Against the Clock
“[A] horizon of 2030 could be catastrophic for the largest continuous forest on the planet and for more than 500 distinct indigenous nationalities and groups that inhabit it, and for humanity,” the study authors write in its Executive Summary.
Yet while the situation in Brazil is perhaps the most urgent, 66% of the forest is menaced by either legal or illegal stressors in the form of agriculture, mining, fossil-fuel extraction, or dam and road building.
Hope for the Forest
“We are the people, the nations, the nationalities that are proposing that humanity continue to exist,” José Gregorio Díaz Mirabal, a member of the Wakuenai Kurripaco people of Venezuela and COICA’s elected leader, says in the press conference.
The report found that 86% of deforestation occurred outside of Indigenous Territories or Protected Areas and that 33% of these unprotected areas were already transitioning to savanna, six times more than in protected areas and more than eight times more than in recognized Indigenous Territories.
Jessika Garcia
Further, companies, governments, and consumers in wealthy countries should pay attention to the origin of the products they make, import, or enjoy.
