grabbers using their illegal activities as occupational certification.
Under the new proposed occupation law, MP 910, this certificate can be used by land-grabbers' claim to legitimize property on that land and can go onto purchase it for a fraction of the value, without bidding against other parties. The government also said it would proxy ownership by larger parties, who they assume will use small landowners to obtain the land for them without any official assessment, by banning the sale of newly acquired land for the first ten years.
"With this flexibility, and without separating big landowners from small ones, this law legalizes those who live from land invasion, deforestation, and the sale of public land,” said Suely Araujo, former president of Ibama, to Mongabay. “If there isn’t a political decision to withdraw MP 910 from the measures to be voted through, we run the risk of a serious environmental reverse during this [health] crisis.”
This new law could lead to the deforestation of at least an additional 1.6 million hectares of the Amazonian rainforests by 2027 said a conservation research organization, Imazon. “If passed, it would be a hard blow against any hope that there will be any regaining control and fighting deforestation,” said Brenda Brito, a lawyer, and researcher at Imazon, to Unearthed. "It will, in fact, be the end of that hope, if anyone is still hopeful that the current government will actually face and fight deforestation. Because this measure will end up stimulating even more than is happening now.”