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Disappearing Forests

Each article is a seed — learn, feel, respond and let these words move something inside you.

Right now, the Amazon Rainforest is facing deforestation at a rapid rate. Contributing factors include the loss of land to loggers, ranchers, and palm oil growers. Lands that were once tribal and fully-functioning ecosystems are facing increased degradation as a result of these harmful practices. Land degradation is a process where land loses its ability to regenerate itself, a loss of ecosystem services like water, plants, and organisms on a more permanent level. According to some recent studies, human activity has degraded more than a third of the remaining Amazon Rain forest.

In Peru, we are seeing the highest rates of land clearing since the early 2000s, before the government began putting in laws to lessen land clearing. A major contributing factor is the establishment of Palm Oil plantations, we are seeing a significant increase of land clearing in Peru and the results are heartbreaking. Clearing jungle forest and the growing of Palm oil trees is extremely bad for the land. It eradicates all the nutrients and becomes increasingly degraded. Making it so that the animals that have lived there for thousands of years, are forced to flee to protected areas if they can make it.

One of the larger impacts of land degradation is that it causes the land to lose the natural ability to store and retain water, which leads to water scarcity.

The lack of water in turn, fuels other factors that majorly threaten the Amazon forests. This includes wildfires as well as unnatural fires caused by groups with ulterior motives. According to the World Resources Institute “91% of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon is linked to illegal activity like land-clearing for agriculture and artisanal mining, often orchestrated by well-structured international criminal enterprises.”

On a societal level, one of the most significant effects of deforestation in the Amazon is the displacement of Indigenous peoples. Our communities have a deep connection with the Amazon rainforest and depend on it for their survival. When forests are cleared, tribal homes, livelihoods, and very existence is threatened.

Bero Netebo works closely with the Shipibo Tribe and their people. With your support, Bero Netebo can continue the work of the Peru Restoration project. With plans in place to support the Shipibo Conibo tribes and relocate them back to the Amazon they can sustain their way of life and culture. It is important to act now, to help buy lands back for the Indigenous tribes and to help plant healthy forests before it is too late.

Citations: ilegalidade-atinge-91-do-desmatamento-na-amazonia

Check out our Peru Restoration page for more information.