In a world that is quickly losing its tropical forests, Brazil was — until recently — the solitary bright spot. Deforestation rates actually declined there by more than three quarters from 2004 to 2011, winning the praises of the world. But in the past half a year, the trend has dramatically reversed, sparking new worries about the future of the world’s largest rainforest.
The pace of forest destruction soared in Brazil from August 2014 through February 2015, according to two different surveys of satellite images. One analysis by the Brazilian space agency INPE reports a 63 percent rise; the other, monthly tallies by the Amazon watchdog group IMAZON, shows deforestation tripling (up 215 percent) in Brazil over the same period a year earlier.
Phillip Fearnside, a forest expert with the Brazilian government’s Amazon research agency, INPA, says that he’s disappointed, but not surprised. He blames the surge in tree-cutting partly ...
