Brazil’s Amazon rainforest at risk as key protection under threat

The Amazon rainforest may face a renewed wave of deforestation as efforts mount to lift the long-standing ban protecting it.

The ban, which banned the sale of soy grown on land cleared after 2008, is widely believed to be about preventing deforestation and has been cited as a global environmental success story.

But powerful farming interests in Brazil, with the support of a group of Brazilian politicians, are pressing for the restrictions to be lifted as the COP30 UN climate conference enters its second week.

Critics of the ban say it is an unfair “cartel” that allows a small group of powerful companies to dominate Amazon’s soy business.

Environmental groups have warned that lifting the ban would be “catastrophic” and pave the way for a new wave of land grabs to plant more soy in the world’s largest rainforest.

Scientists say ongoing deforestation combined with the effects of climate change are already pushing the Amazon towards a potential “tipping point”, a threshold where the rainforest can no longer sustain itself.

Brazil is the world’s largest producer of soybeans, a staple crop grown for its protein and an important animal feed.

The majority of meat consumed in the UK (including chicken, beef, pork and farmed fish) is raised using feed containing soybeans, with around 10% of this coming from the Brazilian Amazon.

Many major British food companies are members of a coalition, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, M&S, Aldi, Lidl, McDonald’s, Greggs and KFC. UK Soy Manifesto This represents around 60% of soya imported into the UK.

The group supports the ban, officially known as the Amazon Soy Moratorium, because they argue it helps protect UK soya supply chains from deforestation.

In a statement made earlier this year The signatories said: “We call on all actors in the soy supply chain, including governments, financial institutions and agribusinesses, to strengthen their commitments in the soy supply chain. [ban] and keep it going.”

Public opinion in the UK also appears firmly behind protecting the Amazon. World Wildlife Fund research Research conducted earlier this year found that 70% of respondents support government action to eliminate illegal deforestation in UK supply chains.

But Brazilian opponents of the deal last week He requested the Supreme Court, the country’s highest court, to reopen the investigation. Whether the moratorium amounts to anti-competitive conduct.

“Our state has a lot of room to grow and the soy moratorium works against this development,” Vanderlei Ataídes told the BBC. He is president of the Soybean Farmers Association in the state of Pará, one of Brazil’s main soybean producing areas.

“I don’t understand how [the ban] It helps the environment,” he added. “I can’t plant soybeans, but I can use the same land to plant corn, rice, cotton or other crops. Why can’t I plant soybeans?”

This challenge even divided the Brazilian government. While the Ministry of Justice said there may be evidence of anti-competitive behavior, both the Ministry of Environment and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office publicly defended the moratorium.

The voluntary agreement was first signed almost two decades ago by farmers, environmental organizations and major global food companies, including commodity giants such as Cargill and Bunge.

It follows a campaign by environmental pressure group Greenpeace exposing how soy grown on deforested land is used in animal feed, including chicken sold by McDonald’s.

The fast food chain became a champion of the moratorium, with signatories pledging not to buy soy grown on land deforested after 2008.

Before the moratorium, clearing of forests for soy production and the expansion of cattle ranches were the main causes of deforestation in the Amazon.

Forest clearing dropped sharply after the agreement took effect, reaching a historic low in 2012 during President Lula’s second term in office.

Deforestation rose under subsequent administrations (especially under Jair Bolsonaro, who encouraged the opening of forests to economic development), but has fallen again during Lula’s current presidency.

Bel Lyon, chief advisor for Latin America at the World Wildlife Fund, an early signatory of the agreement, warned that suspending the moratorium “would be a disaster for the Amazon, its people and the world, because it could open up an area the size of Portugal to deforestation.”

Small farmers whose land is close to soy fields say they disrupt local weather conditions and make it difficult to grow their crops.

Raimundo Barbosa, who grows cassava and fruit near the town of Boa Esperança outside Santarém in the southeastern Amazon, says that when the forest is cleared, “the environment is destroyed.”

“Where there is a forest, this is normal, but when the forest is gone, it becomes even hotter, there is less rain and there is less water in the rivers,” he told me as we sat in the shade next to the machines he uses to turn cassava into flour.

The push to lift the moratorium comes as Brazil prepares to open a major new railway stretching from its agricultural heartland to the rainforests in the south.

The railway is expected to significantly reduce the cost of shipping soy and other agricultural products and add another incentive to clear more land.

Deforestation is already profoundly shaping rainforests, scientists say. Among them is Bruce Fosberg, an Amazon expert who has spent half a century studying the forest.

It climbs 15 floors of a narrow tower that rises 45 meters above a pristine rainforest reserve in the heart of the Amazon. From the small platform at the top, it overlooks a lush green sea stretching to the horizon.

The tower is filled with high-tech devices, which are sensors that monitor almost everything that happens between the forest and the atmosphere: water vapor, carbon dioxide, sunlight, and essential nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus.

The tower was built 27 years ago and is part of the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment (LBA) project, which aims to understand how the Amazon is changing and how close it is to a critical threshold.

Data from LBA, along with other scientific studies, show that some parts of the rainforest are approaching a “tipping point” after which the ecosystem can no longer sustain its own functions.

“The living forest is closing down,” he says, “and not producing water vapor and therefore precipitation.”

He explains that as trees are destroyed by deforestation, fire and heat stress, the forest releases less moisture into the atmosphere, precipitation decreases and droughts intensify. This creates a feedback loop that causes more trees to die.

The fear is that if this continues, large areas of rainforest will disappear and become a savannah or dry grassland ecosystem.

Such a collapse would release massive amounts of carbon, disrupt weather patterns across continents, and threaten countless species of plants, insects, and animals as well as the millions of people whose lives depend on the Amazon for survival.