All is not doom and gloom in Brazil.
The soya moratorium, which Greenpeace helped establish in 2006, has been renewed
for another 12 months, which means another year of soya traders refusing to do
business with farmers growing crops on newly deforested land. In addition,
companies like McDonalds, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and the Co-op have reaffirmed their
commitment to the moratorium, ensuring that they continue to demand non-Amazon
soya at the consumer end too.
There's no denying that the moratorium has been a
success. Since it was established four years ago, deforestation rates in the
Amazon have decreased while soya yields have increased, showing that (as Paulo
Adario from our Brazilian office put it) "production and conservation can go
hand in hand".
With last year's agreement between three of the largest
slaughterhouses in Brazil to prevent cattle ranching
making further in-roads into the rainforest, we've made great strides in
breaking the link between agricultural production and deforestation. But the
current attempts to change the forest code could undo much of the success of
recent years so there's no rest for the wicked just yet.