PROTECTION: Brazil's progress

About 44% of the Brazilian Amazon is protected, however ISA reports that those protected areas are still affected by encroachment and bad management.¹ As of December 2010, 2,197,485 square kilometers are protected in the Amazon with national parks accounting for 50.6% and indigenous territories 49.4%.¹ Even though a great amount of the amazon is protected, the ISA report found that there have been significant human impacts in those areas, such as forests clearing within those borders.¹ They attributed the degradation of protected areas to “faulted poor management.”¹ The number of staff in some areas is very low thus situations like this can occur. 50% of the protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon don’t have an approved management plan and 45% doesn’t have a management council.¹ Illegal mining and logging are still threats to protected areas.¹ Over 1,300 titles for mining have been approved in protected areas and over 10,000 are still waiting approval.¹

However, Brazil has been experiencing a decline in deforestation as annual clearing has reduced by 75% since 2004.¹ This is in part due to the law that passed in 2009 comiting the country to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 36%.² The reduction is expected to be a result of limiting Brazil’s deforestation rate which until recent years was the world’s highest.² Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said that Brazil’s 80% deforestation reduction target for the Amazon would be met by 2016.² Conversely, BNDES, Brazil’s national development bank, plans new Amazon infrastructure projects such as dams and roads with an allocated tens of billions of dollars a year.² This could increase pressure on the Amazon rainforest. Furthermore, farmers and ranchers in the area are advocating for more relaxed environmental protection laws. They would like a revision of the forest code, which requires individuals to keep 80% of forest on their land.²

In the graph below, you can see a very steep decline in deforestation so far was between 2004-2006. Rates continue to lessen except in the year 2008. I would expect a chart from 2009-2016 to shower a steep decline as well due to all of the laws and regulations passed in Brazil. 
In the pie graph below, an agricultural slowdown and new protected areas are accountable for 82% of the causes for sharp decline in deforestation rates. With the new laws set in place in Brazil, use of the rainforest will be greatly limited and more protected areas are put in place which makes me further believe in a high decline in deforestation from 2009-on.

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0601-amazon_arpa.html

1) "Protected Areas Cover 44% of the Brazilian Amazon." Mongabay.com. N.p., 20 Apr. 2011. Web. 29 Nov. 2012. <http://news.mongabay.com/2011/0420-protected_amazon.html>.

2) Butler, Rhett A. "Brazil's Amazon Deforestation Rate Falls to Lowest on Record."Mongabay.com. N.p., 01 Dec. 2010. Web. 29 Nov. 2012. <http://news.mongabay.com/2010/1201-brazil_deforestation_2010.html>.