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Brazil’s first homemade satellite will put an extra eye on dwindling Amazon forests

A new Brazilian satellite would allow near-real-time monitoring of Amazonian deforestation.

    The fate of Brazil’s satellite program — and the country’s capacity to monitor disappearing Amazon forest — will be decided in 17 minutes and 30 seconds on February 28. That’s the time it will take to launch Amazonia-1, the first satellite entirely developed by the country. If the mission goes well, Brazil will join about 20 countries that have managed the whole chain of design, production, and operation of a satellite. Amazonia-1 will give researchers more frequent updates on deforestation and agricultural activity in the world’s largest tropical rainforest. Nevertheless, other challenges await, since Brazilian scientists deal with increasing cuts in research funding.

    The satellite represents “a milestone for Brazil,” says Adenilson Silva, an engineer at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) who leads the mission and will oversee the launch at the Indian space center on the island of Sriharikota. The satellite’s development, which began in 2008, has involved more than a dozen Brazilian companies and an investment of 360 million reais ($60 million) — about one-sixth what it would cost to import ready-to-use equipment, Silva says. Amazonia-1 is the first of three Amazon-monitoring satellites INPE aims to build with the same manufacturing platform.

    The new satellite is a 2.5-meter-long metallic cuboid weighing 640 kilograms. It’s loaded with 6 kilometers of cables and three wide-angle cameras capable of detecting any area of deforestation bigger than four soccer fields. A planned launch in 2018 was postponed because of a lack of funding and delays in the supply of key components from collaborating companies.

(Sofia Moutinho. www.sciencemag.org, 26.02.2021. Adapted.)

T E X T

Britain, Norway and the United States join forces with businesses to protect tropical forests.

    Britain, Norway and the United States said Thursday they would join forces with some of the world’s biggest companies in an effort to rally more than $1 billion for countries that can show they are lowering emissions by protecting tropical forests. The goal is to make intact forests more economically valuable than they would be if the land were cleared for timber and agriculture.

    The initiative comes as the world loses acre after acre of forests to feed global demand for soy, palm oil, timber and cattle. Those forests, from Brazil to Indonesia, are essential to limiting the linked crises of climate change and a global biodiversity collapse. They are also home to Indigenous and other forest communities. Amazon, Nestlé, Unilever, GlaxoSmithKline and Salesforce are among the companies promising money for the new initiative, known as the LEAF Coalition.

    Last year, despite the global downturn triggered by the pandemic, tropical deforestation was up 12 percent from 2019, collectively wiping out an area about the size of Switzerland. That destruction released about twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as cars in the United States emit annually

    “The LEAF Coalition is a groundbreaking example of the scale and type of collaboration that is needed to fight the climate crisis and achieve net-zero emissions globally by 2050,” John Kerry, President Biden’s senior climate envoy, said in a statement. “Bringing together government and privatesector resources is a necessary step in supporting the large-scale efforts that must be mobilized to halt deforestation and begin to restore tropical and subtropical forests.”

    An existing global effort called REDD+ has struggled to attract sufficient investment and gotten mired in bureaucratic slowdowns. This initiative builds on it, bringing private capital to the table at the country or state level. Until now, companies have invested in forests more informally, sometimes supporting questionable projects that prompted accusations of corruption and “greenwashing,” when a company or brand portrays itself as an environmental steward but its true actions don’t support the claim.

    The new initiative will use satellite imagery to verify results across wide areas to guard against those problems. Monitoring entire jurisdictions would, in theory, prevent governments from saving forestland in one place only to let it be cut down elsewhere.

   Under the plan, countries, states or provinces with tropical forests would commit to reducing deforestation and degradation. Each year or two, they would submit their results, calculating the number of tons of carbon dioxide reduced by their efforts. An independent monitor would verify their claims using satellite images and other measures. Companies and governments would contribute to a pool of money that would pay the national or regional government at least $10 per ton of reduced carbon dioxide.

    Companies will not be allowed to participate unless they have a scientifically sound plan to reach net zero emissions, according to Nigel Purvis, the chief executive of Climate Advisers, a group affiliated with the initiative. “Their number one obligation to the world from a climate standpoint is to reduce their own emissions across their supply chains, across their products, everything,” Mr. Purvis said. He also emphasized that the coalition’s plans would respect the rights of Indigenous and forest communities.

From: www.nytimes.com/April 22, 2021  

The boxer

I am just a poor boy, though my story’s seldom told
I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises
All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest

[05] When I left my home and my family, I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the railway station, runnin’ scared, laying low,
Seeking out the poorer quarters, where the ragged people go
Looking for the places only they would know
[10] Lie la lie, lie la la la lie lie

Asking only workman’s wages, I come looking for a job
But I get no offers
Just a come-on from the whores on 7th Avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
[15] I took some comfort there

Now the years are rolling by me
They are rockin’ evenly
I am older than I once was
And younger than I’ll be; that’s not unusual
[20] Nor is it strange
After changes upon changes
We are more or less the same

After changes we are more or less the same
And I’m laying out my winter clothes and wishing I was gone
[25] Goin’ home
Where the New York City winters aren’t bleedin’ me
Leadin’ me
Goin’ home

In the clearing stands a boxer and a fighter by his trade
[30] And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down or cut him
‘Til he cried out in his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”, but the fighter still remains 

PAUL SIMON and ART GARFUNKEL
Adaptado de genius.com.

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The business of climate change

    A UN assessment published this week on the progress made in stemming the global loss of species made depressing reading. Not one of the 20 targets adopted by 196 countries in a convention on biodiversity in 2010 has been met. And the latest biennial Living Planet Report from the WWF, an environmental group, found that animal populations worldwide shrank by an average of two-thirds between 1970 and 2016. The falls were greatest in the tropics. In Latin America and the Caribbean animal populations fell by 94%, on average, during the period. It is some comfort that around the world biodiversity and climate change have become big political issues. In Australia koala bears have almost brought down a state government.

(www.economist.com, 18.09.2020.)