State of the Rainforest 2014

Small-scale farming and charcoal production

Roads, mining and drilling

Small-scale farmers, 33 not least those practising shifting cultivation, were previously often seen as main agents behind tropical forest loss. Although there is growing agreement that large commercial agricultural enterprises and extractive industries pose the greatest threat to the tropical forest, small scale farming is still a driver of deforestation – and in many places an important one. The sustainability of slash and burn cultivation depends on demographic pressure, available area for fallow and choice of cultivars. Whereas the rainforest has coexisted for centuries with slash and burn under conditions of subsistence agriculture and extensive available areas, modern day slash and burn is not necessarily equally benign to the forest. In Central Africa, competition for land, poverty and lack of tenure rights combine to make small-scale peasants an important deforestation factor. Extensive charcoal production also contributes to deforestation in Central Africa, and with growing demand both in urban centres and from export markets outside the region charcoal production seems set to increase. 34

Infrastructure development and extractive industries, such as hydroelectric dams, oil and gas, and mining projects, are major drivers of deforestation. Infrastructure development opens up forest areas, initiating and accelerating a process of gradual forest degradation. New roads make the rainforest accessible to legal and illegal logging, land speculation, agricultural expansion and mining. In the Brazilian Amazon, for example, a new study reveals that 95%of deforestation has occurred within 5.5 kilometers of roads or 1 kilometers of a navigable river. 35 The price rise for gold and other metals in recent years has led to a sharp growth in legal and illegal mining in the Amazon. 36 Today, areas under planned and active mining concessions in total cover a 21% of the Amazon’s surface. 37 In Indonesia, the mining industry is a key indirect driver of deforestation. The country has quadrupled its coal production in ten years (from 100 to 400 million tonnes a year) and has become the world’s largest exporter of coal. 38 In addition to the direct consequences of mining operations, the mining industry normally have major socio-environmental impacts far beyond the mining site, a problem largely ignored by the industry. Mining and drilling areas often overlap with indigenous territories, and these operations therefore seriously affect some of the most vulnerable and forest dependent people. 39 Also, hydropower development is proceeding at a historically unprecedented pace in the region. More than 400 dams are planned or under construction in the Amazon basin. 40 Large dams often have severe and irreversible environmental and social impacts, inundating large areas of land, displacing thousands of people. 41 In the Western Amazon, drilling for oil and gas has increased massively in the past five to six years, and today 84% of the forested areas of Peru is dedicated to oil production. 42

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STATE OF THE RAINFOREST 2014