As cacao production in West Africa continues to decline during the current period of record-high demand for chocolate South American nations such as Peru have been rushing to expand the land under cacao cultivation to fill the gap. That, in turn, is accelerating the pace of deforestation and the degradation of other crucial ecosystems and the life-supporting services and products…
Brazil’s Amazon River and rainforest is under siege as large-scale hydroelectric projects and small-scale land speculation portend a sharp rise in deforestation rates and massive environmental degradation.
Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil has risen six-fold, according to recent satellite images from the National Institute for Space Research. Comparing data from March-April 2010 to the same period this year shows deforestation has increased from 103 square kilometers in 2010 to 593 square kilometers just one year later. Most of that deforestation is in the state of…
The Weekly Mulch from the Media Consortium By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger (reposted with permission) An Ecuadorian judge ordered Chevron this week to pay $8.6 billion in damages for polluting the Amazon rainforest from 1964 until 1990. The payout is the second largest ever in an environmental case, with only the damages BP agreed to pay in the wake…
Amazon drought may shift region from carbon sink to carbon emitter Typically, the Amazon rainforest acts as a carbon sink, absorbing on average 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2 annually. Researchers in the UK and Brazil are now concerned that the role of, the Amazon may turn to an emitter of carbon emitter due to changing conditions in the region….
WhateverGate The UK’s Sunday Times recently retracted claims made in an article published last January by Jonathan Leake, a writer who is no stranger of climate-change-denying controversy. Leake’s claims, says the times retraction, that non-peer-reviewed data based on unscientific sources influenced the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report regarding climactic impacts on the Amazon Rainforest – what Leake…
