STATE OF THE RAINFOREST 2014
77
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
Small-scale farming and charcoal production
Roads, mining and drilling