THE Amazonian rainforest of Brazil is being destroyed at a record rate, driven by a surge in demand for agricultural products.

Government figures released yesterday show that more than 26,000 sq km (10,000 sq miles) of virgin forest were lost in the year to last August, an increase of 6 per cent over the previous 12 months. It was the second worst year for the rainforest since government monitoring began in 1988.

By the Brazilian Government’s own estimates, Amazon rainforest the size of France and Portugal combined has now been destroyed. This represents 18 per cent of the original forest, which originally covered an area equivalent to the United States, excluding Alaska.

Environmentalists said that action should be taken to prevent further destruction, but the Government said that environmental concerns had to be balanced against the country’s economic demands, including repayments on the national debt, the highest in the developing world.

The rate of destruction fell in six of the eight Amazon states monitored by the Government, but it increased sharply in Mato Grosso, which is the centre of the booming Brazilian soy industry.

Mato Grosso accounted for half the year’s loss as forest gave way to soya fields. In recent years the development of new varieties of soy has allowed farmers to move into more humid regions where the crop previously would not grow, increasing pressure on the rainforest.

Blairo Maggi, the Governor of Mato Grosso, is the world’s biggest soya producer. Greenpeace have denounced him as the king of deforestation. Brazilian soya exports, driven by demand from China, have expanded enormously and are now the country’s biggest agricultural export, worth an estimated $10 billion (£5.4 billion) a year.

Demand for Brazilian beef is also growing, placing the forest under threat from ranchers keen to meet overseas demand. Brazil recently passed the United States as the world’s biggest beef exporter, with exports of $2.5 billion. Ranchers are even more active than soya farmers in chopping deeper into the forest to create grazing for herds of cattle.

The Government says that it is committed to protecting the forest. “We do not want to justify the increase, which is still too high. We want it to fall,” Marina Silva, the Environment Minister, said.

The country needs the vital foreign currency the agricultural exports bring as it struggles to service the developing world’s biggest debt burden. Last year’s economic expansion of 5.2 per cent was heavily dependent on the country’s agribusiness sector.

The Government says that it is approaching the competing needs of preserving the rainforest and encouraging economic growth in a structured manner. Environmental groups say that the Government’s strategy for protecting the forest is not working. “We still need to convince businesses and state governments to give an effective social and economic use to the rainforest,” Denise Hamú, head of the World Wildlife Fund in Brazil, said.

Indigenous tribes living in the rainforest are among those affected as land grabbers invade their traditional areas. Much of the Amazon region is lawless. Competing land claims are settled with violence and the federal Government struggles to impose its authority against landlords often acting with the help of the local authorities.

Environmental groups are also concerned about the impact of a gas pipeline that Brazil plans to build to export Bolivian gas across part of the Amazon basin to industry in the east of the country.

AMAZON LOG

• Nearly a fifth of the original Amazon rainforest has been cut down
  
  
• 26,000 sq km of rainforest were destroyed in 2004, the largest amount in a single year since 1995
  
• Amazon loggers produce about 35 million cubic metres of wood a year
  
  
• The land exposed by logging is usually used for soy plantations or cattle farms
  
  
• 4 per cent of Brazil’s gross domestic product comes from logging and 80 per cent of logging in the Amazon is illegal, according to the Brazilian Government
  
  
• Ibama, the federal environmental agency, says it can only detect 10 per cent of all illegal logging
  
  
• In some areas Ibama has only one inspector per 4 million hectares, an area the size of Switzerland

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