The environment of Brazil is characterised by high biodiversity with a population density that decreases away from the coast.

Brazil’s large area comprises different ecosystems, which together sustain some of the world’s greatest biodiversity. Because of the country’s intense economic and demographic growth, Brazil’s ability to protect its environmental habitats has increasingly come under threat.

Extensive logging in the nation’s forests, particularly the Amazon, both official and unofficial, destroys areas the size of a small country each year, and potentially a diverse variety of plants and animals. Brazil’s environment is under threat because of the rapid economic and demographic rise.

Extensive legal and illegal logging destroys forests the size of a small country per year, and with it a diverse series of species through habitat destruction and habitat fragmentation.

Between 2002 and 2006, an area of the Amazon Rainforest equivalent in size to the State of South Carolina was completely deforested for the purposes of raising cattle and woodlogging. By 2020, at least 50% of the species resident in Brazil may become extinct.

There is a general consensus that Brazil has the highest number of both terrestrial vertebrates and invertebrates of any single country in the world. Also, Brazil has the highest primate diversity, the highest number of mammals, the second highest number of amphibians and butterflies, the third highest number of birds, and fifth highest number of reptiles.

There is a high number of endangered species, many of them living in threatened habitats such as the Atlantic Forest.

Environmental Policy and Law

Brazil has one of the most complete environmental legislations in the world. However, the laws in this legislation haven’t been adequately enforced in the past, compromising their effectiveness towards protecting the natural environment in this nation with a rich biodiversity of fauna and flora.

The Brazilian Environmental Policy (1981) was the first real breakthrough concerning environmental protection and sustainability. Before this, there were polluting emissions guidelines that allowed industries to pollute to a certain extent without being liable to any environmental damage.

However, after this policy was passed, strict liability was applied which determined that industries were accountable for all the pollution they were causing. Therefore, from then onwards, polluters would be responsible for all the damage they caused.

Just after this policy was implemented, laws were introduced that authorised public prosecutors to act in defence of the environment, and later on, another law was introduced which allowed NGOs to do the same.

The Brazilian Ministry of the Environment is the agency in charge of coordinating, supervising and controlling the Brazilian Environmental Policy. It is also responsible for promoting the use of sustainable natural resources and applying sustainable development within the formulation and implementation of national policies.

Environmental licensing is a legal obligation before any potentially damaging and polluting activities take place in any part of Brazil’s territory. A framework has been created by the federal government called the National Environment System (SISNAMA), which includes local state government environment agencies, the National Environment Council (CONAMA) and the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), in order to facilitate the licensing process.

IBAMA is the Brazilian government’s main tool for providing information with regards to environmental welfare and protection, and acts as the “environmental police”. Despite its administrative and financial autonomy, it is responsible for implementing new policies and standards for environmental quality, evaluating environmental impacts, examining environmental degradation and for distributing environmental licenses.

IBAMA has the power to impose administrative fines, but when more serious environmental crimes are committed, it is responsible for informing federal authorities for further prosecution.

The challenge Brazil is currently facing is to find a solution as to how powerful actors can be encouraged to abide by environmental regulation and enforce these policies. In order to address this, former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva signed a decree on July 22, 2008 that would improve the process of imposing fines and sanctions on people and institutions committing environmental crimes.

Monitoring the occurrence of environmental crimes and policing areas in a country with vast expanses of forests, including the Amazon Rainforest and the Atlantic Forest has proved to be a difficult task. IBAMA and the Brazilian Armed Forces are the main organisations used by the federal government to actively protect Brazil’s natural ecosystems.

The main tactics used to deter environmental degradation and to improve sustainability is to use direct force, such as fines and jail terms. This reflects the command-and-control system in which regulation and environmental protection is carried out in Brazil.

Deforestation

Brazil once had the highest deforestation rate in the world and as of 2005 still has the largest area of forest removed annually. Since 1970, over 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed.

In 2001, the Amazon was approximately 5.4 million square kilometers, which is only 87% of the Amazon’s original state.

Rainforests have decreased in size primarily due to deforestation. Despite reductions in the rate of deforestation in the last ten years, the Amazon Rainforest will be reduced by 40% by 2030 at the current rate.

Between May 2000 and August 2006, Brazil lost nearly 150,000 square kilometers of forest, an area larger than that of Greece. According to the Living Planet Report 2010, deforestation is continuing at an alarming rate, but at the CBD 9th Conference 67 ministers signed up to help achieve zero net deforestation by 2020.

Cattle Ranching and Infrastructure

The annual rate of deforestation in the Amazon region has continued to increase from 1990 to 2003 because of factors at local, national, and international levels. 70% of formerly forested land in the Amazon, and 91% of land deforested since 1970, is used for livestock pasture. The Brazilian government initially attributed 38% of all forest loss between 1966 and 1975 to large-scale cattle ranching.

According to the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), “between 1990 and 2001 the percentage of Europe’s processed meat imports that came from Brazil rose from 40 to 74 percent” and by 2003 “for the first time ever, the growth in Brazilian cattle production, 80 percent of which was in the Amazon was largely export driven.

The Brazilian government granted land to approximately 150,000 families in the Amazon between 1995 and 1998. Poor farmers were also encouraged by the government through programmes such as the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform in Brazil (INCRA) to exploit the unclaimed forest land and after a five year period were given the rights to ownership and rights to sell it, giving them a clear purpose to use and reform the land for financial gain.

The problem is worsened by the short-term productivity of the soils following forest removal for arable farmers and after only a year or two the fields became infertile and the farmers are forced to exploit new areas of forest to maintain income. In 1995 nearly half, 48% of deforestation in Brazil was attributed to the poorer farmers removing lots under 125 acres (0.51 km2) in size.

Hydroelectric Dams and Mining Activities

Hydroelectric dam projects in the Amazon have also been responsible for flooding significant areas of the forest.[19] In particular the Balbina dam flooded approximately 2,400 km² (920 square miles) of rainforest on completion and its reservoir itself has been responsible for contributing to global warming by emitting 23,750,000 tons of carbon dioxide and 140,000 tons of methane in only its first three years of operation.

Mining has also increased deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon particularly since the 1980s with miners often clearing forest to open the mines, often also using them for building material, collecting wood for fuel and subsistence agriculture.

Soybean Production

In addition, Brazil is currently the second-largest global producer of soybeans after the United States, mostly for livestock feed, and as prices for soybeans rise, the soy farmers are pushing northwards into forested areas of the Amazon. As stated in Brazilian constitution, clearing land for crops or fields is considered an ‘effective use’ of land and is the beginning towards land ownership.

Cleared property is also valued 5–10 times more than forested land and for that reason valuable to the owner whose ultimate objective is resale. The soy industry is an important exporter for Brazil; therefore, the needs of soy farmers have been used to validate many of the controversial transportation projects that are currently developing in the Amazon.

Logging

Logging in Brazil’s Amazon is economically motivated. The economic opportunity for developing regions is driven by timber export and demand for charcoal. Charcoal producing ovens use large amounts of timber. In one month, the Brazilian government destroyed 800 illegal ovens in Tailandia. These 800 ovens were estimated to consume about 23,000 trees per month.

Logging for timber export is selective, since only a few species, such as mahogany, have commercial value and are harvested. The forest is not completely logged, but still selective logging creates a lot of damage to the forest. For every tree harvested, 5-10 other trees are logged, to transport the logs through the forest. Also, a falling tree takes down a lot of other small trees in the forest.

A logged forest contains significantly less species where no selective logging has taken place. A forest disturbed by selective logging is also significantly more vulnerable to fire.

In order to combat this destruction, the Brazilian government has not issued any new permits for logging. Unauthorized harvesting has continued nonetheless. Efforts to prevent cutting down forests are made through payments to land owners.

Instead of banning logging all together, the government hopes payments that are comparable to the money the land would earn from timber or farming will dissuade owners from further destruction.