Brazil Case Study Flashcards
Brazil’s location
Brazil is in South America, bordering many other nations such as Peru, Venezuela, and Bolivia. It is the largest country in the continent, bordering the Atlantic Ocean.
Reasons for land cover change in Brazil
Brazil holds about 1/3 of the world’s remaining rainforests. Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon declined sharply in the mid-2000s due to government interventions, macroeconomic factors, and efforts by civil society.
SHEEPT Factors: Environmental
- 1.4 billion trees are lost each year
- Trees are natural carbon sinks, and when they are cut down, large amounts of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere
- this exacerbates the effects of climate change
SHEEPT Factors: Economical
- Many people in Brazil rely on the forest’s resources for their jobs and fishing.
- Deforestation disrupts these activities, leading to economic hardship and social conflict.
- Brazil could face losses of $317 billion per year, according to the World Bank
SHEEPT Factors: Social
Displacement of Indigenous peoples. These communities have a deep connection with the land and depend on it for their survival. When forests are cut down, their homes, livelihoods, and very existence are threatened.
Issues and challenges resulting from deforestation
- destructions of essential plants for medicines before their uses are discovered
- more frequent flooding as there’s no soil absorption
- increased amounts of C02
Responses and strategies: National
Brazil’s original Forest Code of 1965 established a proportion of rural land that should be maintained permanently as forest and also prohibited the clearing of vegetation in sensitive areas like steep slopes and along the margins of rivers and streams.
Responses and strategies: Local
Indigenous communities working to protect the forest by patrolling their territories to prevent illegal logging, mining and land encroachment
Responses and strategies: Global
- Brazil actively participates in REDD+ initiatives
- they are crucial for addressing deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest
- The program aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by incentivizing countries to protect their forests and promote sustainable land use.
Effectiveness of responses and strategies: Brazil forest code
Successes:
In 2012, deforestation in the Amazon reached its lowest level since monitoring began.
Failures:
In 2012, the policy was updated by Bolsanaro’s government to ignore all illegal deforestation prior to 2008 and reduced protected areas – deforestation rates begun increasing again.
Effectiveness of responses and strategies: REDD+
REDD+ interventions along Brazil’s Trans-Amazon Highway have reduced deforestation rates by 50% relative to matched control sites. However, other studies show it has had little impact
The distribution of deforestation on a global scale
- An annual loss of 10 million hectares of forest over recent years
- 95% of global deforestation occurs in the tropics. Brazil and Indonesia alone account for almost half.
The natural characteristics of forests
- dominated by trees and tree canopies
- species of animals
- density and height
- high biodiversity
The spatial distribution of forests worldwide
- Forests are widely distributed ocurring in every continent except for Antartica
- a total of 4 billion hectares worldwide
- covers 31% of the world’s total land area
Natural processes causing deforestation
Wildfire: Accounts for around 3% of forest loss each year. Most common in temperate regions.
Extreme weather: such as drought, cyclones, flooding, storms accounts for 0.5%
Human processes causing deforestation
- agriculture is responsible for approx. 73% of global deforestation in efforts to promote food security
- logging contributes to 19% as enforcement of forest protection laws are hard to enforce in remote areas increasing illegal logging
Distribution of forest cover during HCO
- forests covered 47% of earth’s surface and has since stablised
