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How megacities are changing the map of the world | Parag Khanna

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Covid-19 is exposing social inequalities the world over, but homelessness, poverty, and segregation in Brazil's unequal cities leave large swathes of the country's population especially vulnerable, writes Matthew Richmond (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre).

Social distancing measures are exposing social inequalities everywhere that Covid-19 has struck, but this is especially true in the highly unequal societies of Latin America.

In the case of Brazil, 40 per cent of workers operate in the informal sector, meaning they lack labour protections like paid sick leave and redundancy that can cushion the effects of temporary periods without work. While many on low incomes are entitled to welfare programmes, like the famous conditional cash transfer programme Bolsa Família, these are insufficient to keep a family above the poverty line in the absence of other sources of income. Most low-income Brazilians, furthermore, have little or no savings.

Since the pandemic arrived in Brazil, the federal government has shown little inclination to support poor families and informal workers in dealing with its economic effects. Although a 600 real (USD $120) monthly basic income was belatedly introduced, this falls far short of what is needed. It is little more than half of the minimum wage, and far less than what most informal workers would usually be able to earn.

However, to fully grasp the destructive potential of the pandemic in Brazil we must understand how these kinds of socio-economic inequalities articulate with - and are exacerbated by - specifically urban dimensions of inequality. Urban inequalities here refers to the ways in which infrastructure, public services, and economic activities as well as ordinary people, their relationships, and their everyday practices are organised and unevenly distributed across the city.

Brazil is a highly urbanised society, with approximately 85 per cent of the population living in urban areas. Over 16 per cent of the national population lives in the country's two megacities, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which have metropolitan populations of 21.6 million and 12.7 million respectively. These are also the centres where coronavirus is currently spreading fastest. Urban inequalities and the politics surrounding them could therefore be crucial in determining how the crisis unfolds.

Covid-19 and Brazil's homeless populations

One highly visible aspect of urban inequality in Brazil is homelessness, perhaps most notoriously in São Paulo.

With a rise of 9,000 over the last four years alone, there are now estimated to be some 25,000 homeless people in the city, most of whom live in the city centre. Around 33 per cent of this population is drug-dependent. In the neighbourhood of Santa Ifigênia there is a semi-permanent settlement of drug users known as Cracolândia ("Crackland"), where crowds that can be over 1,000-strong often gather to buy and consume crack cocaine.

São Paulo's large homeless population and its smaller drug-dependent population are hugely vulnerable to Covid-19. Most are unable to wash regularly, let alone comply with stringent official hygiene guidelines. Many have underlying health conditions, such as pulmonary illnesses or immune deficiencies.

Given that many homeless people form groups for mutual aid, protection, and socialising, they also tend to share food and drink, tents and mattresses, and cigarettes or crack pipes, especially in the large agglomeration of Cracolândia. These collaborative practices are fundamental to everyday life and cannot simply be stopped for the purposes of social distancing.

As of 6 April, there have been three confirmed cases of Covid-19 amongst the homeless population (though the true number is expected to be far higher), and none have yet been confirmed in Cracolândia. However, the fear is that if Covid-19 does arrive, it will spread rapidly and with devastating force.

Indeed, even if it has yet to fully arrive, São Paulo's homeless populations are already feeling its effects. The complex social and economic networks of the city centre, which allow them to survive day-to-day, have been decimated by social distancing. Homeless populations rely on everyday flows of workers, residents, and visitors who provide donations or pay for odd jobs like washing windscreens or supervising parked cars. They also rely on small businesses that may offer them casual employment as cleaners or manual labourers, not to mention the lanchonete diners that provide cheap food and sometimes give out leftovers.

With everyday urban flows grinding to a halt, these populations have become increasingly dependent on the already under-resourced and overcrowded services offered by state agencies, NGOs, and churches. While city governments have begun to explore emergency measures, at best they will only be able to mitigate the effects of Covid-19 on the precarious health and livelihoods of their most marginalised populations.

Covid-19 in Brazil's favelas and peripheries

The simultaneous health and economic impacts of Covid-19 are magnified even further when it comes to the many millions of residents who populate Brazil's low-income peripheries and favelas.

In part, this is because these areas contain larger numbers of poor residents, who are more likely to be informally employed and to have low levels of savings. A recent study by research institute Data Favela suggested that 72 per cent of Brazil's 13.6 million favela residents have no savings and so will be unable to survive any sustained period out of work.

These broader social inequalities are also reflected in health inequalities. Favela residents are more likely to suffer from health problems like hypertension or diabetes, and they are less likely to have private health insurance.

However, there are also specifically urban factors at play.

It is common for peripheral and favela homes to be overcrowded, with multiple family members sharing rooms, often across different generations. This makes the effective isolation of the elderly and other at-risk groups almost impossible. Although conditions vary, in more precarious settlements, sanitary infrastructures like running water and sewerage are often inadequate, preventing residents from following official hygiene guidelines. More generally, favelas in particular tend to be densely constructed and populated, with poor ventilation in some areas; together these factors add up to an increased risk that the virus will spread rapidly.

These internal conditions must also be placed in the context of relationships to the wider city. Residents of favelas and peripheries tend to live further away from the essential services that they will need to access during lockdown: this applies to supermarkets, pharmacies, and banks just as it does to health centres or hospitals. Meanwhile, many who must continue to work will have to travel distant areas of the city, in most cases on forms of public transport that will expose them to a higher risk of infection. While there have been relatively few confirmed cases in favelas and peripheries to date, they are likely to spread quickly once they do arrive.

In response to challenges of access, especially in Rio de Janeiro's steeper hillside favelas, residents have gradually developed complex, collaborative systems that permit mobility and the distribution of essential goods. These typically depend on social proximity, however, and will need to be reconfigured to meet social-distancing requirements. There are promising examples of local groups establishing such arrangements. Meanwhile, broader networks are mobilising to raise money and distribute emergency packages to the poorest families, as well as articulating political demands for more effective responses from the state.

However, the potential of such grassroots initiatives is currently being undermined not only by the structural and long-term institutional exclusion of these populations, but also by the emerging politics of the pandemic in Brazil - and especially the stance taken by the country's president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Hygienisation and the politics of urban inequality

At present, Brazil's federal system of government is complicating its response to the pandemic. Social distancing is being imposed by state governors and city mayors, who have limited spending powers. The federal government, meanwhile, has resisted taking the economic measures needed to make the restrictions sustainable.

Instead, Bolsonaro has rhetorically positioned himself against the lockdown, downplaying the threat of the virus and calling for people to return to work. While this may provide some short-term economic relief to those informal workers who follow his advice, it also increases the risk of the virus spreading to the most vulnerable urban populations.

If this does occur, the politics of the pandemic could become intertwined with Brazil's brutal politics of urban inequality. As Jeff Garmany and I discussed in a recent article, the term " higienização " (hygienisation) is widely used in Brazil to refer to violent state interventions to displace or contain marginalised urban populations, usually for purposes of urban beautification. The term almost certainly comes from "hygienism", a movement of nineteenth-century European epidemiologists and urban planners that sought to redesign cities according to contemporary theories about the spread of disease.

When it arrived in the postcolonial setting of Brazil, however, hygienisation became the basis for violent interventions against poor, racialised masses, whose presence in the city was seen as a threat to civilisation. While hygienisation today tends to be driven by economic and security factors rather than fear of disease, the Covid-19 pandemic could revive such imaginaries, even linking them to existing dynamics of state violence.

This applies in different ways to different marginalised urban populations. As the streets of central São Paulo have been largely abandoned, homeless and drug-dependent populations have become more visible, generating anxiety and rumours amongst local residents about violent robberies. This has already provoked incidents of vigilante violence. It could easily lead to state violence against a population that politicians and elites have long sought to expel from the city centre, and this at a time when civilian monitoring of police may be compromised.

Favelas and peripheries, meanwhile, are already widely seen as sources of urban violence in Rio and São Paulo, and these perceptions are regularly exploited by politicians through mediatised policing operations and even federal military interventions. If Covid-19 and its economic impacts lead to social unrest in these areas, some will be tempted to exploit the situation in these well-rehearsed ways.

As the crisis deepens, Brazil's brutal politics of urban inequality could provide opportunities for embattled politicians at different levels of government - not least the President himself - to recover their legitimacy by attacking familiar enemies.
Notes:
* The views expressed here are of the authors rather than the Centre or the LSE
* This post draws on the author's article (with Jeff Garmany)Hygienisation, Gentrification, and Urban Displacement in Brazil (Antipode, 2019)
* Please read ourComments Policy before commenting
About the author

Posted In: COVID19 | Society

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Brazil's urban inequalities will exacerbate the impacts of Covid-19 | LSE Latin America and Caribbean

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Covid-19 is exposing social inequalities the world over, but homelessness, poverty, and segregation in Brazil's unequal cities leave large swathes of the country's population especially vulnerable, writes Matthew Richmond (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre). Social distancing measures are exposing social inequalities everywhere that Covid-19 has struck, but this is especially true in the highly unequal societies of Latin America.

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Brazil struggles to keep peace in favelas

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Why is biodiversity so important? - Kim Preshoff

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Unsustainable industrial and agricultural development, however, has severely degraded the health of the world's rainforests. Citizens, governments, intergovernmental organizations, and conservation groups are working together to protect these invaluable but fragile ecosystems.
Rainforest Structure
In the Amazon rainforest, the towering trees of the emergent layer include the Brazil nut tree ( Bertholletia excelsa) and the kapok tree ( Ceiba pentandra). The Brazil nut tree, a vulnerable species, can live up to 1,000 years in undisturbed rainforest habitats. Unlike many rainforest species, both the Brazil nut tree and the kapok tree are deciduous-they shed their leaves during the dry season.

Animals often maneuver through the emergent layer's unstable topmost branches by flying or gliding. Animals that can't fly or glide are usually quite small-they need to be light enough to be supported by a tree's slender uppermost layers.

The animals living in the emergent layer of the Amazon rainforest include birds, bats, gliders, and butterflies. Large raptors, such as white-tailed hawks ( Geranoaetus albicaudatus) and harpy eagles ( Harpia harpyja), are its top predators.

In rainforests on the island of New Guinea, pygmy gliders populate the emergent layer. Pygmy gliders ( Acrobates pygmaeus) are small rodents that get their name from the way flaps of skin between their legs allow them to glide from branch to branch.

Bats are the most diverse mammal species in most tropical rainforests, and they regularly fly throughout the emergent, canopy, and understory layers. For instance, one of the world's largest species of bat, the Madagascan flying fox ( Pteropus rufus)-found on the African island of Madagascar-is an important pollinator that mainly feeds on juice from fruit, but will chew flowers for their nectar.
Canopy Layer
Beneath the emergent layer is the canopy, a deep layer of vegetation roughly six meters (20 feet) thick. The canopy's dense network of leaves and branches forms a roof over the two remaining layers.

The canopy blocks winds, rainfall, and sunlight, creating a humid, still, and dark environment below. Trees have adapted to this damp environment by producing glossy leaves with pointed tips that repel water.

With so much food available, more animals live in the canopy than any other layer in the rainforest. The dense vegetation dulls sound, so many-but not all-canopy dwellers are notable for their shrill or frequent vocalizing. In the Amazon rainforest, canopy fruit is snatched up in the large beaks of screeching scarlet macaws ( Ara macao) and keel-billed toucans ( Ramphastos sulfuratus), and picked by barking spider monkeys and howler monkeys. The silent two-toed sloth chews on the leaves, shoots, and fruit in the canopy.

Thousands and thousands of insect species can also be found in the canopy, from bees to beetles, borers to butterflies. Many of these insects are the principal diet of the canopy's reptiles, including the "flying" draco lizards of Southeast Asia.
Understory Layer
Located several meters below the canopy, the understory is an even darker, stiller, and more humid environment. Plants here, such as palms and philodendrons, are much shorter and have larger leaves than plants that dominate the canopy. Understory plants' large leaves catch the minimal sunlight reaching beyond the dense canopy.

Understory plants often produce flowers that are large and easy to see, such as Heliconia, native to the Americas and the South Pacific. Others have a strong smell, such as orchids. These features attract pollinators even in the understory's low-light conditions.

Animals call the understory home for a variety of reasons. Many take advantage of the dimly lit environment for camouflage. The spots on a jaguar ( Panthera onca), which are found in the rainforests of Central and South America, may be mistaken for leaves or flecks of sunlight, for instance. The green mamba, one of the deadliest snakes in the world, blends in with foliage as it slithers up branches in the Congo rainforest. Many bats, birds, and insects prefer the open airspace the understory offers. Amphibians, such as dazzlingly colored tree frogs, thrive in the humidity because it keeps their skin moist.

Central Africa's tropical rainforest canopies and understories are home to some of the most endangered and familiar rainforest animals-such as forest elephants, pythons, antelopes, and gorillas. Gorillas, a critically endangered genus of primate, are crucial for seed dispersal. Gorillas are herbivores that move throughout the dark, dense rainforest as well as more sun-dappled swamps and jungles. Their droppings disperse seeds in these sunny areas where new trees and shrubs can take root. In this way, gorillas are keystone species in many African rainforest ecosystems.
Forest Floor Layer
The forest floor is the darkest of all rainforest layers, making it extremely difficult for plants to grow. Leaves that fall to the forest floor decay quickly.

Decomposers, such as termites, slugs, scorpions, worms, and fungi, thrive on the forest floor. Organic matter falls from trees and plants, and these organisms break down the decaying material into nutrients. The shallow roots of rainforest trees absorb these nutrients, and dozens of predators consume the decomposers!

Animals such as wild pigs ( Sus scrofa), armadillos, and anteaters forage in the decomposing brush for these tasty insects, roots and tubers of the South American rainforest. Even larger predators, including leopards ( Panthera pardus), skulk in the darkness to surprise their prey. Smaller rodents, such as rats and lowland pacas (a type of striped rodent indigenous to Central and South America), hide from predators beneath the shallow roots of trees that dominate the canopy and emergent layer.

Rivers that run through some tropical rainforests create unusual freshwater habitats on the forest floor. The Amazon River, for instance, is home to the boto ( Inia geoffrensis), or pink river dolphin, one of the few freshwater dolphin species in the world. The Amazon is also home to black caimans ( Melanosuchus niger), large reptiles related to alligators, while the Congo River is home to the caimans' crocodilian cousin, the Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus).

Types of Rainforests
Tropical Rainforests
Tropical rainforests are mainly located between the latitudes of 23.5°N (the Tropic of Cancer) and 23.5°S (the Tropic of Capricorn)-the tropics. Tropical rainforests are found in Central and South America, western and central Africa, western India, Southeast Asia, the island of New Guinea, and Australia.

Such ample sunlight and moisture are the essential building blocks for tropical rainforests' diverse flora and fauna. Roughly half of the world's species can be found here, with an estimated 40 to 100 or more different species of trees present in each hectare.

Tropical rainforests are the most biologically diverse terrestrial ecosystems in the world. The Amazon rainforest is the world's largest tropical rainforest. It is home to around 40,000 plant species, nearly 1,300 bird species, 3,000 types of fish, 427 species of mammals, and 2.5 million different insects. Red-bellied piranhas ( Pygocentrus nattereri) and pink river dolphins swim its waters. Jewel-toned parrots squawk and fly through its trees. Poison dart frogs warn off predators with their bright colors. Capuchin and spider monkeys swing and scamper through the branches of the rainforest's estimated 400 billion trees. Millions of mushrooms and other fungi decompose dead and dying plant material, recycling nutrients to the soil and organisms in the understory. The Amazon rainforest is truly an ecological kaleidoscope, full of colorful sights and sounds.
Temperate Rainforests
Temperate rainforests are located in the mid-latitudes, where temperatures are much more mild than the tropics. Temperate rainforests are found mostly in coastal, mountainous areas. These geographic conditions help create areas of high rainfall. Temperate rainforests can be found on the coasts of the Pacific Northwest in North America, Chile, the United Kingdom, Norway, Japan, New Zealand, and southern Australia.

As their name implies, temperate rainforests are much cooler than their tropical cousins, averaging between 10° and 21°C (50° and 70°F). They are also much less sunny and rainy, receiving anywhere between 150-500 centimeters (60-200 inches) of rain per year. Rainfall in these forests is produced by warm, moist air coming in from the coast and being trapped by nearby mountains.

This productivity allows many plant species to grow for incredibly long periods of time. Temperate rainforest trees such as the coast redwood in the U.S. state of California and the alerce in Chile are among the oldest and largest tree species in the world.

The animals of the temperate rainforest are mostly made up of large mammals and small birds, insects, and reptiles. These species vary widely between rainforests in different world regions. Bobcats ( Lynx rufus), mountain lions ( Puma concolor), and black bears ( Ursus americanus) are major predators in the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest. In Australia, ground dwellers such as wallabies, bandicoots, and potoroos (small marsupials that are among Australia's most endangered animals) feast on the foods provided by the forest floor. Chile's rainforests are home to a number of unique birds such as the Magellanic woodpecker and the Juan Fernández firecrown, a hummingbird species that has a crown of color-changing feathers.

People and the Rainforest

Rainforests have been home to thriving, complex communities for thousands of years. For instance, unique rainforest ecosystems have influenced the diet of cultures from Africa to the Pacific Northwest.

The Mbuti, a community indigenous to the Ituri rainforest in Central Africa, have traditionally been hunter-gatherers. Their diet consists of plants and animals from every layer of the rainforest.

From the forest floor, the Mbuti hunt fish and crabs from the Ituri River (a tributary of the Congo), as well as gather berries from low-lying shrubs. The giant forest hog, a species of wild boar, is also frequently targeted by Mbuti hunters, although this species is hunted for sale more often than food. From the understory, the Mbuti may gather honey from bee hives, or hunt monkeys. From the canopy and emergent layers, Mbuti hunters may set nets or traps for birds.

Although they are a historically nomadic society, agriculture has become a way of life for many Mbuti communities today as they trade and barter with neighboring agricultural groups such as the Bantu for crops such as manioc, nuts, rice, and plantains.

The temperate rainforest of the northwest coast of North America is the home of the Tlingit. The Tlingit enjoy a diverse diet, relying on both marine and freshwater species, as well as game from inland forests.

Due to bountiful Pacific inlets, rivers, and streams, the traditional Tlingit diet consists of a wide variety of aquatic life: crab, shrimp, clams, oysters, seals, and fish such as herring, halibut, and, crucially, salmon. Kelps and other seaweeds can be harvested and eaten in soups or dried. One familiar Tlingit saying is "When the tide is out, our table is set."

In more inland areas, historic Tlingit hunters may have targeted deer, elk, rabbit, and mountain goats. Plants gathered or harvested include berries, nuts, and wild celery.

The Yanomami are a people and culture native to the northern Amazon rainforest, spanning the border between Venezuela and Brazil. Like the Chimbu, the Yanomami practice both hunting and shifting-cultivation agriculture.

Game hunted by the Yanomami include deer, tapirs (an animal similar to a pig), monkeys, birds, and armadillos. The Yanomami have hunting dogs to help them search the understory and forest floor for game.
Benefits of Rainforests Ecological Well-Being
Rainforests are critically important to the well-being of our planet. Tropical rainforests encompass approximately 1.2 billion hectares (3 billion acres) of vegetation and are sometimes described as the Earth's thermostat.

Rainforests also help maintain the world's water cycle. More than 50% of precipitation striking a rainforest is returned to the atmosphere by evapotranspiration, helping regulate healthy rainfall around the planet. Rainforests also store a considerable percentage of the world's freshwater, with the Amazon Basin alone storing one-fifth.
Human Well-Being
Rainforests provide us with many products that we use every day. Tropical woods such as teak, balsa, rosewood, and mahogany are used in flooring, doors, windows, boatbuilding, and cabinetry. Fibers such as raffia, bamboo, kapok, and rattan are used to make furniture, baskets, insulation, and cord. Cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, and ginger are just a few spices of the rainforest. The ecosystem supports fruits including bananas, papayas, mangos, cocoa and coffee beans.

Rainforests also provide us with many medicinal products. According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, 70% of plants useful in the treatment of cancer are found only in rainforests. Rainforest plants are also used in the creation of muscle relaxants, steroids, and insecticides. They are used to treat asthma, arthritis, malaria, heart disease, and pneumonia. The importance of rainforest species in public health is even more incredible considering that less than one percent of rainforest species have been analyzed for their medicinal value.

Even rainforest fungi can contribute to humanity's well-being. A mushroom discovered in the tropical rainforest of Ecuador, for example, is capable of consuming polyurethane-a hard, durable type of plastic used in everything from garden hoses to carpets to shoes. The fungi can even consume the plastic in an oxygen-free environment, leading many environmentalists and businesses to invest in research to investigate if the fungi can help reduce waste in urban landfills.

Threats to Rainforests

Rainforests are disappearing at an alarmingly fast pace, largely due to human development over the past few centuries. Once covering 14% of land on Earth, rainforests now make up only 6%. Since 1947, the total area of tropical rainforests has probably been reduced by more than half, to about 6.2 to 7.8 million square kilometers (3 million square miles).

Such rapid habitat loss is due to the fact that 40 hectares (100 acres) of rainforest are cleared every minute for agricultural and industrial development. In the Pacific Northwest's rainforests, logging companies cut down trees for timber while paper industries use the wood for pulp. In the Amazon rainforest, large-scale agricultural industries, such as cattle ranching, clear huge tracts of forests for arable land. In the Congo rainforest, roads and other infrastructure development have reduced habitat and cut off migration corridors for many rainforest species. Throughout both the Amazon and Congo, mining and logging operations clear-cut to build roads and dig mines. Some rainforests are threatened by massive hydroelectric power projects, where dams flood acres of land. Development is encroaching on rainforest habitats from all sides.

Rainforest Conservation

Many individuals, communities, governments, intergovernmental organizations, and conservation groups are taking innovative approaches to protect threatened rainforest habitats.

Intergovernmental groups address rainforest conservation at a global scale. The United Nations' REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) Program, for example, offers financial incentives for reducing carbon emissions created by deforestation to 58 member countries. The Democratic Republic of the Congo used REDD funds to create an online National Forest Monitoring System that tracks and maps data on logging concessions, deforestation in protected areas, and national forestry sector measures. REDD funds were also used to investigate best practices in solving land disputes in Cambodia, which lacks proper forest zoning and boundary enforcement.

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A rainforest is an area of tall trees and a high amount of rainfall.

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Graves for victims of COVID-19 fill a new section of Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery, in Manaus. More than 100,000 cases of COVID-19 and 3,500 deaths have been reported in the state, where infection rates are beginning to stabilize.

Photograph by Felipe Dana, AP

Amid rising alarm that the novel coronavirus has reached deep into the Amazon rainforest, threatening isolated tribes, Brazil's Supreme Court this month unanimously ruled in favour of Indigenous people's demands to force the government to protect them from the pandemic.

Even before the ruling on August 5, Indigenous groups hailed the case as an unprecedented triumph. It was the first time the high court had agreed to hear a case brought by Indigenous litigants without intermediaries, such as the Indigenous affairs agency FUNAI. The agency, whose mission is to defend the rights and lands of Brazil's Indigenous people, has come to be seen as adversarial to their interests under the rule of hard-right president Jair Bolsonaro.

"It's a historic victory and extremely important for us Indigenous people," says Luiz Eloy Terena, lead attorney for the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), the country's principal Indigenous federation, which partnered with six opposition political parties to bring the case against the government. "It's a recognition of our own forms of social organisation."

The court ordered the administration to develop and implement a comprehensive plan within 30 days to prevent the spread of COVID-19 into Indigenous territories, particularly those where groups living in extreme isolation-so-called "uncontacted tribes"-are present. Additionally, the government must install a working group that includes Indigenous representatives, as well as establish a "situation room" in Brasilia to provide continuous monitoring of efforts to block or contain the pandemic in forest lands inhabited by isolated and recently contacted Indigenous groups.

To date, more than 25,000 Indigenous people in 146 tribal communities have tested positive for COVID-19 across Brazil, according to APIB. Nearly 700 have died. It's not known if the pandemic has reached an isolated Indigenous group, but the prospect is stirring deep unease among advocates.

Although the Supreme Court ruled in favor of COVID-19 protections, it failed to set a timeline on another of the plaintiffs' demands: the immediate expulsion of illegal loggers, miners, and land speculators from seven Indigenous territories scattered across the Amazon. Intrusions by outsiders pose an especially serious health risk as the pandemic rages, and the court's refusal to impose a concrete plan for their removal has tempered jubilation among Indigenous leaders.

"This was an incomplete victory," says Beto Marubo, of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley, who returned to his office in Brasilia last week from a visit to his home on the border with Peru. "It was very symbolic and positive to get recognition from the Supreme Court, but we didn't expect there would be a delay to effect an expulsion of the intruders."

At a funeral service held at the Park of Indigenous Nations, in Manaus, relatives mourn the death of a Kokama indigenous chief. Many of the Kokama tribe have moved from their homeland in western Brazil to Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, in search of work and services. At least 60 Kokama have died from COVID-19.

Photograph by Edmar Barros, AP

Given how easily COVID-19 spreads, Marubo fears the worst. "When we in the Javari say there is a possibility of genocide, we're accused of being alarmist," Marubo says. "But if one person from an isolated tribe is infected, he's going to contaminate his entire group. Anyone with familiarity with the Javari knows that could happen."

The sprawling Javari Valley Indigenous Territory in far-western Brazil is of special concern to health officials and Indigenous leaders. It hosts the highest concentration of isolated Indigenous communities in the world, and health experts say such tribes are at exceptionally high risk for the contagion, as they lack immunological defences to pathogens that have evolved in faraway population centers.

Adding to the sense of urgency in the Javari and elsewhere, last week a group of uncontacted nomads entered the Kulina village of Terra Nova in the headwaters of the Envira River, some 30 miles southwest of Javari reserve in the state of Acre.

Mourners carry the coffin at the funeral of Chief Messias, 53, of the Kokama tribe, who succumbed to the coronavirus in Manaus in May.

Photograph by Michael Dantas, AFP/Getty Images

A Brazilian armed forces medical team arrives in the indigenous village of Cruzeirinho, on the Javari River along the border with Peru. With sporadic access to government-provided health care, some communities set up roadblocks to keep intruders out after the pandemic began to spread into the region in late March. Other villagers have fled into the jungle.

Photograph by Evaristo SA, AFP/Getty Images

Speaking to O Globo newspaper from a village payphone, chief Cazuza Kulina reported that 10 to 20 tribespeople, including women and children, had taken foodstuffs, tools, and clothing before melting back into the forest. Villagers told the newspaper that several residents are presenting symptoms that could indicate the presence of the coronavirus: headaches, coughing, and lethargy. Cazuza said that neither FUNAI nor the Indigenous health service SESAI had reached the village to set up and staff quarantine sites-so-called "sanitary barriers"-that could have helped protect the group from COVID-19 and any number of infectious diseases.

"Since the beginning of Brazil's colonization, these peoples suffered and died from infections brought by the colonisers-like measles, smallpox, tuberculosis, and various strains of flu," Indigenous health expert Lucas Infantozzi Albertoni said in an email, referring to aboriginal populations that have had little or no contact with the outside world. He wrote from a hospital ship on the Tapajós River in the central Amazon, where he's making annual rounds to treat patients from remote communities. "These illnesses produced enormous rates of mortality, leading to the extinction of entire ethnicities and the social disintegration of many others."

COVID-19 on the threshold of uncontacted tribes

Even as the court ordered the implementation of sanitary barriers to halt the advance of the coronavirus, reports also emerged of the first cases of COVID-19 in villages perilously close to an isolated group in Javari Valley Indigenous Territory.

On August 6, an elderly woman of the Kanamari tribe succumbed to the illness after being evacuated from the settlement of Hobana, on the Upper Itaquaí River, less than 10 miles from gardens planted by an isolated tribe known as the Flecheiros-the Arrow People. (This Indigenous rights activist nearly came face-to-face with the 'Arrow People' 16 years ago.)

The first cases of COVID-19 in Javari reserve were reported in a village downriver, brought in most likely by government health care teams. But the sudden appearance of COVID-19 deep inside the reserve is troubling Indigenous leaders and health experts. With all its rivers flowing outward from a rugged headwaters region at its core, the reserve is easily protected from large-scale incursions by riverbank control posts. But as difficult as it is to reach villages such as Hobana by boat, experts say the virus has entered Javari through a kind of back door-foot trails opened through the forest by enterprising Kanamari to buy goods in towns such as Ipixuna and Eirunepé on the heavily transited Juruá River.

"Our big fear now, which has come to pass, is that the illness is entering along footpaths to the upper reaches of the rivers that have FUNAI checkpoints downstream," Indigenous attorney Terena says. Besides the Kanamari, several other contacted Indigenous groups-Matis, Marubo, Matsés-occupy ground perilously close to isolated groups in the remote headwaters of Javari reserve, Terena explains, heightening opportunities for the virus to spread to nomads with no immunological defense to the illness and no ability to treat it.

So far, 441 cases of COVID-19 infection and two deaths have been reported in the Javari Valley, according to SESAI.

"An infection in one of the contacted villages could rapidly spread to these isolated groups," Terena says. That's especially true now with the onset of the dry season in the western Amazon region. It's the time of year when floodwaters pull back from the forest floor, and entire communities-the uncontacted nomads in particular-are on the move in a quest for sustenance.

It's also the time of year, says Beto Marubo, when isolated groups slip into settlements to help themselves to food and tools. The same isolated nomads have visited the Marubo village of São Joaquim, on the Ituí River, year after year. "They come in at night and take foodstuffs-bananas, sugarcane, potatoes-and tools like machetes and axes," he says. "And there's a confirmed case of coronavirus there."

Fears of genocide

Though sharply criticised for its response to the COVID-19 crisis, FUNAI says the court's ruling will do little to alter its plans. "The decision of the Supreme Court permits us to enhance the measures that have been undertaken by the Fundação Nacional do Índio [FUNAI] to protect Indigenous peoples since the outset of the pandemic," the agency said in an email to National Geographic. The agency referred to its delivery of 500,000 food baskets to families in "situations of social vulnerability" and what it called support for more than 300 sanitary barriers.

But Indigenous leaders say FUNAI's response has been woefully lacking, which is why they took their case to court to begin with. They worry too that the court's refusal to set a timetable to expel intruders will feed a growing sense of impunity.

Marubo says poachers are appearing in Javari communities for the first time in decades, threatening villagers and FUNAI personnel with violence. In the Matsés village of Solís, they invoked the name of FUNAI worker Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, who was murdered last September in the nearby city of Tabatinga. "You saw how Maxciel was killed last year?" Marubo says, repeating the taunts of the criminals. "The same thing could happen to you."

Dos Santos had worked for FUNAI to protect the isolated tribes in Javari reserve for 12 years before being shot by a hit man on a motorbike in broad daylight. No one was ever brought to account.

"There was no action from the authorities, nothing that would have shown a strong response from the Brazilian government," Marubo says. As a result, other FUNAI workers have shown a reluctance to take their jobs seriously. "They're saying to themselves: 'If it happened to Maxciel, it could happen to me too.'"

Attorney Terena hopes the court's ruling will breathe life into faltering efforts to contain the spread of the pandemic. Failure to take decisive action in the coming weeks, he says, could expose the government to charges of violating international law.

"I would like to point out that with respect to the isolated peoples, the failure to comply with the measures ordered by the court could occasion the genocide of these populations."

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Coronavirus gets dangerously close to isolated 'Arrow People' in Amazon

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Graves for victims of COVID-19 fill a new section of Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery, in Manaus. More than 100,000 cases of COVID-19 and 3,500 deaths have been reported in the state, where infection rates are beginning to stabilize.

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Mark Plotkin: What the people of the Amazon know that you don't

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"The greatest and most endangered species in the Amazon rainforest is not the jaguar or the harpy eagle," says Mark Plotkin, "It's the isolated and uncontacted tribes." In an energetic and sobering talk, the ethnobotanist brings us into the world of the forest's indigenous tribes and the incredible medicinal plants that their shamans use to heal.

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Earth's Tropical Islands - Series 1: 1. Madagascar

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Exploring the unique wildlife of Madagascar, the oldest island on Earth.

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David Attenborough’s natural history series. This episode looks at the tropical rainforests, which are home to a staggering 50 per cent of the world’s species.

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Fires do not occur naturally in the Amazon rainforest. So, for fires to burn in a standing forest there, a few things must happen, namely a dry year along with lots of ignition sources on neighboring lands. These sources - almost exclusively human caused - can arise from runaway agricultural fires (routinely used to burn off croplands and pastures to remove pests, for example), or from blazes set intentionally to clear land following deforestation, much of it illegal.

"It's difficult to know what 'typical' is when it comes to fire in the Amazon," Jos Barlow, a professor of conservation science at Lancaster University, UK, told Mongabay. Barlow, who has been studying Amazon fires for over two decades, added: "Last year... we had lots of deforestation fires .... whereas, this year, it does seem to be that the fires are burning more areas of standing forest, which is a huge concern."

The Amazon fires that drew international attention in 2019 largely followed a pattern of recent deforestation, driven by landgrabbers, emboldened by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's pro-agribusiness rhetoric. In February, more than 1,200 scientists signed a letter, stating that, "the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro is dismantling the country's social-environmental policies."

In comments to the United Nations this week, Bolsonaro said that the country has, "the best environmental legislation on the planet," and that, "the fires practically occur in the same places, on the east side of the forest, where peasants and Indians burn their fields in already deforested areas." He provided no evidence for this claim.

Analysis by MAAP, NASA, INPE and others show a widespread pattern of fires throughout the Brazilian Amazon that includes significant illegal burning within conserved areas - doing serious harm in the most biodiverse country in the world.
When it burns, what happens to life in the forest?
The rainforest burns slowly. A fire line could advance just 300 meters (984 feet) in 24 hours, Barlow says. Such slowly moving burns give large mobile animals plenty of time to flee. But where to? The choices are to burrow, head to water, or move into other areas. Most animals cannot simply shift into the territory of another without consequence: be that violence from a competitor, or simply a lack of resources like food and shelter. Unfortunately, the research on the impacts of such flight is limited.

"We don't really know what happens to the larger animals that are forced to move into other territories," Barlow said. "So, presumably, at some point, there's a reduction in population size, because you can't just have more animals in an area."

Primates, for example, may get trapped in islands of unburned vegetation in the burnt forest, persisting on remaining food until they are forced to risk travel into foreign habitat. Fires in 2019 burned through the habitat of a recently discovered species, the Mura's saddleback tamarin. But the effects on its population are unknown.

"Who can survive the flames? We know arthropods nesting in the soil usually do very well," Lucas N. Paolucci, a professor of biology at the Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Brazil, told Mongabay in an email. "But several others, like litter-dwelling invertebrates, some birds, small mammals and snakes frequently die directly due to flames."

"You do see the small invertebrates trying to flee the flames and obviously they don't survive," Barlow said. "We've come across forest floor tortoises and [turtles] with burns scars on their shells. So, some animals do get affected and do burn." But how many animals may die in this year's extensive blazes, no one can say.

It is known that rainforest trees are especially vulnerable to fire. Because fire is a relatively new, and foreign element in the Amazon, the forest and the life within it have not evolved to withstand the flames. Tropical trees, for instance, lack the thick bark of a temperate fire adapted species such as sequoias or pines. A rainforest fire, burning the forest for the first time, kills most small trees and seedlings and can kill 50% of large trees. Seeds in the soil heated to high temperatures can lose their ability to germinate.

While bigger trees may not be immediately killed, fire damage to a trunk can cause a mortal wound, allowing pathogens to enter the trunk. These trees then take years to die. But as they succumb, they open the canopy, making surviving trees more susceptible to being knocked over in wind storms. When those large trees fall, the dark rainforest understory is compromised, with devastating consequences for the biota which has evolved in deep shade.

Barlow and his colleagues found that after Amazon forest fires, flora changes radically. Understory specialist birds, which feed in the leaf litter, "basically disappeared" with populations still not recovering ten years later. This finding is not surprising, he says, because a decade after fire, tropical forests look very different, with less biomass and an open canopy.

One study indicated that the abundance and types of dung beetle species were altered in burned Amazon forests. Dung beetles play a vital role in nutrient cycling and seed dispersal and a decline in their diversity has cascading effects on the ecosystem.

In a large experimental study, forest plots that were burned several times saw a decline in the abundance of specialist forest ant species. These species disperse seeds, play specific roles in the forest food chain, and work the soil via their burrowing. After fires, these specialist ant species were replaced by an influx of ant communities from more open-habitat areas such as savannas. The loss of these specialized forest species means the loss of the specialized work they do.

In the same experimental burn area, a different study found similar patterns of species loss for butterflies, with forest specialists decreasing in burnt areas. There is a growing body of evidence demonstrating that fire is a threat with long-term consequences to animals and plants that require the cool, moist, understory microclimate of the Amazon forest.
How do forests recover?
Because forest fires are a newer phenomenon in the Amazon, scientists are still not sure how long it takes forests there to fully recover, or even if they do. It is not surprising for researchers to examine a forest in the years after a fire and find a loss in biodiversity, but the fate of the animals on land and in the water, as well as the role of that biodiversity in supporting forest recovery, remains a mystery.

As researchers examine these landscapes, surprises emerge. For example, lowland tapirs ( Tapirus terrestris), a large fruit-eating mammal that looks somewhat like a pig crossed with an elephant, may assist with the natural recovery of burned forests, Paolucci's team found in a recent study. Tapirs travel and defecate more frequently in degraded forests, dispersing up to three times as many seeds in there than in healthy forests.

However, these tapir findings involved small experimental fires and occurred close to intact, unburned forests. "What happens in a fragmented landscape when a burnt area is not adjacent to an unburned patch?" Barlow asks. "Where are the seed sources going to come from then? And how does the forest recover when you don't have forest connectivity or the ability for the large game and the birds to help disperse the seeds?"

In areas that have burned multiple times, or in areas with large amounts of deforestation and little connectivity, with little chance to recover, the forest changes from a closed canopy primary forest to, what Barlow describes as, "essentially open scrubby bamboo and vine dominated vegetation, which is very, very flammable." This landscape, now devoid of game, food and medicines, is "of very low value to local people as well as most forest species."

"The Amazon is like a bubble... if the trees are intact, it keeps moisture under the canopy in the forest," Ernesto Alvarado, a professor of wildland fire sciences at the University of Washington said. Logging, roads, deforestation, and fires can pop this moisture bubble. "You open the canopy, right? It's like a bunch of holes in the bubble, and now the moisture is better escaping and the forest becomes drier."

Also, the Amazon dry season is getting longer and mega-droughts more common, primarily due to climate change and deforestation. Towards the end of the dry season, plants in more seasonal parts of Amazonia must rely not on rain but on water held in the soil to keep on transpiring and releasing moisture into the atmosphere. But when the dry season extends beyond that seen in past years, plants lack soil water, and some shut down their demand for moisture by dropping leaves. This dry leaf litter is ripe for burning when a fire set in a neighboring field blazes out of control.

"All these years when fires took over, plants were water-stressed," Paulo Brando, a tropical ecologist at the University of California, Irvine, said, "and then, for animals... all sorts of problems, right? Because the resource availability in terms of fruits and energy decrease a lot if you have a combination of droughts and fire."
The Amazon fires tomorrow
The future of the Amazon rainforest will depend on complex interactions between fire, deforestation, and deepening drought due to climate change, as well as other human causes.

Some scientists warn that the Amazon is nearing a tipping point, when precipitation diminishes until the rainforest transitions into a "derived-savannah." However, unlike a natural savannah, which is a highly diverse and functioning system, a severely degraded Amazon may look more like, "a very impoverished [ecological] system, less diverse, providing less function," Brando said.

The Brazilian Amazon's southern portion is currently most vulnerable to this forest-to-savannah transformation, especially along the Arc of Deforestation where rainforest meets pasture and cropland, and where several elements, including worsening drought, a prolonged dry season, and someone ready to set the land ablaze, all come together.

One ray of hope: Because Amazon forest fires burn slowly, they are fairly easy to fight with the right resources in place, Barlow says. Brazil has the technology to both predict and monitor fires with accuracy. However, without the political will and investment to do so, the Amazon rainforest, which holds 10% of the planet's biodiversity, will continue to burn.
Banner image Liz Kimbrough FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page. is a staff writer for Mongabay. Find her on Twitter @lizkimbrough_ of royal flycatcher (Onychorhynchus coronatus) in the Amazon by Philip Stouffer.
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As the Amazon burns, what happens to its biodiversity?

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The number of fires burning in standing Amazon rainforest spiked dramatically in recent weeks, threatening the forest's biodiversity - a richness of flora and fauna not adapted to withstand the flames. Of all major fires detected in the Amazon this year, 43% were in standing forests, as of Sept 21, (up from only 13% in [...]

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Read this story in Spanish here.

The Amazon rainforest-home to one in 10 species on Earth- is on fire. As of last week, 9,000 wildfires were raging simultaneously across the vast rainforest of Brazil and spreading into Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru. The blazes, largely set intentionally to clear land for cattle ranching, farming, and logging, have been exacerbated by the dry season. They're now burning in massive numbers, an 80 percent increase over this time last year, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The fires can even be seen from space.

For the thousands of mammal, reptile, amphibian, and bird species that live in the Amazon, the wildfires' impact will come in two phases: one immediate, one long-term.

"In the Amazon, nothing is adapted to fire," says William Magnusson, a researcher specializing in biodiversity monitoring at the National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) in Manaus, Brazil.

In some forests, including many across the U.S., wildfires are essential for maintaining healthy ecosystems. Animals are adapted to cope with it; many even rely on it to thrive. The black-bellied woodpecker, for example, native to the American West, only nests in burnt-out trees and eats the beetles that infest burned wood.

But the Amazon is different.

The rainforest is so uniquely rich and diverse precisely because it doesn't really burn, says Magnusson. While fires do sometimes happen naturally, they're typically small in scale and burn low to the ground. And they're quickly put out by rain.

"Basically, the Amazon hadn't burnt in hundreds of thousands or millions of years," says Magnusson. It's not like in Australia, for instance, where eucalyptus would die out without regular fires, he says. A growing number of manmade fires have plagued the Amazon in recent years, imperiling the ecosystem. The rainforest is not built for fire.

How are the fires affecting individual animals right now?

It's likely they're taking a "massive toll on wildlife in the short term," says Mazeika Sullivan, associate professor at Ohio State University's School of Environment and Natural Resources, who has done fieldwork in the Colombian Amazon.

Generally, in the midst of wildfire, Sullivan says, animals have very few choices. They can try to hide by burrowing or going into water, he says. They can be displaced. Or they can perish. In this situation, a lot of animals will die, from flames, heat from the flames, or smoke inhalation, Sullivan says

"You'll have immediate winners and immediate losers," says Sullivan. "In a system that isn't adapted to fire, you'll have a lot more losers than you will in other landscapes."

Are some animals likely to do better than others?

Certain traits may be beneficial in the midst of wildfire. Being naturally mobile helps. Large, fast-moving animals like jaguars and pumas, Sullivan says, may be able to escape, as may some birds. But slow-moving animals like sloths and anteaters, as well as smaller creatures like frogs and lizards, may die, unable to move out of the fire's path quickly enough. "Escape into the canopy but choose the wrong tree," Sullivan says, and an animal is likely to die.

Could some already-vulnerable species become more threatened or even extinct?

It's tough to say. Wildfire in the Amazon is completely different than in the U.S., Europe, or Australia, where we know a lot about species distributions, says Magnusson. We don't know enough about the range of most of the animals in the rainforest to pinpoint which species are under threat.

Nevertheless, there are a few specific species of concern.

Milton's titi, a monkey discovered in 2011, has only ever been documented in a part of Brazil in the southern Amazon that's currently beset by fire. Another recently discovered monkey, the Mura's saddleback tamarin, lives in a small range in central Brazil-also threatened by encroaching wildfire, says Carlos César Durigan, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society of Brazil. It's possible these species are native to these specific regions, Durigan says. "I [fear] we may be losing many of these endemic species."

What about aquatic animals?

Large bodies of water are mostly safe in the short term. But animals in small rivers or creeks-which are highly biologically diverse-could be in trouble. In smaller streams, "fires burn right over," says Sullivan. Water-dwelling amphibians, which need to stay partially above water in order to breathe, would be in harm's way. Fire could also change water chemistry to the point that it isn't sustainable for life in the short term, Sullivan says.

How might the fires' aftermath affect species?

This is the second major blow. "Longer-term effects are likely to be more catastrophic," says Sullivan. The entire ecosystem of the burning sections of rainforest will be altered. For example, the dense canopy of the Amazon rainforest largely blocks sunlight from reaching the ground. Fire opens up the canopy at a stroke, bringing in light and fundamentally changing the energy flow of the entire ecosystem. This can have cascading effects on the entire food chain, Sullivan says.

Surviving in a fundamentally transformed ecosystem would be a struggle for many species. Lots of amphibians, for instance, have textured, camouflaged skin that resembles the bark or leaves of a tree, allowing them to blend in. "Now, all of a sudden, the frogs are forced to be on a different background," says Sullivan. "They become exposed."

And many animals in the Amazon are specialists-species have evolved and adapted to thrive in niche habitats. Toucans, for instance, eat fruits that other animals can't access-their long beaks help them reach into otherwise inaccessible crevices. Wildfire decimating the fruit the birds depend upon would likely plunge the local toucan population into crisis. Spider monkeys live high in the canopy to avoid competition below. "What happens when you lose the canopy?" Sullivan asks. "They're forced into other areas with more competition."

The only "winners" in burned forest are likely to be raptors and other predators, Sullivan says, as cleared-out landscapes could make hunting easier.

Are there other consequences for wild animals?

Magnusson is most concerned about the overall repercussions of forest loss.

"Once you take the rainforest away, [you lose] 99 percent of all species," he says. If these wildfires were a one-off, he wouldn't necessarily be worried, he says, but he notes there's been a fundamental change in policy in Brazil "that encourages deforestation." He's referring to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's commitment to open up the Amazon for business. "The political signal that's gone out is basically that there's no law anymore, so anybody can do what they want."

Conservationists and concerned citizens have taken social media, and #PrayForAmazonas became Twitter's top-trending hashtag on Wednesday. Many criticized the Bolsonaro government's policies. Others expressed concern that the global demand for beef incentivizes the accelerated clearing of land for cattle ranching. Environmentalists are also calling attention to the consequences that a burning Amazon-often called the lungs of the planet-would have on climate change. By Thursday, #PrayForAmazonas had spurred momentum for a spin-off hashtag: #ActForAmazonas.

There's an area along the southern border of the Amazon rainforest, in the Brazilian states of Pará, Mato Grosso, and Rondônia, called the "deforestation arc," Magnusson says. There, wildfire is pushing the edge of the rainforest north, possibly changing the border forever.

"We know the least about it," he says of this region. "We may lose species without ever knowing they were there."

Editor's note: This story was updated on August 26 to clarify that a growing number of manmade fires have plagued the Amazon in recent years.

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What the Amazon fires mean for wild animals

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Read this story in Spanish here. The Amazon rainforest-home to one in 10 species on Earth- is on fire. As of last week, 9,000 wildfires were raging simultaneously across the vast rainforest of Brazil and spreading into Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru.

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Tropical Forest Destruction Accelerated in 2020

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There were bright spots, but the total lost acreage increased by 12 percent over all from the year before, according to new research.

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Since 1978 about one million square kilometers of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana. Why is Earth's largest rainforest being destroyed?

For most of human history, deforestation in the Amazon was primarily the product of subsistence farmers who cut down trees to produce crops for their families and local consumption. But in the later part of the 20th century, that began to change, with an increasing proportion of deforestation driven by industrial activities and large-scale agriculture. By the 2000s more than three-quarters of forest clearing in the Amazon was for cattle-ranching.

The result of this shift is forests in the Amazon were cleared faster than ever before in the late 1970s through the mid 2000s. Vast areas of rainforest were felled for cattle pasture and soy farms, drowned for dams, dug up for minerals, and bulldozed for towns and colonization projects. At the same time, the proliferation of roads opened previously inaccessible forests to settlement by poor farmers, illegal logging, and land speculators.

But that trend began to reverse in Brazil in 2004. Between then and the early 2010s, annual forest loss in the country that contains nearly two-thirds of the Amazon's forest cover declined by roughly eighty percent. The drop was fueled by a number of factors, including increased law enforcement, satellite monitoring, pressure from environmentalists, private and public sector initiatives, new protected areas, and macroeconomic trends. Nonetheless the trend in Brazil is not mirrored in other Amazon countries, some of which have experienced rising deforestation since 2000.

However Brazil's success in curbing deforestation has stalled since 2012 and forest loss has been trending upward since. There is debate over why this is the case, but some researchers argue that Brazil achieved about as much as it could through law enforcement and other punitive measures. Reducing deforestation further requires sufficient economic incentives to maintain forest cover in the Amazon. Put another way, standing forest needs to be made more valuable than clearing it for pasture, crops, or land speculation.

By that line of reasoning, the political impetus for reducing deforestation began to wane as ranchers, farmers, investors, and land speculators grew tried of fines, threats of legal action, and prohibitions against clearing. Political movements like the ruralistas pushed harder for relation of environmental laws and amnesty for past transgressions. These interests gained momentum when the Temer administration came to power in 2016 and won more clout with the election of Jair Bolsonaro in late 2018. Bolsonaro, who campaigned on the promise to open the Amazon to extractive industries and agribusiness while disparaging environmentalists and indigenous peoples, immediately set about dismantling protections for the Amazon when he took office in January 2019. Deforestation increased sharply thereafter, reaching levels not seen since the mid-2000s. Mongabay-News is tracking the latest deforestation news in the Amazon at its Amazon deforestation news feed.

Forest loss trends between Amazon countries are highly variable. The following charts are based data from Matt Hansen and colleagues, as presented in Global Forest Watch, using a "loose" definition of the Amazon that extends beyond the Amazon river basin. This includes the Guianas, all of Amazonas state in Venezuela, and all of the states of Maranhão and Mato Grosso in Brazil. "Forest" is defined as areas having more than 30% tree cover.

Please note: Amazon deforestation data is updated monthly here.

Brazil

Brazil [ news] holds about one-third of the world's remaining rainforests, including more than 60 percent of the Amazon rainforest. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon declined sharply in the mid-2000s due to government interventions, macroeconomic factors, and efforts by civil society. However in recent years, that decline has stalled, with deforestation beginning to rise again.

The history of dramatic decline in the Brazilian Amazon's deforestation rate is detailed in our environmental profile on the country. For updates on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, check our Brazil deforestation news feed.

Peru

Peru's [ news] rate of forest loss has been trending upward over the past decade. Reasons for the rise include the development and completion of the Transoceanic highway, which connects Pacific ports to the heart of the Amazon; a surge in gold mining in Madre de Dios and other regions along the eastern slope of the Andes; and increased logging and hydrocarbon extraction.

Colombia

The rate of forest loss in the Colombian Amazon [ news] has been roughly flat since 2000.

Bolivia

Bolivia's [ news] deforestation spiked in 2008 and again in 2010. Overall the country's rate of loss has been increasing at the second highest rate in the Amazon.

Ecuador

Ecuador's [ news] rate of forest loss in the Amazon increased between 2001 and 2012. One of the top concern for environmentalists is the government's decision to open Yasuni National Park for oil drilling.

Venezuela

Only a part of Amazonas state in Venezuela [ news] is considered part of the Amazon rainforest, but for the purpose of this estimate, the entire state is used. Most of Venezuela's rainforest found in areas that are part of the Orinoco river basin. Forest loss in the Venezuelan Amazon has been mostly flat since 2000.

The Guianas

While Suriname [ news], Guyana [ news], and French Guiana [ news] aren't part of the Amazon River basin, their forests are often lumped in as part of the Amazon rainforest. Forest loss in the three countries has sharply increased in recent years.

Several trends are contributing to industrial conversion in the Amazon rainforest:

Increased government incentives in the form of loans and infrastructure spending, including roads and dams;

Scaled-up private sector finance due to growing interest in "emerging markets" and rising domestic wealth;

Surging demand for commodities like beef, soy, sugar, and palm oil

Cattle ranching

Cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. In Brazil, this has been the case since at least the 1970s: government figures attributed 38 percent of deforestation from 1966-1975 to large-scale cattle ranching. Today the figure in Brazil is closer to 70 percent. Most of the beef is destined for urban markets, whereas leather and other cattle products are primarily for export markets.

But production of beef, leather and other cattle products isn't the only reason for converting rainforest into artificial grasslands. In a region where land prices are appreciating quickly, cattle ranching is used as a vehicle for land speculation, much of which is illegal. Forestland has little value-but cleared pastureland can be used to produce cattle or sold to large-scale farmers, including soy planters.

In the mid- to late-2000s, the situation in the Brazilian Amazon began to change. In 2006, major soy crushers established the Amazon Soy Moratorium, which barred the purchase of soy produced on lands deforested in the Amazon biome after July 24, 2006. This historic agreement, which came in response to a Greenpeace campaign, became the basis for zero deforestation commitments established subsequently in other sections, including cattle production. In 2009, major cattle buyers and the Brazilian government established the "Cattle Agreement" which was intended to bar cattle from illegally deforested areas from supply chains as well as prohibit the use of slave labor on ranches. As part of the push to improve the sustainability of cattle, state-run banks began mandating landowners register their properties for environmental compliance in order to gain access to low-interest loans.

Cattle agreements did not emerge in Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, where cattle ranching remains a major driver of Amazon forest loss. And by the early 2010s, it became clear that major slaughterhouses in Brazil were evading the safeguards put in place under the agreement by laundering cattle through other ranches. Such activity rendered the cattle agreement far less effective than originally envisioned. As of 2020, cattle ranching remains the dominant cause of deforestation in the Amazon.

Colonization and subsequent subsistence agriculture

Historically, subsistence agriculture has been an important cause of deforestation in the Amazon. Small-scale agriculture has often been facilitated by government colonization programs aiming to alleviate urban population pressure by redistributing or granting rural land to the poor. In some cases these programs have failed to meet their development goals while simultaneously unleashing large-scale deforestation.

For example, in the 1970s, Brazil's military dictatorship expanded its ambitious colonization program centered around the construction of the 2,000-mile Trans-Amazonian Highway, which would bisect the Amazon, opening rainforest lands to (1) settlement by poor farmers from the crowded, drought-plagued north and (2) enabling the exploitation of timber and mineral resources. Under the program, colonists would be granted a 250-acre lot, six-months' salary, and easy access to agricultural loans in exchange for settling along the highway and converting the surrounding rainforest into agricultural land. The plan would grow to cost Brazil US$65,000 (1980 dollars) to settle each family.

The project was plagued from the start. The sediments of the Amazon Basin rendered the highway unstable and subject to inundation during heavy rains, blocking traffic and leaving crops to rot. Harvest yields for poor farmers were dismal due to poor training and inadequate soils, which were quickly exhausted necessitating more forest clearing.. Logging was difficult due to the low density of commercially exploitable trees. Rampant erosion, up to 40 tons of soil per acre (100 tons/ha) occurred after clearing. Many colonists, unfamiliar with banking and lured by easy credit, went deep into debt.

Adding to the debacle was the environmental cost of the project. After the construction of the Trans-Amazonian Highway, Brazilian deforestation accelerated to levels never before seen.

While state-sponsored colonization schemes have waned in the 21st century, they haven't disappeared. The Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (INCRA) continues to resettle colonists in the Amazon. Additionally, actors in the private sector are known to encourage colonization for the explicit purpose of land-grabbing and deforestation. Speculators may sponsor migrants from Brazilian cities to settle forested areas in the Amazon, sometimes enroaching on farmers' legal forest reserves, indigenous reserves, and national parks and other state lands. Once the squatters - known locally as grileiros - have occupied the land long enough to clear it or secure assert a claim, however tenous, they turn it over their benefactor who sponsored the venture. The grileiros may then be deployed to another tract of forest.

Commercial agriculture

After the commercialization of a new variety of soybean developed by Brazilian scientists to flourish in rainforest climate, soy emerged as one of the most important contributors to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon from the 1990s through the mid-2000s.

Soy was both a direct and indirect deforestation. While forest was converted directly for soy fields, the crop's impact on rainforests was much larger, providing an impetus for new highways, driving up land prices and thereby encouraging land speculation, and encouraging ranchers and small farmers to move deeper into rainforest areas.

But the situation in Brazil has changed significantly since 2006, when a high profile campaign by Greenpeace forced Brazil's largest soy producers to commit to avoiding deforestation for new production. However deforestation for soy is still widespread in Bolivia and Paraguay.

Meanwhile other forms of commercial agriculture, including rice, corn, and sugar cane, also contribute to deforestation in the Amazon, both directly through forest conversion and indirectly by driving up land values.

Logging

In theory, logging in the Amazon is controlled by strict licensing which allows timber to be harvested only in designated areas, but in practice, illegal logging remains widespread in Brazil and Peru.

Logging in the Amazon is closely linked with road building. Studies by the Environmental Defense Fund show that areas that have been selectively logged are eight times more likely to be settled and cleared by shifting cultivators than untouched rainforests because of access granted by logging roads. Logging roads give colonists access to remote rainforest areas.

Other causes of forest loss in the Amazon

Historically, hydroelectric projects have flooded vast areas of Amazon rainforest. The Balbina dam flooded some 2,400 square kilometers (920 square miles) of rainforest when it was completed. Today dams drive deforestation by powering industrial mining and farming projects. Hundreds of dams are planned in the Amazon basin over the next 20 years.

Mining has had a substantial impact in the Amazon. High mineral and precious metal prices has spurred unprecedented invasions of rainforest lands across Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, and Peru. A 2013 study found that the area torn up for small-scale gold mining increased 400 percent in 13 years The surge in the gold price during the COVID-19 pandemic reinvigorated interested in mining, triggering more encroachment by illegal goldminers ̵ called garimpeiros in Brazil as well as increased investment from commercial and industrial operators.

Oil and gas development is fueling environmental concerns in the Western Amazon. Large blocks of rainforest have been granted for exploration and exploitation licenses in recent years. Oil and gas development is generally not a major direct driver of deforestation - most of the impact comes from the construction of supporting infrastructure like roads and pipelines. But pollution from oil spills, flaring, and intentional dumping of chemical waste drive other environmental problems.
This section is excerpted for an story published on Mongabay News: What's the current deforestation rate in the Amazon rainforest?
Nearly two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest is located in Brazil, making it the biggest component in the region's deforestation rate. Helpfully, Brazil also has the best systems for tracking deforestation, with the government and Imazon, a national civil society organization, releasing updates on a quarterly and monthly basis using MODIS satellite data, respectively. Both the Brazilian government and Imazon release more accurate data on an annual basis using higher resolution Landsat satellite imagery.

For other Amazon countries - primarily Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia since Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana are mostly outside the true Amazon basin watershed - the most reliable source for regular updates is Global Forest Watch, a platform that aggregates data from a many different sources. Currently Global Forest Watch has FORMA, a near-real-time forest cover monitoring system that also uses MODIS, and annual estimate made by a group of researchers led by a team at the University of Maryland.
Variance in monthly deforestation
Month-to-month deforestation is highly variable leading to frequent misreporting in the media. Both MODIS and Landsat cannot penetrate cloud cover, so during the rainy season - from roughly November to April - estimates are notoriously unreliable when compared to the same month a year earlier. Furthermore, most forest clearing in the Amazon occurs when it is dry. So if the dry season is early, deforestation may increase earlier than normal. For these reasons, the most accurate deforestation comparisons are made year-on-year. For Brazil, the deforestation "year" ends July 31: the peak of the dry season when the largest extent of forest is typically visible via satellite.

Nonetheless, short-term MODIS data isn't useless - it can provide insights on trends, especially over longer periods of time. Generally, comparing 12 consecutive months of MODIS data will provide a pretty good indication of deforestation relative to other years. Therefore the charts below include a history of MODIS-based data as well as the longer-term Landsat-based data. The MODIS system used by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) is called DETER, while Imazon's system is called SAD. INPE's annual Landsat-based system is called PRODES.
Current monthly deforestation data for the Brazilian Amazon
INPE and DETER are used primary for law enforcement since detection occurs on roughly a biweekly basis, enabling environmental police to take action as large-scale forest clearing occurs. As of 2021, INPE releases SAD data every Friday, covering deforestation registered up to about 10 days prior.

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Since 1978 about one million square kilometers of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed across Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana. Why is Earth's largest rainforest being destroyed? For most of human history, deforestation in the Amazon was primarily the product of subsistence farmers who cut down trees to produce crops for their families and local consumption.

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Brazil's Amazon: Deforestation 'surges to 12-year high'

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Destruction of the rainforest increased by 9.5% compared to the previous 12 months, new data shows.

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Exposing organized crime in the Amazon: Q&A with Robert Muggah of the Igarapé Institute

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Mongabay caught up with Igarapé Institute co-founder Robert Muggah this week to discuss Ecocrime, a new data visualization platform that combines visual storytelling with access to raw data on environmental crime in the Amazon. This interview has been edited for style and clarity. Mongabay: What prompted you to create the platform?

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The embattled indigenous peoples of Latin America are by far the best guardians of the regions' forests, according to a UN report, with deforestation rates up to 50% lower in their territories than elsewhere.

Protecting the vast forests is vital to tackling the climate crisis and plummeting populations of wildlife, and the report found that recognising the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples to their land is one of the most cost-effective actions. The report also calls for the peoples to be paid for the environmental benefits their stewardship provides, and for funding for the revitalisation of their ancestral knowledge of living in harmony with nature.

However, the demand for beef, soy, timber, oil and minerals means the threats to indigenous peoples and their forest homes are rising. Hundreds of community leaders have been killed because of disputes over land in recent years and the Covid-19 pandemic has added to the dangers forest peoples face.

Sateré-Mawé men collect medicinal herbs to treat people showing Covid symptoms, in a rural area west of Manaus, Brazil. Photograph: Ricardo Oliveira/AFP/Getty Images

Demands by indigenous peoples for their rights have become increasingly visible in recent years, the report said, but this has come with increasing persecution, racism, and assassinations. Supporting these peoples to protect the forests is particularly crucial now with scientists warning that the Amazon is nearing a tipping point where it switches from rainforest to savannah, risking the release of billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.

The report was produced by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (Filac), based on a review of more than 300 studies.

"Almost half of the intact forests in the Amazon basin are in indigenous territories and the evidence of their vital role in forest protection is crystal clear," said the president of Filac, Myrna Cunningham, an indigenous woman from Nicaragua. "While the area of intact forest declined by only 5% between 2000 and 2016 in the region's indigenous areas, in the non-indigenous areas it fell by 11%. This is why [indigenous peoples'] voice and vision should be taken into account in all global initiatives relating to climate change, biodiversity and forestry."

"Indigenous peoples have a different concept of forests," she said. "They are not seen as a place where you take out resources to increase your money - they are seen as a space where we live and that is given to us to protect for the next generations."

Indigenous and tribal territories contain about a third of all the carbon stored in the forests of Latin America, said Julio Berdegué, the FAO's Regional Representative: "These peoples are rich when it comes to culture, knowledge, and natural resources, but some of the poorest when it comes to incomes and access to services." Supporting them would also help avoid new pandemics, he said, as these are most often the result of the destruction of nature.

Cattle graze on land recently burned and deforested by farmers near Novo Progresso, Pará state, Brazil. Photograph: André Penner/AP

"Even under siege from Covid-19 and a frightening rise in invasions from outsiders, we remain the ones who can stop the destruction of our forests and their biodiverse treasures," said José Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, indigenous leader of an umbrella group, the Coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin. He said the report's evidence supports his call for climate funds to go directly to indigenous peoples and not governments vulnerable to corruption.

The report found the best forest protection was provided by peoples with collective legal titles to their lands. A 12-year study in the Bolivian, Brazilian, and Colombian Amazon found deforestation rates in such territories were only one half to one-third of those in other similar forests. Even though indigenous territories cover 28% of the Amazon Basin, they only generated 2.6% of the region's carbon emissions, the report said.

Indigenous peoples occupy 400m hectares of land in the region, but there is no legal recognition of their property rights in a third of this area. "While the impact of guaranteeing tenure security is great, the cost is very low," the report said, needing less than $45 per hectare for the mapping, negotiation and legal work required.

The report said it would cost many times more to prevent carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning using carbon capture and storage technology on power plants. The granting of land rights to indigenous people has increased over the last 20 years, Cunningham said, but has slowed down in recent years.

Paying indigenous and tribal communities for the environmental services of their territories has reduced deforestation in countries including Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru. Berdegué said such programmes could attract hundreds of millions of dollars per year from international sources.

The need for protection is urgent, the report said, with annual deforestation rates in Brazil's indigenous territories rising from 10,000 hectares in 2017 to 43,000 hectares in 2019. In January, indigenous leaders urged the international criminal court to investigate Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, over his dismantling of environmental policies and violations of indigenous rights.

Elsewhere, the area of large intact forests in indigenous territories has fallen between 2000 and 2016, with 59% lost in Paraguay, 42% in Nicaragua, 30% in Honduras and 20% in Bolivia. Mining and oil concessions now overlay almost a quarter of the land in Amazon basin indigenous and tribal territories, the report said.

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Indigenous peoples by far the best guardians of forests - UN report

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The embattled indigenous peoples of Latin America are by far the best guardians of the regions' forests, according to a UN report, with deforestation rates up to 50% lower in their territories than elsewhere.

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The Amazon Rain Forest Is Nearly Gone. We Went to the Front Lines to See If It Could Be Saved

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Colonization and environmental vandalism created a crisis in the Amazon that could have alarming consequences for climate change.

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Using legitimate mining infrastructure, "artisanal miners" have brought the pandemic into their otherwise isolated communities. Credit: AFP via Getty Images

The people behind the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) have kept an eye on global man-made deforestation. The declaration aimed to halve deforestation by 2020, and now aims to eliminate it by 2030. Most deforestation comes from agriculture, but the declaration's third goal aims to protect forests from mining and other industries.

An analysis by the World Bank suggests that 44% of all operational mines lie in forests. This represents 1,539 mines, with another 1,826 in development or currently inactive. Mining activities have driven 7% of deforestation, according to a 2012 assessment.

A 2020 update by NYDF says extraction companies are "increasingly recognising their forest impacts". However, report author Erin Matson told us: "T his increase is unfortunately starting from a very low baseline, so the attention paid to deforestation by mining companies is not nearly sufficient yet."

The report continues: "It is clear that important targets set by the declaration for this year have been missed. The outlook is also grim: forest loss has increased rather than halved since 2014, and success stories are a rare exception.

"Without dramatic shifts in economic development strategies - away from a reliance on extraction, exploitation, and consumption, and toward alternative pathways which value forests and people - the world will not meet its ambitious goals for sustainable development, climate, and forests."

Data, insights and analysis delivered to you View all newsletters By the Mining Technology team Sign up to our newsletters Sign up here

Where are the current deforestation problems in mining?

When picturing mining in forests, your first thought will likely go straight to the area with biggest issues. Brazil stands out as having many large-scale, pollution-intensive mines in its enormous tropical forest. While mines in Latin America generally see less impact on their forests than in Asia and Africa, Brazil stands out as an exception.

Destruction of the Amazon rainforest has sped up in recent years, as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro dismantles environmental protections. He has cut environmental protections, saying the Amazon "belongs to Brazil, not to the world". This has allowed companies to move into previously inaccessible areas, and the pandemic seems likely to accelerate this.

The NYDF report states: "Measures to mitigate negative impacts on forests, and people dependent on them, are often lukewarm at best. Policies and institutions set up to protect lands and communities from environmental harms have been weakened in many forest countries, especially under cover of the Covid-19 crisis."

Despite Brazil's reliance on mining, the Covid-19 pandemic has fuelled backlash against the industry. The #MinersOutCovidOut campaign has petitioned the Brazilian government to expel illegal miners. Using legitimate mining infrastructure, "artisanal miners" have brought the pandemic into their otherwise isolated communities.

The disproportionate impact of "artisanal" mining on forests

Artisanal mining relies on its ability to meet demand without engaging with regulations. While ethical regulations focus on the supply side, Matson told a recent panel that: "Demand for minerals produced in forests continues to rise and the countries that consume these commodities have so far taken few steps to limit the impact of that demand."

A 2012 study by consultancy Levin Sources and WWF found that illegal artisanal mines operating in more than two-thirds of protected forests. Since then, artisanal mining has almost doubled in scale.

However, smaller mines generally cause less direct deforestation. Instead, these cause pollution to surrounding areas, degrading ecosystems and damaging biodiversity. One scientific paper found that artisanal mines often poison waterways with mercury, in turn killing trees and animals that rely on them. Another says that artisanal mines caused the loss of 100,000 hectares of forests between 1984 and 2017.

A 2016 Levin Sources study found that artisanal alluvial diamond mining disturbed 100 times more land per carat than industrial kimberlite mining. While places such as Ghana have used small-scale mining to encourage economic development, the lack of oversight leads to a disproportionate impact on the surrounding environment.

Mining in forests, and the consequences beyond the lease

Some minerals cause more issues than others. More than 60% of nickel, titanium, and aluminium mines lie in forested areas. However, gold, iron, and copper extraction bring the greatest volume of mining into forests.

The NYDF report urges miners to consider their impacts beyond just the site of the mine. For instance, exploration access roads cause direct logging, but also allow easier access deeper into forests. This increases access for rural communities, but also allows destructive agricultural practices, which are the leading cause of deforestation.

While this may seem tangential, a in scientific journal found that deforestation around mining leases was 12 times more prevalent than within them. This comes from development of airstrips, staff housing, and other developments directly stemming from projects. Examining mining leases in the Amazon, the study found that mining projects noticeably increased deforestation for 70km around them.

Miners cannot control "slash and burn" agriculture, but political leaders can. As such, the NYDF report authors suggest approaching environmental issues from a broader perspective.

In remote forested areas, mining can lead to game hunting and monocultural farming. Along with deforestation, this in turn leads to poor biodiversity. As a result of practices like these, the International Council of Mining and Metals (ICMM) set up standards to encourage best practice.

ICMM COO Aidan Davy told us: "Biodiversity is declining at unprecedented rates, so a more strategic approach is required. We should question current practices relating to the allocation of concessions and licences within forest areas and call on governments to prohibit all development - including forestry, agribusiness, or infrastructure activity - in forest areas of greatest conservation value, coupled with stronger protective measures."

What questions should mining companies ask to decrease their impact on forests?

NYDF report author Matson told us: "Comprehensive Environmental and Social Impact Assessments should be standard before exploration begins in any new site. The assessments need to cover not just the expected environmental impacts within the direct footprint of the mine site, but also the indirect impacts of access infrastructure. Then, the company can apply a mitigation hierarchy to address these impacts."

In some ways, mitigation hierarchies act similar to a risk assessment. They encourage companies to eliminate unnecessary impacts at the planning stage, and to take remedial measures for unavoidable effects. The report emphasises: "Restoration and offsetting options should only be used as a last resort."

Both Levin and the NYDF report also support industry bodies making and enforcing practice guidelines. ICMM's Davy continued: "We need mining and metals companies across the industry to commit to higher standards of performance on biodiversity, and other environmental, social, and governance areas, which is the purpose of ICMM's Mining Principles .

"These principles require our members to neither explore nor develop new mines in World Heritage sites, respect legally designated protected areas, and ensure that any new operations or changes to existing operations are compatible with the value for which such areas were designated.

"They also require companies to assess and address risks and impacts to biodiversity and ecosystem services by implementing the mitigation hierarchy, with the ambition of achieving no net loss to biodiversity."

Matson continues: "The uptake of standards like these has been quite small and slow compared to the size of the sector. Separately, many sector-wide principles that aim to mainstream sustainable mining practices do not make s pecific mention of forests, so this is not just a gap at the individual company level."

" The most important step toward solving this problem is recognising it and understanding its scale. For this, we need to drastically increase transparency around the impacts, sustainability commitments, and actions of companies.

"Companies need to measure and publicly report their forest impacts, adopting commitments and targets to reduce the impacts, and disclosing progress toward these targets on a regular basis. In 2019, CDP introduced a mining-specific module in their forests questionnaire for mining companies to disclose against, which would be a good place to start for any company interested in being part of the solution."

Related Companies

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Mining and deforestation: the unheeded industry challenge?

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The people behind the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) have kept an eye on global man-made deforestation. The declaration aimed to halve deforestation by 2020, and now aims to eliminate it by 2030. Most deforestation comes from agriculture, but the declaration's third goal aims to protect forests from mining and other industries.

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But the consequences of Bolsonaro's policies also would be felt far beyond areas hit by chainsaws. Even modest increases in deforestation could affect water supplies in Brazilian cities and in neighbouring countries while harming the very farms he is trying to expand. More massive deforestation might alter water supplies as far away as Africa.

Most troubling of all: some scientists suggest the Amazon may already be nearing a tipping point. The region has been so degraded that even a small rise in deforestation could send the forest hurtling toward a transition to something resembling a woodland savanna, according to an analysis earlier this year by two top scientists. In addition to forever destroying huge sections of the world's largest rainforest, that shift would release tremendous quantities of planet-warming greenhouse gases, which could hasten the decline of whatever forest remained.

"We are already in a very critical situation in terms of climate change," says Adriane Esquivel-Muelbert, a native Brazilian who studies tropical forests at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. She's the lead author on a study published this month showing that the mix of tree species across the forest is already shifting in response to rising temperatures.

"If we mess up with the Amazon, carbon dioxide emissions will increase so massively that everyone will suffer," she adds.

By some accounts, it could happen quite fast.

The rainforest creates rain

Bolsonaro, a right-wing congressman from Rio de Janeiro, soundly defeated a former mayor of Sao Paulo in Brazil's presidential election late last month. The populist president-elect is so openly hostile to his country's established order that some call him 'Tropical Trump'.

His rise comes at a perilous moment for the Amazon.

From poison dart frogs and giant anteaters to golden lion tamarins and stinging bullet ants, the South American rainforest is the most species-rich biome on Earth. It is home to 10 percent of the world's species, including 2.5 million species of insect.

The forest also influences the water cycle on a regional and perhaps even global scale. As moisture comes off the Atlantic Ocean it falls on the forest as rain. This water gets sucked up by deep roots, then moves through plants and across the surface of leaves before returning to the atmosphere. Winds blowing over the uneven forest canopy create turbulence, which allows the atmosphere to absorb more moisture.

All this water then moves like a giant flowing river in the sky, falling as rain and then evaporating again and again until it reaches the Andes. Ultimately, the forest produces at least half of its own rain.

"One water vapour molecule may be recycled five to seven times before it leaves the system, either through the atmosphere or the Amazon River," says Carlos Nobre, a climate scientist with the University of Sao Paulo's Institute for Advanced Studies.

But experts increasingly fear this delicate exchange could collapse. The loss of just a fraction more of this moisture-creating forest could lead far more of it to dry out, which would reduce rainfall even more, in a self-reinforcing spiral. Already, climate change, decades of logging, and land-clearing by intentionally set wildfires have sparked record-setting droughts in 2005, 2010, and 2015-2016.

"That suggests the system is flickering," says Thomas Lovejoy, a George Mason University professor and senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation, who is widely considered the godfather of biodiversity studies.

Lovejoy and Nobre recently tried to estimate how close to the edge the Amazon really is. Their projection, published earlier this year as an editorial in Science Advances, suggests that in the most susceptible parts of the rainforest-the southern, eastern and central Amazon-loss of as little as 20 to 25 percent of original forestland could tip the system into an unstoppable transition to a drier, savanna-like ecosystem.

Already, by the Brazilian government's own estimates, 17 percent of the Amazon forest system has been lost-not including the parts that are still largely intact, but degraded.

How likely is the scenario Lovejoy describes?

"It's not something we know with any confidence, but it's a possibility-and not just a crazy, harebrained possibility. It's a very real one," says Abigail L. S. Swann, a University of Washington eco-climatologist who is contributing to a chapter on abrupt landscape changes for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's next assessment.

While no one knows precisely where the Amazon's tipping point may lie, "it makes no sense at all to discover the tipping point by actually tipping over it," Lovejoy says.

The forest is changing already

Even as Bolsonaro prepares to take office, the Amazon is already changing.

The dry season is lengthening and rainfall has dropped by a quarter in some regions. Meanwhile, precipitation, when it comes, sometimes arrives in more intense bursts, leading to massive floods in 2009, 2012, and 2014. The region's climate system is oscillating more wildly.

In the study she led, published in the journal Global Change Biology with more than a hundred other scientists as co-authors, Esquivel-Muelbert found that during the past 30 years, more drought-tolerant plant species have appeared in the Amazon, while species that predominantly emerge in wet areas are declining. Fast-growing trees and taller trees that are better at accessing the sun are outcompeting shorter, damp-loving species.

Another study shows the rate of tree deaths is increasing.

It's not clear whether all this is the beginning of the shift Lovejoy and Nobre predicted-or something else. "But it's still important because the species are beginning to change, and that can change how the forest behaves," Esquivel-Muelbert says.

How will that change the interactions among tens of thousands of species within the jungle? No one yet knows.

"It's sending ripples through the system, and we have no idea where they are going to lead," Lovejoy says. "It could become a much simpler ecosystem, and what that means in terms of its overall stability is a real question."

If Lovejoy is right, and heat and deforestation lead to less rain and a transition to a different type of landscape, consequences will be felt far and wide.

Expanding ripples

For starters, it's impossible to quantify the true value of lost diversity. In one recent review, a team found evidence that 381 new types of plants or animals had been discovered in the Amazon during a single two-year period from 2014 to 2015-the equivalent of one new species every other day.

"It's kind of a cliché that the cure for cancer might be in the Amazon, but it's also kind of true," Esquivel-Muelbert says.

Moisture from the Amazon also nourishes the winter rains that supply Uruguay, northern Argentina and Paraguay with water. The recent drought that led to water shortages in São Paulo, Brazil's largest city, were probably exacerbated by rainforest shifts.

In some places, rainfall in the Amazon also helps supply water to the very soy farmers and beef ranchers who are clearing the forest. Brazilian agriculture, it seems, actually needs the Amazon.

"We need to have forest in order to have the rain necessary to plant crops," Esquivel-Muelbert says.

Massive deforestation of the Amazon could change weather outside South America as well. Because water vapour heats the air as it condenses high in the sky to form liquid raindrops, a significant reduction in rain caused by deforestation would actually cool the atmosphere above the region. That cooling perturbation would leave the southern hemisphere in atmospheric waves-generating untold ripple effects around the planet.

According to one modeling study, for example, if the Amazon were ever completely deforested, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains-a crucial water reservoir for California-would be diminished by half.

That's without even considering the effect on CO2 and climate.

Burning time

"The Amazon stores a tremendous amount of carbon," Nobre says.

Instead of sucking CO2 from the sky, a deforested Amazon could instead begin releasing stored greenhouse gases. If 60 percent of the forest were to degrade to a savanna, Nobre says, that could unleash the equivalent of five or six years' worth of global fossil-fuel emissions.

Michael Mann, a climate scientist and director of the Earth System Science Centre at Pennsylvania State University, called it "another aggravating climate feedback" loop, where drying rainforest leads to less absorption of CO2, which in turn promotes more climate change, drying more forest.

"We depend quite a bit on the continued functioning of key carbon sinks," he says. "That's just one of the many things that makes climate change a global problem."

In fact, deforestation, fire, and climate change already work synergistically in the Amazon. In recent years, climate change has sparked droughts that let wildfires burn bigger and longer. Between 2003 and 2013, forest clearing dropped by 76 percent, but the increase in wildfire, especially during the drought of 2015, erased half the increased absorption of CO2.

That's why Lovejoy and Nobre conclude that-contrary to Bolsonaro's campaign promise-what the Amazon needs is not deforestation, but a massive campaign of tree planting.

"It really makes sense to do some active reforestation to build that margin of safety," Lovejoy says. "It doesn't have to be the forest primeval, but you need something with trees and relatively complex communities."

At the very least, says Esquivel-Muelbert, Brazil should avoid clearing more. Asked what message she would send to Brazil's new president, she said: "Please, don't make things worse."

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How Amazon forest loss may affect water-and climate-far away

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But the consequences of Bolsonaro's policies also would be felt far beyond areas hit by chainsaws. Even modest increases in deforestation could affect water supplies in Brazilian cities and in neighbouring countries while harming the very farms he is trying to expand. More massive deforestation might alter water supplies as far away as Africa.

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First study of all Amazon greenhouse gases suggests the damaged forest is now worsening climate change

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The first broad look at all of the gases that affect how the Amazon works—not just CO2—reveals a system on the brink.

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Eco-tourism a $7 billion per year boon for Brazil

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ate morning, and the suffocating heat of Costa Rica's rainy season has turned the air over the plantation leaden. On the horizon, where the spikes of thousands of pineapple plants merge into a grey-green fog, sits a spraying machine. Settled and silent for now, like a giant stinging insect that has briefly come to land, its long stick arms are folded back above its head while the belly of the tank on the trailer behind it, marked with a skull and crossbones warning, is being refilled with its next toxic load. Then the whine starts up again, the arms unfold, the spray nozzles open and it sets off towards us.

Alongside me, Fernando Ramirez, leading agronomist at the National University's toxic substances institute, is explaining the agrochemical cycle required to produce perfect luxury fruit from a tropical monoculture. "Pineapples need very large amounts of pesticides, about 20kg of active ingredient per hectare per cycle. The soil is sterilised; biodiversity is eliminated. Fourteen to 16 different types of treatment are typically needed, and many have to be applied several times. They use chemicals that are dangerous for the environment and human health." The chemicals involved are legal in Costa Rica but include some of the most controversial in the world.

This intensive agriculture has delivered cheap pineapples and created a new market. Global production has risen by nearly 50% since 1998. Two US-based multinationals, Del Monte and Dole, dominate the trade, and three-quarters of the pineapples on European shop shelves now come from Costa Rica. Two years ago, the fruit became even cheaper, when it became the focus of a price war. Go into any supermarket today and you can see "half price" and "two for the price of one" offers on boxes of pineapples.

But this is an industry built on environmental degradation and poverty wages. Moreover, price cuts appear to have led to an immediate, sometimes brutal deterioration in conditions that were already poor. On a visit to Costa Rica in June to make a documentary with funding from Consumers International, I heard repeated allegations of chemical contamination, wage cuts, union-breaking involving mass sackings and accidental poisonings.

Like many other local experts, Ramirez, who is the country's coordinator for the Pesticide Action Network, fears that the pineapple boom has outpaced the government's ability to regulate it. "The fight now is against pineapples because there's been an explosion in production, but it's difficult because the owners of the plantations have very big political and economic influence."

By now, the sprayer was bearing down on us and we reached for our masks. Then, out of nowhere, an armed guard rode up on his motorbike to inspect us. Costa Rica, with a population of just over 4m, has only 12,000 or so policemen and no army, but an estimated 17,000 gun-carrying security guards employed by private companies. We were standing resolutely on one of the many roads that are public rights of way but run right through the plantations. Across the road, a gang of a dozen or so workers who had been slumped, sweat-drenched, by a bank, snatching their day's half-hour break, pulled themselves up, slung machetes over their shoulders and clambered on to the back of another trailer heading off to a picking area. The 12-hour piece-rate harvesting shift still had a long time to go. The guard talked urgently down his walkie-talkie to base, glared at us, then rode off in a cloud of red dust.

Ramirez continued describing his concerns. "Some of the plantations have used paraquat, for example, to clear the soil at very, very high doses, 10 to 15 times the normal dose on other crops; it's banned in Europe. They use lots of herbicides because the EU will not allow even one weed in a container of imports. This is absolute monoculture, and that and the climate provide the perfect conditions for pests and diseases. They use organophosphates, organochlorines, hormone disruptors, chemicals that are known to cause cancer, chemicals that are reproductive toxins [cause birth defects]... Many are highly toxic, some are persistent pollutants."

In its most recent tests on pineapples imported from Costa Rica, the UK government's pesticide residues committee found 94% of samples contained residues of the fungicide triadimefon, a reproductive toxin and suspected hormone disruptor. None was above the legal limits, however, and the committee concluded they would not be expected to have an effect on consumer health. Other experts take the view that we should reduce our exposure to residues of this sort as much as possible, especially among vulnerable groups such as pregnant women and children.

The main burden of this constant agrochemical assault falls not on affluent western consumers, however, but on Costa Ricans - 90 complaints about public water relating to 19 pineapple companies are currently before the country's environmental court, including some against the biggest producers. One involves the community of El Cairo, which sits below two vast plantations in Costa Rica's Atlantic region, Hacienda Ojo de Agua and Finca Babilonia. The former is contracted to supply pineapples to Del Monte; the latter has been directly owned by Del Monte since 2008.

For more than three years, the residents here and in neighbouring villages - around 6,000 people in total - have had to collect their drinking water from a tanker because the ground water has been declared unsafe. Tests showed it was contaminated with agrochemicals used in pineapple production, including ones linked with cancer and that disrupt hormone systems.

When she had finished hauling buckets home in the tropical heat, one of the community leaders, Aydee Quiroz Nunez, told us how the local water crisis had begun. She first suspected a problem in 1995, when her family's health deteriorated dramatically after they moved to the village. Then growing numbers of locals began reporting unexplained illnesses - diarrhoea, rashes, gastric problems, including vomiting blood, pains in bones and headaches, loss of vision. Ramirez's university colleagues tested the water, and the tests were then verified by international labs.

Eventually, 10 years later, the government accepted that residues of 22 agrochemicals could be detected in the drinking water, among them bromacil, a herbicide linked with cancer of the thyroid, liver and kidneys. Finally, in 2007, the authorities agreed to send in water by tanker. But deliveries can be erratic and are insufficient. When we visited, Nunez and her neighbours had been waiting four days for the tanker to arrive. Most residents still rely on the contaminated piped water for washing and, if they are out when the tanker does show up, for drinking water, too. Many complained of serious health problems.

"I now have many chronic illnesses, and so do my children," Nunez told us. "It's not fair what's happening to us." She broke down in tears as she explained how their campaign to get back decent water had been greeted by officials. "The government has labelled us communists for this. The reality is many people are sick because of pineapples. We are not communists."

We asked the owners of Hacienda Ojo de Agua and Del Monte to comment on the water contamination next to their plantations. The Hacienda did not respond, although it has in the past told local press that it hasn't broken any laws. Del Monte said the government was monitoring the situation and that it had stopped using bromacil on its own farm nearby when it bought it in 2008. Del Monte added that it did not use any pesticides banned by the US or the EU, and that it closely managed pesticide use on its contracted farms.

Pineapples were worth $700m to the Costa Rican economy in 2009. The sector currently employs around 25,500 workers directly and accounts for a further 100,000 jobs indirectly. In the eyes of the government, the multinationals and principal aid donor the US, the industry represents a much-needed opportunity for Costa Rica to develop.

But as with so much globalised, liberalised food production today, the new jobs created are "flexible" and conditions often so tough that they are filled not by locals but by Nicaraguan migrants. Approximately 60% of workers in the Costa Rican pineapple industry are Nicaraguan, rising to 90% in the Atlantic and northern growing regions. Many of the migrants are without proper papers and therefore struggle to assert their rights.

We met a group of them who work on a large plantation owned by Grupo Acon, a major supplier to Dole, Fyffes, Tesco and Walmart-Asda. Pineapple price wars in western supermarkets meant only one thing for them: "Our wages have been slashed. We are in crisis. It's nowhere near enough to cover our living costs. We are even struggling to pay for water," one of the workers told us. The group alleged that the company had nearly halved their pay in recent months, saying it had no choice because of falling prices in Europe.

At peak harvest times, the work is long and arduous, both in the field and in the pack houses that run 24/7. Pablo Lopez Garcia from Nicaragua had worked seven days a week for more than three weeks when we caught up with him on his first day off in a month. A member of the plantation workers' union Sitrap, he had recently been persuading fellow workers to petition the company for independent union representation on its "permanent committee" that handles relations between employees and management. But everyone who had signed the petition had just been sacked, he told us. In 2007, there was a mass sacking, or "liquidaciones", and rehiring at wage rates reportedly 40% lower than previously. Union members were rehired only if they agreed to give up their affiliation, we were told.

Victor Louis Espinoza, also from Nicaragua, had been in Costa Rica for six years, sending money home when he could to his wife and child so she could go to school, but his pay had been nearly halved in recent months and, despite working six or seven days a week, 12 hours a day, he said he could barely survive now. He joined the union three years ago, having suffered health problems as a chemical sprayer, in particular after using an organophosphate insecticide called diazinon. "We used to have headaches, skin burns, nausea. They stopped using that after we complained, but we still get rashes sometimes from different chemicals." Approval for diazinon, mostly used as a sheep-dip in the UK, was revoked in this country in 1999 and its use in agriculture phased out from that date. Grupo Acon stopped using it a year ago.

Espinoza was longing to go home, and described a future that seemed to him without hope. "They say the cuts are market pressures and we just have to accept it. I miss my family, of course - it's really difficult to get permission for a holiday long enough to travel all the way back to Nicaragua."

We put details of these allegations to Grupo Acon for comment. It failed to respond before our film was completed, but later told us that strict protocols are in place to deal with any chemical accidents, and are followed. Dole declined to comment on conditions at its supplier. Asda currently takes pineapples from Grupo Acon via Fyffes. Fyffes said it had checked in audits and was satisfied its suppliers had an open attitude to trades unions and and did not refuse to hire union members. Tesco, meanwhile, told us it was actively engaged in improving conditions. "Tesco always looks to ensure high ethical standards among its suppliers. After two years working with suppliers in Costa Rica, we have brokered an agreement to invite independent labour experts to review labour practices and identify ways to strengthen them. That project is under way and is examining issues including pay, labour relations, seasonal labour and health and safety."

The Costa Rican fruit industry has a long record of hostility to independent unions, born of its geographical position and the political history of Central America, according to Carlos Arguedas, environment and health officer for Sitrap. He is based in Siquirres, one of the featureless towns that has grown up in the pineapple frontier. As a young man, he was one of the many chemical sprayers made sterile by the notorious pesticide DBCP when he worked on Dole banana plantations. (As compensation for being made infertile, he told us he received $7,500 from the company.) He has been jailed 23 times for union activism and confrontations that have arisen from it.

As a veteran of union campaigns, Arguedas was familiar with the "communist" label thrown at those, like Aydee Nunez in El Cairo, who confront the powerful interests in the international fruit trade. He explained some of the history. Export-led growth is part of a new vision for Costa Rica promoted by US Aid from the early 80s under the American Public Law 480 "food for peace" programme. After a debt crisis, a World Bank study recommended a restructuring of the economy with a liberalisation of markets and a shift to more food for export to the US and EU, in exchange for cheap imports of US maize, beans and rice. The US gave millions in soft loans to implement it. The policies also created opportunities for US-based trading companies to expand in the region. Cold war politics were a powerful force at the time, and the US was keen to support governments in its backyard against what it saw as socialist and communist tendencies. It was alarmed by the wave of strikes and violent outbreaks on what were then heavily unionised banana plantations on the Pacific coast. It found a willing ally in this geopolitical game in the Catholic church under its Polish, anti-communist pope, John Paul II.

The legacy today is an antipathy to the unions.Arguedas agreed to be our guide in the flatlands of the northern Atlantic region, where there were reports of union repression. In contrast to the rolling hills of the rainforested tourist north, this is a bleak, agri-industrial landscape in which miles of banana, in blue plastic insecticide bags, give way to miles of pineapple. The humidity is intense, and the settlement we were visiting seemed not even to merit a proper name. It was simply called Agriportica - Agriculture for Tica [Costa Rica]. Del Monte has two huge pineapple plantations here.

Workers were too frightened to be identified, but we gathered more evidence here of mass sackings and allegations of union-breaking at Del Monte's Finca San Peter at the end of last year. We were told a few workers tried to join the union to demand higher pay, and after some had been poisoned while spraying pineapples with Furadan - one of the most toxic carbamate pesticides, not approved for crop use in the EU. Carbamates are nerve poisons. The company reaction was "like a bomb going off", one worker said. It was alleged that first members were intimidated and threatened. I was shown a notice that was then put up in the plantation office announcing that all field workers, around 300 people, would be sacked in a mass "liquidacion" and rehiring on 7 November. The workers were rehired on slightly poorer conditions than before, with the exception of union members.

Didier Leiton, the local Sitrap organiser, took up the story for workers who felt unable to speak openly. (Like Arguedas, he had in his youth been a sprayer on banana plantations and was made sterile by DBCP.) "They were offered free transport to Siquirres town to renounce their union membership. Those who accepted the offer were rehired; those who did not were not." One who refused to leave the union found his house burned down shortly after. Leiton suspects it was arson, though there has been no formal investigation. He was himself beaten up one night on his way home from union work on a separately-owned plantation.

We put detailed allegations to Del Monte about incidents at San Peter and two other cases, similar in scale and nature, related to us by workers, of alleged mass sackings and union-busting, chemical accidents and violence against union organisers on Del Monte-owned or Del Monte-supplying pineapple plantations in Costa Rica. The company did not respond to our specific allegations, but said in a statement that strict controls and rigorous good practice had enabled it to keep accidents to a minimum. It added that freedom of association was a fundamental right for all its employees, many of whom belonged to unions. In Costa Rica, the vast majority of its farm employees chose to be represented by permanent committees, it said.

These committees are controversial. Many workers told us they didn't feel they represented workers' interests and were manipulated by managements. According to the independent unions, they are part of a new structure for industrial relations put in place by the fruit companies when they moved to the Atlantic zone in the 80s and designed to keep free unions out. The structure includes the Solidarista Associations which are part of a movement promoted by an institution within the Costa Rican Catholic church. Multinational fruit companies have paid this Catholic "escuela", or school, to produce anti-union literature and films to show workers on plantations. These alternative structures for labour relations got off to a flying start with a $1.5m cheque from the US embassy.

There are other ways to farm pineapples. While in Costa Rica, we met a leading fairtrade and organic farmer, Mainor Soto Castro, who works his own land with his family in the northern region. He told us he had switched out of conventional production when his family kept becoming ill from the chemicals they had to apply. Instead, he now controls pests by rotating crops and building up the health of the soil, and therefore the ability of the plants to resist them. He was prospering, in part thanks to the extra premium paid to him for fairtrade. But the association that markets his fruit told us its fairtrade pineapple business as a whole was in crisis. With prices of conventional pineapple being slashed across Europe, demand for the more expensive fairtrade fruit had fallen dramatically. People who might be prepared to pay an extra 50p for more ethical production were put off when the price difference was £1 or more. Three-quarters of its fairtrade pineapples were finding no market and were no longer actually sold as such, but were sold as though they were conventionally grown, so the farmers were receiving no premium for them.

As we drove away from the Finca San Peter, we passed one of the signs you frequently see at the entrance to plantations, often alongside a warning not to enter because agrochemicals have recently been applied: "Thanks to Solidarista, 250 workers toil here in peace and harmony with employers. Solidarismo = Peace." According to Arguedas, the result of "employers and workers toiling in harmony thanks to solidarismo" is a distribution of money from the pineapple trade as unequal as the burden of its environmental impacts.

Consumers International research has found that of every pound you spend on pineapple in the shop, retailers typically take 41p, multinational traders 38p and plantation owners 17p; where the multinational traders also own the plantations, they get 55p. Workers typically receive just 4p.

"All the pineapple production has done is generate money for the multinational companies' foreign bank accounts," Arguedas told us. "Here it only pays wages too low for people to live on and destroys our environment. This is not development. If anything, it is going backwards."

The less people pay in Europe, the higher the price, it seems, they have to pay in Costa Rica.

See Felicity Lawrence's film about pineapples, directed by Tom Pearson, at theguardian.com/video. Additional reporting and translation: Sam Jones.

This article was amended on 11 November 2011 to correct a link to the appropriate Del Monte website.

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Bitter fruit: The truth about supermarket pineapple

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ate morning, and the suffocating heat of Costa Rica's rainy season has turned the air over the plantation leaden. On the horizon, where the spikes of thousands of pineapple plants merge into a grey-green fog, sits a spraying machine.

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England's rivers are contaminated by a "chemical cocktail" of sewage, agriculture and road pollution, according to MPs.

Microplastics, slurry, car tyre particles, oils and wet wipes are all part of the problem, they said.

High quality water is key both to our survival and that of the environment.

Each person in the UK uses around 140 litres of water a day for washing, drinking and cooking.

The water we use in our homes is safe, but increased pollution means more intensive treatment is required, which raises household bills.

Contamination also threatens water sources crucial for the survival of wildlife, the natural environment and the food system.

These species are vital to:

Where does pollution come from?

Professor Steve Ormerod, an ecologist at Cardiff University, warns of other threats. He says: "We need to understand the risks which come with emerging pollutants - pharmaceuticals, microplastics. We don't know, at this stage how big a problem they're going to be."

Previous campaigns on acid rain and sewage have been successful in improving water quality, but improvements have stalled since 2016.

"The fact remains that many water companies, farmers and others are still not doing enough to protect [our waters]," the Environment Agency says.

Which areas are most affected?

Scotland has the largest number of high quality rivers - with up to 66% in good condition.

In Wales, the figure is 40%, in Northern Ireland it's 33% and in England it's just 14%.

Pollution by water companies is particularly high in the south and southwest of England.

Access to good quality water sources also varies across income groups.

The Environment Agency says "people in deprived and heavily populated urban areas were more likely to live within 600m of a river with poor chemical or biological quality".

This could be because these communities are more likely to live in areas near heavy industry and sewage treatment works.

Campaigning groups including Surfers against Sewage now provide real time data on water quality to help people assess the quality of water sources near them.

In 2018, the government published its 25-year Environment Plan, supported by a new Environment Bill for England which was designed to strengthen rules.

However the bill was only approved in November 2021, after a lengthy battle over how much sewage can be released into rivers. Environmental campaigners and peers in the House of Lords argued the bill was too lenient on water companies.

The UK's national environment agencies are meant to monitor the quality of water to ensure industry compliance against the existing regulations.

However, chairman Philip Dunne said the Environmental Audit Committee's inquiry uncovered "multiple failures in the monitoring, governance and enforcement on water quality," carried out by England's Environment Agency.

Since 1993, the number of water quality samples taken annually by the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales has dropped by 57%, which the committee says is a result of budget cuts.

The National Farming Union, believes improved cooperation is key. It cites the example of Poole Harbour Nutrient Management Scheme, where farmers are paid by Wessex Water to minimise fertiliser run-off, reducing contamination and therefore water treatment costs.

But responding to the report, Professor Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology at the University of Reading said: "Collaboration is fine but will mean nothing without investment. We need to get real. This problem has arisen because of chronic, long-term under investment."

England and Wales' water companies have promised to invest £4bn by 2025 to reduce sewage leaks.

However, last year BBC Panorama revealed that they continued to allow undiluted sewage into waterways. This prompted calls by MPs for a move away from a system where water companies self-report breaches.

More on this story

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Water pollution: How clean are the UK's rivers and lakes?

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England's rivers are contaminated by a "chemical cocktail" of sewage, agriculture and road pollution, according to MPs. Microplastics, slurry, car tyre particles, oils and wet wipes are all part of the problem, they said. High quality water is key both to our survival and that of the environment.

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We knew Birmingham was on the cusp of big change when we finally got a decent train station.

Yes, when Grand Central in 2015 transformed our embarrassing old New Street station into somewhere visitors wouldn't mind spending more than ten minutes, we knew things were getting better.

And it even more so when it was announced that Brum was bidding to be home of the Commonwealth Games 2026 - brought forward to 2022 after Durban in South Africa pulled out as host city.

Since official confirmation that Brum had won the bid back in 2017, our city has been going through a whirl of building activity

In an interview with BirminghamLive last year Cllr Ian Ward, head of Birmingham ity Council said the legacy of the games would be "significant" as these developments are proof of how investors are drawn here by the 'transformational impact' of the Games as well as High Speed 2.

The £500 million Paradise scheme, Smithfield masterplan, Digbeth transformation, the Birmingham 2022 projects in Perry Barr, and a revamped city centre landscape

Other projects that have been taking place around the city over the last few years include the £10 million revamp of Birmingham's largest public space, Centenary Square.

In 2017 we welcomed the £30 million redevelopment of 55 Colmore Row - one of the city's most historic office buildings. Its Grade II listed Victorian terrace facade houses over 160,000 sq ft of grade A office.

of the list is getting our floozie in Victoria Square back in full working order.

Birmingham's popular 'Floozie in the Jacuzzi' fountain is set to flow again by March 2022.

Brummies will once again enjoy basking in the sun by the floozie - before Commonwealth Games visitors arrive.

Brum is leading the way digitally too - in the country's 5G network and ultrafast broadband rollout.

The West Midlands is the UK's first large-scale 5G 'test bed' - paving the way for the roll-out of the high-speed network across the country.

And with HS2 due for completion in 2031 - making London only 49 minutes away - Brum is catching a lot of investors' eyes.

More long-term spectacular plans include the £110m transformation of Birmingham's landmark House of Fraser building.

The scheme which was approved in December, will see most of the upper floors of the department store converted into office space with space available on the first floor and basement - for bars and restaurants.

Council bosses are also considering plans for a swanky rooftop terrace for the building.

Meanwhile workman are currently busy building the 26-storey 103 Colmore Row tower.

Once completed, it will become the tallest commercial building in Birmingham and tallest new office building outside London.

We will finally have the city skyline to match the most impressive international cities.

Make no mistake, the landscape of Birmingham will continue to evolve before our eyes.

We raise a toast to all the wonderful projects happening in our city that will ensure that Birmingham become the most amazing city in the world.

The future in Brum is bright. And these are our ten reasons why:
High Speed to London

The Birmingham to London route of HS2 is now expected to be opened between 2029 and 2033.

Work has already begun on the project's first phase, which will link London with the West Midlands - seeing journey times from Birmingham to London reduced from one hour 21 minutes to just 52 minutes.

The HS2 high speed line will also be extended to the East Midlands and Manchester. There will be direct services between central Birmingham and the city centres of Nottingham and Derby.

Improved and faster transport links means more business investment which will establish the city as the true beating heart of the country.
Snow Hill

A £16million revamp of Snow Hill is also underway.

The 'public realm' redevelopment will restrict traffic flow at the heart of Birmingham's business district, making it more pedestrian-friendly.

The scheme will be split into nine individual projects completed over three phases. TIMES The design project is being delivered by a team of consultants led by international architects and urbanists, Broadway Malyan. So we can expect some exciting changes to ensure we are a world class city centre.

1. Eastside

After years of neglect, the Eastside area of Birmingham is finally rising from the ashes.

Digbeth will be the

1. Birmingham Smithfield

Did you know the area around Bullring markets was first known as Smithfield markets back in 1935?

The landscape of Birmingham will be helped along by Smithfield project - regenerating the south of the city centre. It's been described as bringing "food, culture and community together".

The council this year finalised a £1.9 billion scheme which will include 3,000 houses, a new home for the historic Bull Ring Markets, shops, a hotel and a new public square.

The Birmingham Wholesale Markets have already moved to make way for the much-anticipated project. At 42 acres, the site is twice as big as Brindleyplace.

With a potential 8,000 jobs set to be created, the Smithfield development looks set to have a huge impact on the city centre.

The council's 2016 Smithfield Masterplan described how the focal point would be Festival Square - 'to rival the best Europe has to offer'.

Festival Square will look out to a museum, culture centres, markets, a hotel, leisure opportunities such as an ice rink and other family attractions.

The masterplan also outlined that it would also house major concerts. Work is expected to start in 2022.

Speaking in July 2019, Richard Cowell, assistant director of development for the council said Smithfield would be "delivering homes, jobs, creating a new destination, a new civic park space in the square, new neighbourhood community facilities, a significant investment in green infrastructure as well as transport connectivity...".

A full planning application is currently being worked on for the development and is set to go before the planning committee in 2022.

4. Birmingham could have its own Central Park - and Spanish Steps

Birmingham is a surprisingly leafy city with 571 parks - from Cannon Hill to Sutton via Handsworth - covering almost 9,000 acres, more than any other European city.

Over the last four years, more than 10,000 people signed an online poll calling for "a green oasis in the heart of the city" - Birmingham's own New York style 'Central Park'.

Earlier this year Peter Culley, an architect from the Spatial Affairs Bureau, backed the campaign.

He claimed the park called Birmingham Markets Park, would provide 'one of the most iconic views of Birmingham' and demonstrated how it could lead up to Selfridges and the church of St. Martin in the Bull Ring via the city's own version of Rome's Spanish Steps.

5. Welcome to Brummiewood

Birmingham is already a pretty hot film location.

In recent years, blockbuster movies filmed here include Ready Player One directed by the most famous director in the world Steven Spielberg. And in 2021 we welcomed

And it is set to get even better.

Peaky Blinders writer and director Steven Knight says they are "nearly there" with plans to open a film and television studio in the Digbeth area.

The Brummie, who was made a CBE in the Queen's New Year's Honours, is set to transform 34-40 acres of land in and around Digbeth into a brand new £500m media village.

In an interview with BirminghamLive, he said: "We are hoping there will be an announcement in the New Year so that finally we have something tangible.

"We are working with lots of different people, from Birmingham City Council to the Mayor (Andy Street)... people who are trying to make something happen.

"We are hoping it will have a big impact on the future of the city and for the television and film industry here."

The opportunity to open in Brum's creative centre has taken over from original plans to open close to the NEC and Birmingham Airport - which Steven told us might still follow.

He first mooted his plans of a studio back in 2016 - revealing how some executives from Paramount had visited the potential site near the NEC earmarked for the development.

6. This will officially be known as Paradise City

Billed as "the most significant development Birmingham has seen for a generation" and a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to boost the city's standing internationally", the Paradise development should be the glittering jewel in Birmingham's crown.

The £700million scheme, which is being completed in phases, is at the core of the city's wider long-term regeneration. Once completed, it will be an entirely new urban neighbourhood attracting millions of visitors every year.

There will be three brand new squares and an upgrading of Chamberlain Square - delivering a mix of offices, shops, cafes and leisure facilities.

Centenary Way will connect Chamberlain Square and Centenary Square while Congreve Street will widen the existing Congreve Passage and provide a new thoroughfare to Summer Row and the Jewellery Quarter. These changes will ensure our city centre feels a lot bigger than it does right now.

A Paradise spokeswoman said: "Fast forward to 2026 and Paradise will be a well-established destination in the city. A cluster of buildings will be complete including a new four star 250 bedroom hotel and the three public squares - Chamberlain, Ratcliff and Congreve will have been delivered.

"The Copthorne and 77 Paradise Circus buildings will have been demolished to make way for Phase Three of Paradise which will bring the final four buildings to completion. "

The old Paradise Place hid the city's most prized crown jewels - Birmingham Town Hall, Birmingham Council House, Chamberlain Memorial and The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

But the new walkway ensures Brummies can appreciate the historic buildings and "socialise in one of the best retail offerings in the city," according to Argent, which is managing the Paradise development.

In a recent post on the Paradise blog, architect Dav Bansal, director at Glenn Howells Architects, said: "We acknowledge that Paradise needs to be viable and deliverable in several phases, yet also transform the setting of its heritage into a world-class destination that can be enjoyed by the people of the city and its visitors. "

The entire project is slated for completion by 2029.

7. There will be LOADS more bars and restaurants

Right now our restaurant scene is quite frankly incredible. We have five Michelin-starred restaurants, including our latest Aktar Islam's Opheem on Summer Row.

We also have 40 St Paul's, named the best place in the world for for gin in 2019!

The food and drink scene is set to become even more exciting in 2020!

MasterChef: The Professionals winner Stu Deeley is set to open his much anticipated new Jewellery Quarter restaurant.

The 28-year-old Brummie who won the competition with his unique and intriguing dishes - inspired by the multi-cultural flavours of his home city - will open his own eatery by early spring.

We'll also be welcoming celebrated London restaurant brands Dishoom and Vinoteca at one and two Chamberlain Square.

And over at 103 Colmore Row, we'll be welcoming a sexy new rooftop bar and eatery.

At 26-storeys high, the NatWest Tower replacement will open in May 2021.

8. We will have a world class Grand Hotel again

Colmore Row is pretty much resembling a street in London's Marylebone thanks to the restoration of The Grand hotel façade. And inside, the hotel has been undergoing dramatic renovations.

Some fabulous places have already opened inside The Grand development - including the stunning Tattu restaurant.

But The Grand Hotel itself will be the most fabulous of them all - when it's finally ready. Sources suggest the hotel is looking at a 2021 opening date.

The building, designed in French renaissance style, closed in 2002 but the project to restore and modernise the former hotel is nearly coming to an end.

It was built in 1879 and hosted the creme de la creme of society from the UK and all over the world. Human rights activist Malcolm X gave his last speech in England here in 1965.

Owner Hortons Estate revealed it had gone into partnership with Principal Hotel Company to run the hotel once it is completed.

The 185-bedroom hotel has lucrative backing from Paris-based Foncière des Régions.

We can't wait for the restoration of the ornate Grosvenor Room and grand staircase. In total, £45 million will be spent on bringing The Grand back to grand life.

And The Grand won't be the only high-profile new hotel in the city centre.

As well as the hotel at Paradise, directly opposite The Grand, on the other side of Pigeon Park, there will be another glamorous new hotel.

43 Temple Row, currently occupied by Lloyds, is set to be turned into a 200-bedroom hotel.

The plans were approved by council bosses on December 19 as part of a scheme to transform the neighbouring House of Fraser building.

9. Brum is hosting Commonwealth Games in 2022

Remember the buzz Jamaican athlete Usain Bolt created when he bigged up Brum after training here in the lead up to the 2012 Olympics? Well, imagine the global buzz after we host a major international sport event.

Our destiny in becoming a truly world-beating city was sealed when it was announced Birmingham would be the host city for this year's ommonwealth Games - boosting the West Midlands economy by £750 MILLION.

This would leave the stadium well placed to become the home of UK athletics - hosting all the major national and international competitions - after the Games.
A massive Games village to be built in Perry Barr - 1,072 new properties - flats and maisonettes, will be built alongside 79 houses and 268 extra care apartments.
Birmingham City Council leader Ian Ward previously spoke about the games will transform the long term futue of Perry Barr.

He said: "The regeneration of Perry Barr will be the most tangible and transformative legacy we achieve as a result of hosting the games, bringing investment and regeneration to area that has long been crying out for it."

After the Games, the properties will be turned into homes for Brummies.

The plans also include a retirement village and a community centre.

The 'capital projects' for the Games also include the construction of the Aquatics Centre on Londonderry Fields in Smethwick.

The state-of-the-art facility, will feature an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a 25-metre diving pool and 1,000 spectator seats.

After the Games it will become a leisure centre..

The event is our city's chance to shine and showcase Brum to a global audience.

10. We will be 'The Midlands Gateway to the World'

Transport wise, things are getting better too! In January 2020, The Midland Metro Alliance, working on behalf of the West Midlands Combined Authority, will begin work for phase two of the Birmingham Westside Metro extension between Centenary Square and Hagley Road.

By 2031, Birmingham will be better connected than ever to other parts of the country thanks to the HS2 high speed network - which means London will only be 49 minutes away.

HS2 also shifts the transport links to the whole of the UK in favour of Birmingham, with journey times to cities including Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh and Glasgow significantly reduced.

Another tram extension currently planned will go through Solihull and terminate at the HS2 Interchange station - so you will be able to get to the airport, NEC and Genting Arena on the West Midlands Metro tram!

And we'll be better connected to the rest of the world too.

In November 2018, Birmingham Airport launched its new masterplan - entitled 'The Midlands Gateway to the World'

This includes £500 million investment i n the transport hub over the next 15 years which aims to increase capacity by five million passengers a year.

Birmingham Airport will have massively increased the number of international cities it can fly direct to, which includes cities like LA.

Brum will become an impressive destination city for visitors from far flung corners of the globe. And thanks to HS2, improved and faster transport links means more business investment which will establish the city as the true beating heart of the country.

Outcomes of a public consultation included in the documents show Cllr Mahmood Hussain (Lab), councillor the Birchfield Ward, was supportive of the plans.

The development cost of both projects - due to be completed by 2023 - are projected to be £8.1 million according to the business case provided to cabinet.

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10 reasons why Birmingham will be the best city in the world

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We knew Birmingham was on the cusp of big change when we finally got a decent train station. Yes, when Grand Central in 2015 transformed our embarrassing old New Street station into somewhere visitors wouldn't mind spending more than ten minutes, we knew things were getting better.

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Fossil fuels are triggering violent conflicts all over the world, says Michael Klare, Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, the US. Klare zooms in on four areas - Iraq/Syria, South Sudan, the Crimea/Ukraine, and the South China Sea - to argue that the desire to control valuable oil and gas assets is fuelling long-standing historic tensions. "In a fossil-fuel world, control over oil and gas reserves is an essential component of national power," he warns.
Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ukraine, the East and South China Seas: wherever you look, the world is aflame with new or intensifying conflicts. At first glance, these upheavals appear to be independent events, driven by their own unique and idiosyncratic circumstances. But look more closely and they share several key characteristics - notably, a witch's brew of ethnic, religious, and national antagonisms that have been stirred to the boiling point by a fixation on energy.

In each of these conflicts, the fighting is driven in large part by the eruption of long-standing historic antagonisms among neighboring (often intermingled) tribes, sects, and peoples. In Iraq and Syria, it is a clash among Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Turkmen, and others; in Nigeria, among Muslims, Christians, and assorted tribal groupings; in South Sudan, between the Dinka and Nuer; in Ukraine, between Ukrainian loyalists and Russian-speakers aligned with Moscow; in the East and South China Sea, among the Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, and others. It would be easy to attribute all this to age-old hatreds, as suggested by many analysts; but while such hostilities do help drive these conflicts, they are fueled by a most modern impulse as well: the desire to control valuable oil and natural gas assets. Make no mistake about it: these are twenty-first-century energy wars.

Despite the patina of historical enmities, many of these conflicts are really struggles for control over the principal source of national income.

Moreover, we live in an energy-centric world where control over oil and gas resources (and their means of delivery) translates into geopolitical clout for some and economic vulnerability for others. Because so many countries are dependent on energy imports, nations with surpluses to export - including Iraq, Nigeria, Russia, and South Sudan - often exercise disproportionate influence on the world stage. What happens in these countries sometimes matters as much to the rest of us as to the people living in them, and so the risk of external involvement in their conflicts - whether in the form of direct intervention, arms transfers, the sending in of military advisers, or economic assistance - is greater than almost anywhere else.

The struggle over energy resources has been a conspicuous factor in many recent conflicts, including the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the Gulf War of 1990-1991, and the Sudanese Civil War of 1983-2005. On first glance, the fossil-fuel factor in the most recent outbreaks of tension and fighting may seem less evident. But look more closely and you'll see that each of these conflicts is, at heart, an energy war.

Iraq, Syria, and ISIS

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ( ISIS), the Sunni extremist group that controls large chunks of western Syria and northern Iraq, is a well-armed militia intent on creating an Islamic caliphate in the areas it controls. In some respects, it is a fanatical, sectarian religious organization, seeking to reproduce the pure, uncorrupted piety of the early Islamic era. At the same time, it is engaged in a conventional nation-building project, seeking to create a fully functioning state with all its attributes.

As the United States learned to its dismay in Iraq and Afghanistan, nation-building is expensive: institutions must be created and financed, armies recruited and paid, weapons and fuel procured, and infrastructure maintained. Without oil (or some other lucrative source of income), ISIS could never hope to accomplish its ambitious goals. However, as it now occupies key oil-producing areas of Syria and oil-refining facilities in Iraq, it is in a unique position to do so. Oil, then, is absolutely essential to the organization's grand strategy.

Without oil, ISIS could never hope to accomplish its ambitious goals.

At first, many rebel groups were involved in these extractive activities, but since January, when it assumed control of Raqqa, the capital of the province of that name, ISIS has been the dominant player in the oil fields. In addition, it has seized fields in neighboring Deir al-Zour Province along the Iraq border. Indeed, many of the U.S.-supplied weapons it acquired from the fleeing Iraqi army after its recent drive into Mosul and other northern Iraqi cities have been moved into Deir al-Zour to help in the organization's campaign to take full control of the region. In Iraq, ISIS is fighting to gain control over Iraq's largest refinery at Baiji in the central part of the country.

However the present fighting in northern Iraq plays out, it is obvious that there, too, oil is a central factor. ISIS seeks both to deny petroleum supplies and oil revenue to the Baghdad government and to bolster its own coffers, enhancing its capacity for nation-building and further military advances. At the same time, the Kurds and various Sunni tribes - some allied with ISIS - want control over oil fields located in the areas under their control and a greater share of the nation's oil wealth.

Ukraine, the Crimea, and Russia

By annexing the Crimea, Russia virtually doubled the offshore territory it controls in the Black Sea, which is thought to house billions of barrels of oil and vast reserves of natural gas.

Given this background, it is not surprising that a key objective of the " association agreement" between the EU and Ukraine that was repudiated by Yanukovych (and has now been signed by the new Ukrainian government) calls for the extension of EU energy rules to Ukraine's energy system - essentially eliminating the cozy deals between Ukrainian elites and Gazprom. By entering into the agreement, EU officials claim, Ukraine will begin "a process of approximating its energy legislation to the EU norms and standards, thus facilitating internal market reforms."

Nigeria and South Sudan

The conflicts in South Sudan and Nigeria are distinctive in many respects, yet both share a key common factor: widespread anger and distrust towards government officials who have become wealthy, corrupt, and autocratic thanks to access to abundant oil revenues.

With oil selling at around $100 per barrel, this represents a potentially staggering source of wealth for Nigeria [...] Were these revenues - estimated in the tens of billions of dollars per year - used to spur development [...] Nigeria could be a great beacon of hope for Africa.

Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa, pumping out some 2.5 million barrels per day. With oil selling at around $100 per barrel, this represents a potentially staggering source of wealth for the nation, even after the private companies involved in the day-to-day extractive operations take their share. Were these revenues - estimated in the tens of billions of dollars per year - used to spur development and improve the lot of the population, Nigeria could be a great beacon of hope for Africa. Instead, much of the money disappears into the pockets (and foreign bank accounts) of Nigeria's well-connected elites.

In February, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, told a parliamentary investigating committee that the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had failed to transfer some $20 billion in proceeds from oil sales to the national treasury, as required by law. It had all evidently been diverted to private accounts. "A substantial amount of money has gone," he told the New York Times. "I wasn't just talking about numbers. I showed it was a scam."

The very formation of South Sudan is a product of oil politics.

The new state had barely been established, however, when conflict with the north over its oil resumed. While South Sudan has a plethora of oil, the only pipeline allowing the country to export its energy stretches across North Sudan to the Red Sea. This ensured that the south would be dependent on the north for the major source of government revenues. Furious at the loss of the fields, the northerners charged excessively high rates for transporting the oil, precipitating a cut-off in oil deliveries by the south and sporadic violence along the two countries' still-disputed border. Finally, in August 2012, the two sides agreed to a formula for sharing the wealth and the flow of oil resumed. Fighting has, however, continued in certain border areas controlled by the north but populated by groups linked to the south.

As in Syria and Iraq, much of the fighting in South Sudan has centered around the vital oil fields, with both sides determined to control them and collect the revenues they generate. As of March, while still under government control, the Paloch field in Upper Nile State was producing some 150,000 barrels a day, worth about $15 million to the government and participating oil companies. The rebel forces, led by former Vice President Machar, are trying to seize those fields to deny this revenue to the government. "The presence of forces loyal to Salva Kiir in Paloch, to buy more arms to kill our people... is not acceptable to us," Machar said in April. "We want to take control of the oil field. It's our oil." As of now, the field remains in government hands, with rebel forces reportedly making gains in the vicinity.

The South China Sea

In both the East China and South China seas, China and its neighbors claim assorted atolls and islands that sit astride vast undersea oil and gas reserves. The waters of both have been the site of recurring naval clashes over the past few years, with the South China Sea recently grabbing the spotlight.

An energy-rich offshoot of the western Pacific, that sea, long a focus of contention, is rimmed by China, Vietnam, the island of Borneo, and the Philippine Islands. Tensions peaked in May when the Chinese deployed their largest deepwater drilling rig, the HD-981, in waters claimed by Vietnam. Once in the drilling area, about 120 nautical miles off the coast of Vietnam, the Chinese surrounded the HD-981 with a large flotilla of navy and coast guard ships. When Vietnamese coast guard vessels attempted to penetrate this defensive ring in an effort to drive off the rig, they were rammed by Chinese ships and pummeled by water cannon. No lives have yet been lost in these encounters, but anti-Chinese rioting in Vietnam in response to the sea-borne encroachment left several dead and the clashes at sea are expected to continue for several months until the Chinese move the rig to another (possibly equally contested) location.

To view the Chinese drive in the South China Sea as a simple matter of nationalistic impulses would be a mistake.

The riots and clashes sparked by the deployment of HD-981 have been driven in large part by nationalism and resentment over past humiliations. The Chinese, insisting that various tiny islands in the South China Sea were once ruled by their country, still seek to overcome the territorial losses and humiliations they suffered at the hands the Western powers and Imperial Japan. The Vietnamese, long accustomed to Chinese invasions, seek to protect what they view as their sovereign territory. For common citizens in both countries, demonstrating resolve in the dispute is a matter of national pride.

But to view the Chinese drive in the South China Sea as a simple matter of nationalistic impulses would be a mistake. The owner of HD-981, the China National Offshore Oil Company ( CNOOC), has conducted extensive seismic testing in the disputed area and evidently believes there is a large reservoir of energy there. "The South China Sea is estimated to have 23 billion tons to 30 billion tons of oil and 16 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, accounting for one-third of China's total oil and gas resources," the Chinese news agency Xinhua noted. Moreover, China announced in June that it was deploying a second drilling rig to the contested waters of the South China Sea, this time at the mouth of the Gulf of Tonkin.

No End to Fighting

As these conflicts and others like them suggest, fighting for control over key energy assets or the distribution of oil revenues is a critical factor in most contemporary warfare. While ethnic and religious divisions may provide the political and ideological fuel for these battles, it is the potential for mammoth oil profits that keeps the struggles alive. Without the promise of such resources, many of these conflicts would eventually die out for lack of funds to buy arms and pay troops. So long as the oil keeps flowing, however, the belligerents have both the means and incentive to keep fighting.

In a fossil-fuel world, control over oil and gas reserves is an essential component of national power. "Oil fuels more than automobiles and airplanes," Robert Ebel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told a State Department audience in 2002. "Oil fuels military power, national treasuries, and international politics." Far more than an ordinary trade commodity, "it is a determinant of well being, of national security, and international power for those who possess this vital resource, and the converse for those who do not."
If anything, that's even truer today, and as energy wars expand, the truth of this will only become more evident. Someday, perhaps, the development of renewable sources of energy may invalidate this dictum. But in our present world, if you see a conflict developing, look for the energy. It'll be there somewhere on this fossil-fueled planet of ours.
Editor's Note Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Copyright 2014 Michael T. Klare The Race for What's Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation. This article was first published by Tomdispatch.com and is republished here with permission from publisher and author.

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Energy Wars: How oil and gas are fuelling global conflicts

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Oil and gas are triggering violent conflicts all over the world- Iraq/Syria, South Sudan, the Crimea/Ukraine, and the South China Sea- says Michael Klare.

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Birmingham is missing out on £3.6bn in productivity as more than 1.6 million residents do not have quality public transport links to the centre of the city, research by Centre for Cities has found.

Data published today shows just 34% of Birmingham's population can reach the city centre via public transport in less than 30 minutes.

This is because the majority of residents live in low-rise, car-dependent suburbs away from key rail or bus routes. The poor connectivity consequentially limits people's access to education and job opportunities and means the city is far less productive than its European counterparts.

Research shows Birmingham's transport network significantly underperforms when compared with Munich. Although Birmingham has the larger transport network and population (2.5 million to Munich's 1.5 million), Munich is still able to swiftly bring nearly 200,000 more residents to its centre than Birmingham.

A significant factor behind the disparity is a substantial difference in the population densities of both cities, with more people in Munich living in well-connected mid-rise suburbs closer to the city centre.

At current densities, Birmingham's public transport network would need to double in size to achieve the same outcomes as Munich, a task that would be both costly and hard to achieve.

To improve public transport in the UK's big cities and help them compete with their European counterparts, the Government should:

Continue to invest in new transport infrastructure in city regions where it is needed.
Give all combined authorities powers over local bus franchises to set and control bus fares, frequencies and timetables, and specify bus networks. Much like in London and, more recently, Greater Manchester.
Reform the planning system to make it easier to build midrise new neighbourhoods in well-connected suburbs.
Encourage councils to release small areas of greenbelt land around stations for development and implement Local Development Orders - a little used tool to get more homes built.

Centre for Cities chief executive Andrew Carter said: "Last month the Government outlined its ambition to create a 'global city' in every part of the UK by 2030, yet our research shows that transport networks in major cities, such as Birmingham, are lagging far behind their European counterparts.

"Birmingham's reliance on car-dependent low-rise suburbs is keeping local transport revenues down and costing billions of pounds in lost productivity - money that could otherwise be spent on building a successful London-style transport system in the West Midlands.

"If we want these cities to reach their global potential, we need to see more passengers living close to quality public transport links. Attempts to fix this problem by investing in transport infrastructure will fail unless substantial planning reforms are made to build new midrise neighbourhoods closer to the city centre."

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Poor access to public transport 'costing Birmingham £3.6bn in productivity' | TheBusinessDesk.com

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Birmingham is missing out on £3.6bn in productivity as more than 1.6 million residents do not have quality public transport links to the centre of the city, research by Centre for Cities has found. Data published today shows just 34% of Birmingham's population can reach the city centre via public transport in less than 30 minutes.

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CONCERNS have again been raised for the future of Walton's famous Naze after another large chunk of the cliffs collapsed.

Walton's Naze Protection Society was kick-started once again last month in a bid to launch a major fundraising campaign to save the town's crumbling cliffs.

The group had campaigned for years, under the chairmanship of David Gager, to raise almost £250,000 towards the £1.2million Crag Walk scheme, which opened in 2011 to protect the historic Naze Tower.

Fears have again been raised for cliffs further along the coastline and a large section, a few hundred metres away from the tower, started to fall on Tuesday morning.

Collapse - a section of the Naze cliffs has suffered from erosion

David Eagle, acting chairman of the Naze Protection Society, said action is needed to prevent further erosion.

He said: "As a consequence of the Crag Walk being built, the Naze Management Board was started and it is currently chaired by Tendring Council 's chief executive Ian Davidson.

"We have a meeting next week, which is going to be quite crucial, with Mark Johnson, regional coastal manager for the Environment agency. Things are cranking up.

Gone - the section of the cliff had collapsed by Friday morning

"The society is now looking to bring an extension of the Crag Walk on to the agenda, which would be quite significant."

Mr Eagle said it could be difficult to attract Government funding as there were no benefits from a Government agency perspective in terms of saving lives or properties.

"But from my perspective, we must do this in some shape or form to save the Naze," he added.

"That may be in a temporary format or some other alternative."

The Crag Walk protects the cliffs in front of the historic Naze Tower

He added that because the cliffs are designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Natural England's initial stance is for no interference and to allow the cliffs to retreat.

But because it compromised to allow for the Crag Walk to be built, he hopes the agency can be persuaded to back an extension of the sea defence to protect more of the beauty spot from erosion.

The Naze - the collapse section on Friday morning

He added: "Last week the Environment Agency published their national strategy for coastal erosion. It's significant because it says it is looking to give local communities more say and building partnership funding as part of that."

It is expected that millions of pounds will be needed to help fund solutions to slowing the erosion of the Naze.

Falling - Pete Jarvis spotted a section of the cliffs starting to collapse on Tuesday

Pete Jarvis, who has recently moved to the area, captured the collapse on camera.

"I take our dogs for a walk every day on the beach," he said.

"It's beautiful here and it's a real shock to see the extent of the coastal erosion, which seems to get worse by the day.

"It's left me wondering how long it will be before our new house at Kirby Cross will be right on the beach."

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Fears for Walton's Naze as large chunk of cliff collapses

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CONCERNS have again been raised for the future of Walton's famous Naze after another large chunk of the cliffs collapsed. Walton's Naze Protection Society was kick-started once again last month in a bid to launch a major fundraising campaign to save the town's crumbling cliffs.

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The fight to hold Shell accountable for complicity in murder & pollution in Nigeria continues - Oil Change International

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In 2017, Esther Kiobel and three other widows of the Ogoni 9, brought a new legal case against Shell in the Netherlands for complicity in murdering their husbands. And today was judgement day in the Hague. A day for hope. A day of dreams. However, those dreams were to be shattered.

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Ben Law, Head of GoDaddy in the U.K. says micro-business owners have a passion for what they do
Ben Law, Head of GoDaddy in the U.K.

According to government figures, out of the 6.0 million businesses currently operating in the U.K., 5.936 million fall into the category of small companies, employing between zero and 49 people. Break the figures down further and you find the vast majority of small companies - 4.567 million, to be precise - are run solely by their founders.

So what does that tell us? Well first and foremost, a lot of people work for themselves or in very small ventures and the sheer numbers doing just that suggest micro-businesses are - collectively speaking - making a significant contribution to the British economy and to society as a whole.

But just how much of a contribution exactly? Well, a new report by website creation tools company, GoDaddy argues that micro-businesses - defined by the study as companies of up to ten people - are not only an important component of the economy but could also play a major role in the process of "leveling up" disadvantaged regions of the United Kingdom.

Prepared in collaboration with George Saridakis - Professor of Entrepreneurship and Small Business at Kent Business School - Godaddy's VentureForward report identifies around 2.0 million companies operating with ten or fewer people on their books.
More Diverse
And in the wake of the pandemic, it finds that ownership of these companies is becoming younger and more diverse.

For instance, the proportion of micro-businesses started and run by under 35s has doubled since 2020, rising from 16.4 to 34 percent of the total. Across the same period, female ownership has risen from 32 to 39 percent. Ethnic minority-owned businesses now account for 15.1 per cent of the total compared with 13.2 per cent in 2020.

All this has encouraged GoDaddy to contend that a "new breed of entrepreneurship" is emerging in the U.K. in wake of the Covid crisis.

To some extent, that's probably true but it does raise questions around the definition of entrepreneurship. Many micro-businesses - and I'm one of them - are essentially self-employed freelancers who don't necessarily consider their careers in entrepreneurial terms. At the other end of the spectrum, at least some of today's micro-businesses employ staff and may grow to be the SMEs or mid-sized companies of tomorrow. In that respect, this is a segment of the business community that might be described as a very mixed bag in entrepreneurial terms.

So can you gather them together in a report and draw conclusions about entrepreneurship? Ben Law - Head of GoDaddy in the U.K. - says there is a common factor. "Owners of micro-businesses tend to have a passion," he says. "They have a passion for what they do and that's what drives them."
Viable Ventures
Perhaps more important, Britain's micro-business owners are creating viable ventures, albeit often on a small scale. "What's really encouraging is that over half the businesses started in 2020 are now averaging £25,000 in turnover. Around three-quarters of microbusinesses employ more than one employee," says Law.
Community Benefits
Now, in an entrepreneurial world that tends reserve its plaudits for companies that report stellar turnover, ramp up employment into the hundreds and secure millions from VC financers, those figures probably don't sound that impressive. But as Law points out, Britain's micro-businesses, collectively and individually, benefit their communities. They employ local people, shop in local shops and tend to look close to home for suppliers.

And as Law sees it, micro-businesses should be contributing to the regional leveling up agenda that is (supposedly) central to U.K. policymaking. Put simply, the growth of the very small business sector - comprised of companies that can often be started with very little capital while also having the capacity to begin generating sales in weeks or months, rather than years - can contribute to economic prosperity in disadvantaged regions.
The Great Divide
But here's the problem. The U.K. economy is characterised by a North/South divide, with the areas around London and the South East remaining stubbornly more prosperous than many of the regions across the country as a whole. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is reflected in the figures for micro-businesses.

If you want to find a micro-business owner, the highest densities are in London, the South East and the South West.

In that respect, the potential for micro-businesses to assist in leveling up in disadvantaged U.K. regions is not yet being matched by activity on the ground. And according to Law, the government is not doing enough to encourage the creation of very small companies. "We are making decisions at policy level to encourage small and medium-sized businesses, but not enough is being done to support the smallest companies," he says.

That support is not necessarily financial - although access to capital clearly helps. Law says businesses need assistance in areas such as marketing themselves, getting online and technical expertise. "We need to work out how we get educational material to micro-businesses," he says.

It has to be said that boom in micro businesses is probably, in part, related to job losses during the pandemic and the report notes that an increasing number of owners have cited unemployment as a trigger for action. Nevertheless, it's probably also true to say that many people saw the pandemic as an opportunity to reassess their lives and try something new. And as the numbers of self employed and small scale owners grow, their future economic contribution might be important.

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A Small World: Will Micro-Businesses Help Level Britain's Uneven Economy?

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According to government figures, out of the 6.0 million businesses currently operating in the U.K., 5.936 million fall into the category of small companies, employing between zero and 49 people. Break the figures down further and you find the vast majority of small companies - 4.567 million, to be precise - are run solely by their founders.

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Gas prices are soaring globally, largely because of the resurgence of demand for fossil fuels after the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, depleted storage and the difficulty of ramping up supply after the disruptions of the past two years. But prices have also been significantly affected by Russia's recent decision to tighten gas supplies to Europe, which experts believe was driven by Vladimir Putin's desire to move against Ukraine.

Europe is dependent on Russia for about 40% of its natural gas supplies, and despite the expansion of renewable energy over the past two decades, that dependency is increasing as countries shift to gas, away from dirtier coal. Germany is particularly vulnerable, as it has shut down nearly all of its nuclear power stations and aims to eliminate coal by 2030.

A major new gas pipeline, Gazprom's $11bn Nord Stream 2 from Russia across the Baltic to Germany, which would heat 26m German homes, has been the focus of Germany's diplomatic relations with Russia since it was announced in 2015. Construction on the 1,200km pipeline was completed last year, but no gas has yet flowed and its future is now in doubt as Germany's chancellor Olaf Scholz dramatically halted approval for the project on Tuesday.

Russia's gas pipelines to Europe

Russia's gas pipelines to Europe

Concerns that Russia is using its gas supplies as a weapon to achieve its political aims are well founded. Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, noted that Russia's decision to drop gas supplies to Europe by a quarter came as it was heightening tension towards Ukraine. "I hope this was only a coincidence," he told the Guardian.

No. Energy resources are not the focus of this threatened conflict. Vladimir Putin has a long history of territorial ambitions in former Soviet nations, which he made explicit this week, and of attempts to exert political control over Ukraine. Putin is said by supporters to be concerned over the possibility of Nato expansion, although many analysts say this is a pretext.

So the Ukraine crisis is not a war over resources, but it has many implications for resource use. Russia is effectively weaponising its dominance over European gas supply for political ends. Reducing reliance on Russian gas is an urgent necessity for the EU to reach net zero emissions, and would also diminish Putin's political leverage over the EU.

It is also worth noting that in the longer term, as Europe weans itself off gas and pursues net zero emissions, the value of this political weapon will wane rapidly. Russia's industries have never recovered from the fall of communism, and its economy is now based overwhelmingly on the export of fossil fuels, with much of the rest made up of energy-dependent mineral resources, such as iron, steel, aluminium and other metals, and some agriculture.

Four in 10 roubles accruing to Russia's federal budget pre-pandemic came from oil and gas, which made up 60% of Russian exports in 2019. Kremlin strategists are therefore keenly aware that in the longer term the global move to net zero threatens the whole basis of Russia's economy and global influence.

Historically, much of Europe was heavily dependent on coal for power and heating. Renewable energy generation has more than doubled since 2004, and reached 22% of final energy production in 2020.

However, at the same time the share generated from nuclear power has fallen, from about a third of the EU's electricity in 1995 to about a quarter today. After the accident at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011, Germany's then chancellor Angela Merkel announced an "Energiewende" - an energy shift - that would see all of the country's reactors shut down.

This has increased Germany's need for gas, and similar moves away from coal and towards lower emissions in other countries - including the UK, which despite North Sea gas production is a net importer of gas - have heightened the dependency.

The geopolitical implications of this dependency, as well as the climate impacts, are now unignorable. Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate adviser, now with the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington DC, says: "It has taken the current crisis for Germany and the EU to recognise that its co-dependence on Russian gas is a geopolitical and climate nightmare from which they must finally awake. Reducing Russian gas reliance is a huge climate and moral imperative that Europe must prioritise."

That would be a momentous move from Russia. Any further reductions of Russian gas supply to Europe would have severe consequences, for Europe but also for Russia itself. Birol said earlier this month, before sanctions were imposed: "If Russia stops the gas supply to Europe, it could have a seismic impact on European energy. [Russia] has to consider the consequences if existing oil and gas supplies to Europe are halted."

He added: "Failure to maintain [supplies] would shatter Russia's reputation as a reliable partner and that would be a tectonic shift. Russia would be seen as a threat and that would have far-reaching consequences for European economies, but even more consequences for Russia. Europe would choose a strategy to diverge from Russia."

Russia was almost invisible at the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow last November, after a surprising public commitment to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2060. But the Kremlin has left the details of the goal vague and shown little sign of updating Russia's emissions commitments for 2030, which are key to limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C.

This is a crucial year for climate diplomacy, as the pledges from all countries in Glasgow are still inadequate for the 1.5C goal, and the UK Cop26 presidency is hoping for major progress before the next UN climate meeting in Egypt this November. Russia's stance on Ukraine will certainly have an impact on those discussions, not least as any conflict will focus attention on the move from fossil fuels.

It is also notable that Russia's oil and gas operations are among the worst in the world for the climate. Data released this week by the IEA shows that emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas and the major component of natural gas, are 70% higher than countries had claimed.

Russia makes little or no attempt to capture methane from its oil and gas drilling, and to stop its pipelines leaking, so there are huge opportunities. If Putin were serious about tackling the climate crisis, Russia could provide an invaluable service to the rest of the world by plugging these leaks - reducing methane globally by a third by 2030 could reduce temperatures by 0.2C - and at current gas prices this could be done at no net cost and could even be profitable.

No. Attempts to frack in the UK started more than a decade ago, but went nowhere, in part because of protests but also because the economics of industrial fracking in a densely populated country make it impractical. Any move to restart fracking now would take many years to produce any gas, long after the current gas price crisis has been forgotten.

New licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea are also currently under consideration by the government, and on Thursday the Committee on Climate Change will publish its advice to ministers on whether these licences can be compatible with the UK's climate goals. However, any newly licensed fields would also take years to come into production, so would have no impact on the current crisis.

Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, warns of falling for false solutions: "We know that some opponents of climate policy will try to hide the truth and instead fool the public into falsely believing that the soaring prices are due to green energy. If they are successful, they might slow down the transition to clean domestic energy."

Far more good could be done in the shorter term by insulating homes and ramping up renewable energy generation.

Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University in the US and an adviser to the UN secretary-general on the climate, says: "The west needs to meet Putin's flagrant breach of international law with tough sanctions to force a change in calculus in Moscow. Putin believes he has to the largest extent sanction-proofed Russia, but Russia earns hundreds of millions of dollars a day from sales of oil and refined products, and more from sales of gas and minerals.

"Weaning ourselves off these as quickly as possible is one route available to the west. In fact, Putin's understanding of what decarbonisation would mean for Russian energy exports in the medium and long term may be a factor in the timing of Putin's attack on Ukraine now."

Ending the use of fossil fuels is imperative, to reach net zero emissions and stave off the worst impacts of climate breakdown. But the shift will also create geopolitical tensions as the world's massive fossil fuel exporters - Russia, Saudi Arabia and some other Middle Eastern countries, Latin American oil producers, Australia - begin to lose out economically. The crisis in Ukraine shows that some fossil fuel producers at least may not want to give up without a struggle the political leverage they gain from their resources.

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Is Putin's Ukraine invasion about fossil fuels?

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Gas prices are soaring globally, largely because of the resurgence of demand for fossil fuels after the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, depleted storage and the difficulty of ramping up supply after the disruptions of the past two years.

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Access impactful educational videos and supporting classroom resources anywhere, at any time to enhance teaching and learning at all levels.

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The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System is one of the largest pipeline systems in the world. It starts at Prudhoe Bay on the Alaskan North Slope and then winds it way south transecting the state for a distance of 1,287 km, until it arrives at the Marine Terminal at Valdez. The pipeline was built between 1974 and 1977 after the 1973 oil crisis caused a sharp rise in oil prices in the United States that made exploration of the Prudhoe Bay oil field economically feasible. To transport oil from Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean to the ice-free port of Valdez on the Gulf of Alaska, the pipeline had to cross the Denali Fault, a major cause of earthquakes in North America and a source of great worry for the engineers who built it. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline is a vital lifeline that transports about 17% of the domestic oil supply for the United States. Breakage to this pipeline would cause damages worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Trace of the Denali Fault after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake of 3 November 2002, Alaska, USA. The fault trace passes beneath the pipeline between the 2nd and 3rd slider supports at the far end of the zone. Photo credit
To prevent such a disaster, some of the country's top seismologists and geologists were brought together to study the Denali Fault. Those studies located the fault within a 1,900-foot corridor crossing the pipeline route and estimated that the pipeline could be subjected to a magnitude 8.5 earthquake in which the ground might slip 20 feet horizontally and 5 feet vertically. To accommodate the projected fault movement, a section of the pipeline where it crosses the Denali Fault was laid on sliders rather than on rigid pillar supports. The pipeline rests on Teflon shoes that are free to slide on long horizontal steel beams, such that the pipeline moves when the ground moves.

When the team of structural and geo-technical engineers came up with this design in the early 1970s, they didn't expect it to be tested in their lifetimes. They were wrong.

On November 3, 2002, the Denali Fault ruptured over a distance of 336 km, producing the largest earthquake from a continental strike-slip fault in North America since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Measuring 7.9 in magnitude, the earthquake caused ground to shift beneath the pipeline 14 feet horizontally and 2.5 feet vertically. The violent shaking damaged a few of the pipeline's supports near the fault, but the pipeline itself did not break. It was the first significant quake to test the pipeline's mettle.
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The survival of the pipeline in the Denali Fault earthquake was the result of careful engineering to meet stringent earthquake design specifications based on meticulous geological studies. The studies when they were done in the 1970's cost only about $3 million. Had the pipeline ruptured in the quake, the lost revenue and the cost of repair and environmental cleanup could have easily exceeded $100 million, perhaps many times more.

The sliders on which the Trans-Alaska Pipeline rests. Photo credit

The Tok Cut-Off highway was offset 23 feet (7 m) by the earthquake. Photo credit

Richardson Highway offset 8.5 feet in right-lateral sense. This location is near where supports to the Trans Alaska Pipeline sustained damage. Photo credit
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Richardson Highway on right, looking north. The Alaska Pipeline is on the left. Road offset reveals Denali fault location. The part of the pipeline designed to withstand movement along the Denali fault is in the middle part of the photograph. The fault runs beneath the pipeline near the left edge of the photograph. Photo credit

Sources: Wikipedia / ASCE Library / USGS.gov / Seattle Pi

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How The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Survived The 2002 Denali Earthquake

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The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System is one of the largest pipeline systems in the world. It starts at Prudhoe Bay on the Alaskan North Slope and then winds it way south transecting the state for a distance of 1,287 km, until it arrives at the Marine Terminal at Valdez.