Major Cause of Deforestation

Causes of deforestation in the Amazon

• Cattle ranches 60-70%
• Small-scale, subsistence agriculture 30-40%
• Large-scale, commercial agriculture1-2%
• Logging, legal and illegal 2-4%
• Fires, mining, urbanization, road construction, dams 2-4%
• Selective logging and fires that burn under the forest canopy commonly result in forest degradation, not deforestation. Therefore these factor less in overall deforestation figures.

• Cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. This has been the case since at least the 1970s: government figures attributed 38 percent of deforestation from 1966-1975 to large-scale cattle ranching. However, today the situation may be even worse. According to the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), “between 1990 and 2001 the percentage of Europe’s processed meat imports that came from Brazil rose from 40 to 74 percent” and by 2003 “for the first time ever, the growth in Brazilian cattle production—80 percent of which was in the Amazon—was largely export driven.”

• Eliminating meat from diet reduces production of carbon-dioxide, most abundant human produced greenhouse gas.
• Average car produces 3 kilos of carbon-dioxide
• Clearing rainforest to produce beef for one hamburger, produces 75 kilos of carbon-dioxide. Thus, eating 1 pound of hamburger does the same damage as driving your car for more than 3 weeks.

http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Brazil

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