by Wouter Veening*
The economy of the world ultimately depends on the global climate, the availability of water and the abundance of plants and animals. If it is too hot or too dry to grow food or have water to drink, if there are no plants to turn into food crops or animals to provide meat for us carnivores all economy stops, and business balances will colour a glowing red. That is why it is important to recognise that economics is nothing more and nothing less than applied ecology, the science of how life interacts with and is dependent on the air, water and soil surrounding us. The common element in economy and ecology is “eco”, derived from the Greek word “oikos”, which means “home” or the house and place where we live. At the heart of the world’s ecology lies the Amazon, the largest tropical rainforest on earth. Its billion trees evaporate water that form rivers in the sky providing rainfall in South America and contributing to the water cycles around the world. This rainfall together with the (fast melting) glaciers of the Andes where the Amazon river originates makes that the nine Amazon countries (1) form the largest freshwater basin in the world comprising 20% of all reserves. These same billions of trees suck up CO2 from the atmosphere and thus make for global cooling: they balance the continued growth of CO2 emissions (and other greenhouse gases) elsewhere in the world, especially in China, the biggest emitter, the U.S., number 2, the European Union, India and Indonesia (2). If you cut down or burn the Amazon trees the reverse will happen and instead of removing the CO2 from the skies, massive amounts will be emitted into the atmosphere: cooling turns to warming and the effects will be found also in Europe: Southern Spain becoming like North Africa, sea level rise everywhere along the coasts, rapid melting of the Arctic and Greenland ice cover. The latter is a self-sustained process, it feeds on itself. Apart from its significance for rainfall and temperature, the Amazon is also the largest repository of biodiversity on earth, there are more species of flora and fauna than anywhere else, many of which still to be discovered and described by science, but we know they are there: we know what we don’t know.
We also know that the indigenous communities have intimate knowledge of many species and their nutritional and medicinal properties yet unknown to “modern” science. It is of the utmost importance to recognise and preserve that knowledge as they may contribute to new medicines for the world’s population.
Sadly, Brazil elected a president, Jair Bolsonaro, who is determined to open up the Amazon for short-term gains in the sectors of agriculture (soybean!), cattle breeding, logging and mining, which has already led to unprecedented cutting and burning of the forest, killings of environmental protectors, and the invading of officially demarcated indigenous territories. He has all but dismantled IBAMA, the national environmental protection service, and FUNAI, the indigenous people’s protection service. Moreover he has sacked the director of the Brazilian space agency as he did not like their satellite pictures of the deforestation.
As he also considers Covid-19 ‘just a fever’ he causes major numbers of victims in the indigenous communities which are extremely vulnerable to outside diseases - as we know from the era of conquistadores following Columbus - robust as they are to survive in their own Amazon surroundings. While most of the Brazilian soy goes to feed the Chinese pigs, the EU is also a substantial importer. This may grow as China suffers from the African Swine Fever and may want to import more pig meat from
Europe which then may increase soybean imports from Brazil at the cost of the Amazon (3) with all the misery just described.
The European Commission has signed a trade agreement with the Mercosur of which Brazil is a member and this agreement contains a sustainability chapter. On paper this chapter looks good, but like the palm oil arrangements, it is highly doubtful that it will work in practice as the short-term profits are just too big and as custom officials and bureaucrats are easily circumvented. The Dutch parliament has rejected the agreement, but one may ask whether ultimately, like with Brexit, no deal is better than the proposed deal.
To conclude, the EU is working on an ambitious Green Deal which at the moment focuses too much only on the European geography and is still underdeveloped when it comes to the relations with the rest of the world. It is absolutely necessary to include the preservation of the Amazon as one of the priorities of a truly Green Deal!
*President Institute for Environmental Security
(1) Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana, Venezuela
(2) Indonesia, while hardly an industrial nation, is cutting and burning its forests down for the export of palm oil, pulp and timber mainly to China and the EU. It makes the country one of the top emitters of CO2 in the world. Rampant corruption in the country and only paper policy on the side of the EU to ensure the import of only sustainably produced palm oil, continue the destruction of the forest to the detriment of South East Asia and the world as a whole.
(3) Soy is in Brazil also produced in the cerrado, a different landscape, but neighbouring the Amazon.
By: N. Peter Kramer
