The Cerrado Loophole n The much-lauded soy moratorium that applies to the Brazilian Amazon has had no impact on exploitation in the Cerrado, one of the most biologically-rich tropical savanna regions in the world. According to Mongabay, the wooded grasslands of the Cerrado, east of the Amazon and covering a quarter of Brazil, has lost more than half of its native vegetation. WWF says that deforestation in the Cerrado is even worse than in the Amazon and that few blocks of native vegetation remain unchanged there. Much of this is down to the production of agricultural commodities such as soy and cattle, overseen by companies that cannot conduct such activities in the Amazon because of the soy moratorium. Mongabay reported that from 2013 to 2016, more than 75 per cent of all direct soy crop expansion accomplished via native vegetation clearance occurred there. NGOs are now calling for the soy moratorium to be extended to the Cerrado.

increased dramatically and continues to rise. Land speculation is also behind a great deal of deforestation. The clearance of land with no immediate objective in mind is profoundly dispiriting for campaigners: land is bought and cleared, much as an urban developer may buy land in a city and then wait for a buyer to come along. Initially such land, once deforested, is often let to cattle ranchers to graze their livestock until an oil palm grower comes along.

BREAKING LAWS Given what we know, the latest news coming out of the three main rainforest regions, is alarming. Brazil accounts for 40 per cent of the Amazon, or 332.4m ha of rainforest, but will have lost 39.5m ha between 2001 and 2020. Since 1970, the Amazon has lost about 20 per cent of its forest cover – equivalent to nearly one million square kilometres – according to WWF. Following the election of the populist president Jair Bolsonaro, described as ‘the Trump of the Tropics’, environmentalists are aghast that his first moves have included a dilution of laws that require Amazonian landowners to conserve up to 80 per cent of their land as forests.

Mongabay, the rainforest organisation, says that Bolsonaro is effectively dismantling environmental law enforcement. Fines for illegal deforestation this year are down 34 per cent year on year; government seizures of illegally harvested timber fell precipitously,

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