At a rate of 5 soccer fields per hour, approximately 31,000 hectares on average per year, the Ecuadorian Amazon basin was grossly deforested between 2001 and 2020. Total deforestation in this area, considered the lungs of the planet , amounts to more than 623,510 hectares in 19 years. This shocking data is detailed in a recent investigation on deforestation in the Ecuadorian Amazon, developed by MabBiomas and the Amazon Georeferenced Socio-environmental Information Network (RAISG), of which Fundación EcoCiencia is a part.
At the regional level, these figures place Ecuador in fifth place in terms of total deforested area, after Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. Ecuador lost an extension of forests greater than Venezuela, French Guyana and Suriname, all countries larger than Ecuador.
Ecuador is the country with the highest deforestation rate in Latin America compared to its size, even more than Brazil
The expansion of the agricultural and livestock frontier, the development of infrastructure, mining and hydrocarbon exploitation, and the extraction of timber resources are the main causes of deforestation in the country.
“The study is supported by satellite images and with this we have been able to go back in time to be able to analyze from 1985 to 2020. Within this we have been able to observe that in Ecuador, in 36 years there was gross deforestation of more than 623,000 hectares. In this study, only everything that has been lost is taken into account and not the forests that have been regenerated” says Rodrigo Torres, coordinator of Ecociencia.
The years where the increase in deforestation began in the Amazon region coincide with the periods of the oil, agricultural and mining boom, since when this type of anthropological activity occurs, roads are opened, urban areas expand, use has changed ground. “Areas that were previously forests are transformed into agricultural, mining and oil areas. All these factors imply deforestation”, says Torres.
The research data indicates that 79% of the Ecuadorian Amazon basin, more than ten million hectares, are under some category of protection, either as a protected natural area or because they are indigenous territories.
“These areas play a very important role as barriers to deforestation, which is evident when comparing deforestation inside and outside them. Although unprotected areas represent barely 21% of the Ecuadorian Amazon basin and are home to 16% of the remaining Amazon forests by 2020, 54% (339,000 hectares) of deforestation in the last two decades was concentrated in them.” the study indicates.
Meanwhile, within the limits of indigenous territories and protected areas, 46% of the deforestation of 2001 and 2020 occurred, proportionally, a lower figure than that of unprotected areas.
Orellana (8.17%), Lago Agrio (7.35%), Pastaza (5.90%), Shushufindi (5.06%), Loreto (4.38%), Taisha (4.05%), Morona (3.81%), Tena (3.74%), La Joya de los Sacha (3.54%) and Gualaquiza (3.54%) are the ten cantons that between 2001 and 2020 concentrated 50% of the total deforestation in the Ecuadorian Amazon region.
“These cantons with the greatest deforestation are where the oil companies always arrive and base themselves, with this people come to start businesses, roads are opened, new urbanizations are created” says Torres.
Deforestation is the most serious environmental problem that Ecuador has
At the provincial level, only in Morona Santiago, more than 158 thousand hectares of forest were deforested between 2001 and 2020, (25%) of the total deforestation of the entire Ecuadorian Amazon. This province, together with Sucumbíos, concentrate 46% (287 thousand hectares) of the detected deforestation, followed by Orellana and Zamora Chinchipe respectively. Together, these four provinces account for 77% of deforestation in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Deforestation in the Amazon basin is not only reported in Ecuador but in eight other countries. This is causing the absorption of carbon to go down which drives climate change.
In addition, another of the phenomena that is being recorded is the so-called forest degradation and which is already being debated in the country. “This occurs when a forest begins to lose its typical characteristics. Degradation is related to pollution events that cause the forest to lose its natural abilities to store carbon, that is, the forest is still there, but now what it does is release carbon” says Torres.
We need leaders willing to talk with the Amazon, the system that ensures life on the planet.
We propose a meeting to exchange learning from indigenous peoples to protect their territories and the most extensive and biodiverse tropical forest in the world: the Amazon. pic.twitter.com/WRRiHFPgPO– EcoScience Foundation (@F_EcoScience) September 18, 2022
Although degradation can also be caused by natural factors, there are anthropic activities within the Amazon, such as groundwater contamination and selective logging (only the trees with the highest commercial value are deforested, and with this the connectivity of the forest is lost) that causes.
In Ecuador, forests are deforested to make space for cocaine “cooks”
“Recording degradation is a very complicated process. The Ministry of the Environment is going to make a publication in October about its first exercise of forest degradation in Ecuador. This phenomenon is just being debated in many spheres, trying to specify methodologies to find these degraded areas.” says Torres. (YO)
Source: Eluniverso
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