Deforestation in the Amazon

When talking about the Amazon rainforest, the word most commonly associated with it is deforestation, everyone from the president of the United States to the local people on the ground are concerned with it. In this story map, we will look at some of the leading causes of deforestation through the focus on the Flor de Ucayali indigenous territory in Peru.

Deforestation in the Amazon is a globally connected problem, both in cause and effect. Many of the drivers of deforestation in the Amazon are for products to be exported to other countries. The most common of these are soy, cattle, palm oil, and coca, which all require large areas to grow. In this protected area much of the deforested land is being used to farm coca, the plant that gets turned into cocaine. Place your cursor over the graph below to see the specific percentages of deforestation in Pure and some of the smaller causes.

Often, the drive to produce more pushes farmers and cattle herders to push farther into the forest, even into protected indigenous territories and national parks. The map below shows a region in the forest around the Flor De Ucayali, a protected indigenous area, and the reason for each deforested area, with the yellow being agriculture.

Looking at this map we can see the majority of deforestation comes from these agricultural products, with some coming from buildings and other things. Also looking at this map, we can see a road running through their territory. Roads, while being a direct cause of deforestation, may be more dangerous in the effects they bring in. These roads enable people and groups, like illegal loggers, hunters, miners, and land grabbers to more easily go to these locations. With these effects, it is common for the majority of deforestation to come around roads.

Deforestation in the Amazon has not been a constant over time, with uneven development in different regions of the Amazon due to different governments. In Peru, the country with the second-most total area of the Amazon behind Brazil, deforestation is increasing. As deforestation has increased, it has pushed farther into the Flor de Ucayali territory. We can see this in the map with the lighter yellow representing the early 2000s with the solid red representing 2018.

We can see this even clearer in this region through the graph below. This graph shows a slow but consistent rise over time in hectares of deforestation in the area. This is due to both government policy, global market demands, and other changing factors.

Although overall deforestation is increasing, some of the areas deforested in the past that are no longer in use are growing back as what is called a secondary forest. Secondary forests occur when deforested areas have years to regrow and often have a different species makeup and a smaller canopy, allowing more light to the forest floor. Due to the poor soils in the Amazon, this type of forest will become more common in the future as the forest has time to regrow after people have moved on to new land.

The myth of the Amazon as “lungs of the earth” is one of the most common untrue statements related to deforestation, and while that’s not true, the deforestation of the Amazon does have global implications. The burning of the jungle to create deforested areas leads to the release of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, that contribute to climate change. This deforestation also has other effects, like the changing of rainfall patterns around the world.

On a local scale, deforestation causes the loss of habitat for many plants and animals, creates soil erosion, allows more flooding, and elimination of plants and animals that people rely on for food and income. Deforestation also destroys the homeland of groups that live have lived in the forests for hundreds of years, displacing them and destroying their way of life. The issue of deforestation continues to be one of the biggest challenges affecting people both on a local and global scale and driven by a variety of factors created by global demand, and one that both the people of the Amazon and countries around the world have a vested interest in stopping.