The Rate of Destruction

	Satellite images of the Amazon, centered in Ronônia, the state where the infamous highway, BR364 was paved in 1980 with Wold Bank funding. Over the next decade deforatation rates skyrocketed. These are images of the area today. For a bit more on deforestation rates there from 1975 to 1999, see the American Geophyiscal Union article, Large area mapping of land-cover change in Rondônia using multitemporal spectral mixture analysis and decision tree classifiers.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), tropical forests continue to fall at an alarming rate of 15 million hectares per year.

The rate of destruction had been steadily increasing since the 1920s, with a dramatic acceleration in the 1960s into the 1980s.

The rate of destruction appears to have leveled off at what is a catastrophic level.

At this rate, tropical forests will last only another 35 to 40 years.

But this figure tells only part of the story. FAO considers "deforestation" to be the complete elimination of forest cover. But much of the destruction of rainforests is occurring without completely eliminating the forests, like high-grade logging, mining, oil drilling and contamination, devastation of wildlife and displacement and decimation of indigenous people.

For instance, according to one study, if damage due to logging were factored in, FAO’s figure should be doubled.

For more, see the article, The Rate of Destruction.