Orbital View: Eating Away at the Amazon

Another profound sight from Daily Overview:

Deforestation of the rainforest is visible in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Deforestation in the country has primarily been driven by the expansion of mechanized agriculture and cattle ranching. This Overview highlights the country’s struggle to expand food production in order to meet the needs of its growing population, and the sacrificial destruction of its forests that has taken place to do so. Deforestation rates have been stable though relatively high, at about 200,000 hectares a year.

A photo posted by Daily Overview (@dailyoverview) on Dec 14, 2015 at 9:51am PST

Three years ago, Santa Cruz hosted a conference of the Amazon Network of Socio-Environmental Geo-Referenced Information (RAISG). Money quote:

“If all of the economic interests [projects] that are planned for the upcoming years occur, the Amazon rainforest will become a savanna with spots of forest,” warned the general coordinator of the RAISG, Beto Ricardo, from the Socio-Environmental Institute of Brazil. [...] The deforestation analysis shows that between 2000 and 2010 nearly 240,000 square kilometers (92,000 square miles) of Amazonian forest were deforested. This is equivalent to twice the Ecuadorian Amazon.

(See all Orbital Views here)