Burning in amazons brazil rain forest. The council on Foreign Relations hosted this hourlong event. Hello, everybody. We good to go . Hi, my name is mark. Until recently, i was the ceo of the nature conservancy. Im delighted to berece nthere, the moderated of todays s discussion. We have a greattdi scupanel. To my left is monica. She is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for international economics. To monicas left is daniel, director of programs at the climate and land use alliance. And then on the screen is my good friend peter, the cofounder and ceo of neoterro, a new ngo focused on a lot of the issues well be discussing today. Petetedaniel, direct ser wer is founder and ceo of Conservation International, where he is the chairman. Our topic today is the Global Impact of the amazon rain forest. Weve been reading about it in the news. Of course, this raises so many issues. First of all, whats really happening . Its hard to tell on the basisl of the news how much ofl this due to illegal logging or industrial ag or bad government policy or Climate Change itself impacting theth forests. E also, question arises, what har happened . He until basisrecently, the amazor one of the great conservation successss stories. Through a great effort, the brazilian government, local government, brazilian growers, brazilian ranchers, al internationall companies, international ngoos. S, one of the Great Success stories the conservation field used to boast about is bringing deforestation way down in the amazon. That changed. What happened . Another thing thats important is what can the International Community do . Who really owns the amazon . Obviously, most of it is within brazil, not all of it. Way down its impact on the rest of the qu world, especially visavis ther climate challenge, is huge. Where are we in terms of tippin points . We know asoint Climate Change progresses or worsens, it can accelerate bad outcomes. Are we close to that today in the amazon . Then there are a host of other issues. What about the other amazon ome. Countries . What about the role of Indigenous People and impacts on Indigenous People . Or biodiversity itself. Were going to try to touch on all those issues. Am i get to ask questions for abous 30 minutes, then well open it o up to all of you, okay . Peter, are you all set . Try t can you hear us and everything . . I can hear you perfectly. All can you hear me . Et . Can yes. Sound good. All right. Lets start. Im going to start by asking dan to just give us an assessment of where things stand. . Again, i think it is hard to know by reading the paper. Whats causing what right now . Ni what is the role of fires, logging, big ag, big ranching, government whpolicy . Where does deforestation stand . Whats the outlook . K . Are we nearar the scary Tipping Points . Whats going on in your view, wt dan . Thanks, mark. Thanks for the opportunity to be here with all of you. I think were all here because of these fires and deforestation thats been in the news in the amazon over the past several. N months, peaking in the summer and august. T. I thinkpinnin it is important tv these aer bit these fires a t into context. Fires occur all the time within the region. Part of land clearing. I think it is really important n though to know that in brazil in 2019, these fires were not clima induced byte Climate Change. They were not driven by drought. Through the end of august this year, the 2019 dry season, which is over now, was about 50 wetter than what wed seen in en the previous few years. E had yet, on average, we had about 50 more fires during the same period. So the fires were not driven by drought. Drought season, the number of dry days were fewer than in the past. An the the fires thats really the first thing i want you to take home from here. The second thing is that these were fires that were that occurred deliberately for the purpose of deforestation. For the purpose of land clearing. Most of that and when i say r most, estimates are 90 of that is illegal. Perhaps 30 of that is driven by speculators who are clearing public lands. This is a complex criminal enterprisee in brazil in particular with many variations that are all aimed ultimately at selling falsely legit maimated cleared land atland a a huge ma. Another 30 occurred on privatey properties. Mostly exceeding limits on greed deforestation that were agreed to in brazil in 2012 under a major revision of brazilso resa forest code. S by that wasall agreed to by all oe major agrobusiness associations in brazil. Another 20 was likely small farmer clearing mostly on poorly managed reform settlements. Occ about 10 occurred in areas that have no designated ownership. Irt like the first category, thatst really all about land speculation. You can find all this data. Theyre in two really excellent technical notes prepared by a group called epalm. The amazonialamazoni iaial inst research. Year on year, deforestation increased in thebr brazilian amazon by 30 this year over last year, to nearly 10,000 the square kilometers. Thats the official data. Its the highest in the past decade. It goes it is important to oh note thatat that doesnt actualc even cover the period were talking about, which mostly emerged beginning in august because the deforestation year in brazil goes august 1 to july 31. August 1, 2018, to july 31, 2019. Weve had several thousand square kilometers cleared sincel then between august, september, into october. I the third point i want to make o is that this mostly illegal atet deforestation and the fires associated with it both began and ended with the support of the executive branch of the brazilian government. Which has prioritized this current government has prioritized the undoing of 15 years of governmental progress in deforestation control. The fires peaked in the second and third weeks of august following what were deliberately organized fire days in parts ofg the amazon, which were pretty much an open secret within thein responsible government agencies. What happened then is no one really counted on a huge amount of smoke reaching sao paulo and blackening the skies in the city of sao paulo for four days. Bout following that, later that month, following what youve all read about, a lot of controversl in the International Front frone president sent in the army and declared a 60day moratorium oni fire in the region. Eclared at which point, fires stopped being set. The fires diminished and ultimately the dry season endedm Government Support is responsible for both starting and ending this problem this year. Is p soro itsbl not climate, delibe turned on and off by Government Action and inaction. Mark asked a little bit for me to Say Something about this issue of Tipping Points that has come up in the news quiteegove. Suffice to say, it is a very complex area around the science, but the consensus as more and nq more data are emerging is that close, very, very y particularly in the southern and eastern parts of the basin, to Tipping Points to the combination of Land Use Change t and Climate Change will meet that forests wont grow back. Well be seeing the conversion of large areas of in tact tropical forests to savannah eo likesy tropical ecosystems over the comingd years. So having set that depressing stage, mark, ill turn it back to you. Let me turn to monica. Monica, given this challenge, what are the options the International Community faces, and the brazilian government . How can this challenge be will addressed in your judgment . So starting with the International Community, i thina there is onell area where not a lot has been done. Not a lot is perhaps a fairly easy way of putting it. Think it has to do with payments for t Environmental Services. Infamo of course, you usknow, conservi the amazon, conserving the amazon in brazil and the other countries that the amazon spans is a service that is provided t the rest of the world. Conser because asvi a term that has cot out, that some people use and i particularly like, we can go into the explanation of this term, is that the amazon is really a carbon bomb, in the sense that it retains a lot of carbon under the soil. Is re the moment thatal you start deforesting, this carbon is released into the atmosphere in very, very large quantities. So the service thats being provided by keeping thee forest in tact is that of keeping all of that carbon underneath the ground. And there is an issue of how do you actually set up payment for thesehow kinds of environmentalh services, which would be very beneficial from the point of view of innocecentivizing government, in particular,gover governments that have now recently taken difference stances on deforestation and conservation of the amazon. It provides a powerful incentive for them to change the policies back to one of preserving and conserving. I think this is an an area areal the International Community has to think more about and has to m do something about. There essence, were talking inb about, you know, an entire biome that has this characteristic of maintaining carbon underneath the soil and thosese services, which are global in scale, are not beingng paid for. So that, i would say, is one area that the International Community needs to be needs to think hard about. Hings there are other things like the amazon fund, for example, which is chiefly, you know, an initiative that was spearheaded by norway and germany, but largely norway, in which did serve the purpose of, you know,s trying to do a few things in ngn conservation and deforestation t within theat amazon. We know that the size of the amazon fund is small. You know, in relative terms. Mom at the moment, there are issuesd with the amazon fund and the government of brazil. This is another area where some thought has to go into, you er know, sort of, what do we do soe with the amazon fund . T of wha do we make it larger . Ke do we ask for more contributors from otherot parts of the globe . What can they effectively do . It how do we set up a Good Governance structure for the fund if it is to become larger, how do we do this in consonance with whatat the brazil beggover currently wants . Thats anothere area that needs to be thought much more about ba and where a lot of reflection has to go into. As for the government of brazil specifically, there are lots of things that and dan referenced some of them that we know there was this huge period spanning from 2004 until about 2014 or just before 2014 deforestation in the amazon fell dramatically. Be they fellca dramatically becaus of specific policies that were put in place. So we know what to do to reducea deforestation because we tried it in the past, and these politipolityuce policies worked. They involve a number of usthings,e we pasts monitoring, the very sophisticated, satellite imagery monitoring Law Enforcement in coordination of the several environmental agencies in brazil, but also measures like, for example, and as an economist, i particularly like this measure, the central bank of brazil in 2008 instituted a resolution that essentially created because e in the Amazon Region, rural credit is actually, in abecs of brazil, but the Amazon Region specifically, rural credit is provided by banks. Provid what the central bank did was ta institute a blacklist, lets say, of districts or municipalities within the amazon where deforestation rates were occurring at a much higher pace, and where there was evidence that, you know, farmers, local farmers, were notot meeting the environmental regulations and the environmental norms. This s rablacklist, so anybody was put on this blacklist was essentiallye was shut off from t markets. They were not receiving anyiden of access to credit. T. According to a lot of Research Done on this initiative alone, n that ybmeasure, just that measu, served to reduce deforestation by about 20 in different partsr of the amazon and in the itiati different partsve of the amazon where it was applied. So there are things like this wp that alreadypl worked. Dy in essence, you have carrots and sticks and policies like this that have worked in the past. This Central Bank Resolution i mentioned is still in effect. It could be used once again. It hasnt been revoked. Its just that the current government is not moving in that direction, is not using these tools it has available to it. In fact, one of the things it has done is dismantle, to some extent, the capacity of the monitoring and the Law Enforcement abilities of the environmental agencies. Thats where we are. Okay. Ou car thank you, monica. Lets turn to peter. Sed peter, there are a lot of its j additionalus issues for us to th consider. I know youve beenction, i focut them. Is the other amazonian countries, the role of china, the role of indigenous communities in the ee amazon. How do all ofre ar thosee playet into this story line . Pretty directly. Id say that part of the drivera of rtdeforestation, of course, weve talked about it, is the demand for Agricultural Commodities, whether it is soy or whether it is beef. We so if you trace where the fires are being are taking place and where what commodities are beingat grown and where tho commodities are going, you can see a direct correlation. So there is an increased in delivery to europe and an increase in delivery of soy, int particular, to china. Beef to china, to russia, to el egypt. So there is a direct correlation between this increase and in actually thecr tariff war betwe the United States and china which has resulted in a decreas in the importing of soy and beef from the United States to those other countries. So, number one, there is a Global Economic connection. Number two, it is really intriguing to me that the. Numr amazon, which is 880 million or hectares, 1 3 of that, or 30 of that, actually, is under the guardianship of recognized indigenous protective areas. The constitution of brazil is actually very clear as to the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Li as a little bit of an aside, the president has actually stated in speeches that the institute that he admires the most in the United States has been the u. S. Calvary because of its effective ne ne ness. Not only is it 30 of the amazn thats under indigenous guardianship legally, but the government has said those forested areas need to be accessed. We know we cannot do it legally, but we will look the other direction. So what is happening now is an assault on Indigenous Peoples rights. Whats interesting, of course, about the Indigenous Peoples, is they are very effective in area securing the help of these large, ecological territories that are their own. In fact, if you look at maps right now that looked at an pel overlay of fires with indigenoue territories, the indigenous ry f territories areec actually the most secure of the territories actually resisting in agriculture. E. You l Indigenous People played a very Important Role in securing the help of the amazon. I should say, it is not just the amazon. About 35 of the entire actua terrestrial earth is under the guardianship of Indigenous Peoples. Those are the territories on onm thise planet that contain abou 70 of the intact ecosystems. Wim direct correlation with commodity price. Direct correlation with th Indigenous Peoples. Thats just the state of the world. So weve gotimpor some importan allies in Indigenous Peoples. We also need to be looking at those organizations that are directly involved in the financing and the trading of commodities, so that we can actually get at the heart of how do you solve some of these a problems. I wouldsec like to comment for second on something monica talked about, which is this concept of payment for ecosystea services. The enormous role that brazil plays in terms of carbonsequesth 5 of the co2 thats human caused is absorbed by the amazon rain forest. There is an outside role the amazon plays. When we look at solutions, we am need to look at what is in the selfinterest of the hebrazilia, in termsms of nots allowing a Tipping Point so that that forest becomes savannah, whicha would bend devastating to the iy agricultural, the precipitation and agricultural productivity within brazil itself. So thats in the selfinterest of brazilding. To keep that for standing. But the waters and the precipitation that emerges from the amazon doesnt just stay in brazil. Right. It actually goes up through kind of atmospheric rivers to benefit the midwest and the re United States. Rivwest u so there is a strong argument tn thatg this is a global good and this should be a common there should be a considered, thoughtful way to balance the benefits to brazil and the benefits to the rest of the world. So i wouldust sa just say that complex question, for sure. Its a a very political questio right now in terms of how you address the challenges in brazil. Its no lesssscha complicated t the challenges were facing in the United States in terms of the political terms o world. So i wish there was an easy ld solution. There. I is not. Thank you, panelists. Really interesting. He itre reminds me of any time at the nature con sense servancconserv. We wish fe