DEFORESTATION OF BRAZIL'S BIOMES BETWEEN 2002 AND 2009 MAINLY DUE TO DEMAND OF PRODUCTS

Brazil's internal consumption and exports of soybeans, beef and other primary products from the Amazon are responsible for more than half of the deforestation rates and, consequently, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) registered by that biome.

The evaluation is a study conducted by researchers at the Faculty of Economics, Administration and Accounting (FEA) of the University of São Paulo (USP), as part of a thematic project of FAPESP ("Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa") Program in research on global climate change ("PFPMCG").

"More than half of GHG emissions from Amazon happen on the consumer demand outside the region, for internal supply of the country or for export," said Joaquim José Martins Guilhoto, professor of FEA and one of the researchers participating in the project.

In order to investigate the main vectors of deforestation in the country, since most agricultural expansion event occurs outside of the Amazon, the researchers did a study using integrated spatial analysis of the Brazilian territory, including the six biomes of the country.

For this, they used data on deforestation obtained from "Prodes" project, the Ministry of Environment (MMA) and the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA), and geo-referenced Landsat satellites  images, obtained from the American space agency Nasa.

The study revealed that, during the period from 2002 to 2009, 

the deforested areas in all six biomes were [hectare divided by 100 = square kilometers]:

Amazon:  12.062 million hectwere deforested in the Amazon;

Cerrado:  10.015 million hectares;

Caatinga:  1.846 million hectares;

Pantanal:  447 thousand hectare;

Atlantic forest:  375 thousand hectares;

Pampa (southern Brazil):  257 thousand hectares.

The calculations showed that direct exports from the Amazon account for 16.98% of GHG emissions  in Amazonian (northern) region. The exportation for the rest of the country are responsible for emissions of 6.29% of the Amazon emission, since there are products from the region that are processed and exported by other Brazilian States.

"The sum of these numbers indicates that in Brazil in seven years, it was devastated the equivalent of the state of São Paulo plus the  "Triângulo Mineiro" (central region in the state of Minas Gerais) or a Great Britain", estimated Rafael Feltran-Barbieri, a researcher at FEA and one of the authors of the study.