Brazil's deforestation

Brazil is experiencing a massive drought right now with only half the rainfall as last year, leaving some of the largest rivers at about 10% of what the once were. As a country that’s wealth and resources are massively divided, it is known for its abundance of fresh water resources, which make about 12% of the world’s fresh water. This has lead to several big dilemmas for the people including a major shortage a drinking water, an all time low for agriculture and food production, and cutting down transportation as a lot of the population commutes by boat. Power outages are raving throughout the highly populated city as well because of the shortage in hydroelectricity. The country is responding to this by increasing fossil fuel burning which emits more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Authorities have announced that reservoirs are at all time lows and in the first weeks January (the country’s highest rainfall season) has only seen about a quarter of the average rainfall it usually has. So why is there this drought? Perhaps it could be from the deforestation that has raised 195% since last year’s rates. Because the people of Brazil have been ravishing the Amazon and Atlantic forests, it causes humid air mass to cease flowing, resulting in no new rain clouds forming in any of the regions. On top of all this, Brazil’s government has not done anything to slow this rate at all. As Brazil is currently still a developing country, it is focusing more on economic growth through wealth from their resources. They are simply ignoring the fact they are destroying their own ecosystem and the people still remain unaware of what is going and what those consequences will be. Although this is the exact opposite of Malwai’s deforestation that resulted in flooding, we can clearly see that taking away forests severely tampers with the ecosystem. Awareness needs to happen in this country so the people can exactly what will happen to them if the government keeps taking away the natural resources of the forest.    

https://www.the-newshub.com/international/brazil-a-democratic-climate-change 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/23/brazil-worst-drought-history