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The importance of the Amazon for climate and biodiversity is well known. But its preservation is also a health issue: the fight against deforestation in indigenous territory would prevent millions of cases of disease per year, conclude researchers in a new study.
“Our estimates indicate that by protecting the indigenous territories of the Amazon, more than 15 million cases of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases could be prevented each year, with approximately 2 billion dollars saved in health expenditures”they write in the review Communications Earth & Environment. This international team analyzed ten years of data on fine particle pollution (PM 2.5), health and the tropical forest, subject to some of the highest deforestation rates in the world.
health at risk
Forest fires – often started intentionally to make way for agricultural activities – can contribute to respiratory or cardiovascular disease due to the particles emitted. It also means the disappearance of trees that act as filters against pollution.
Scientists have calculated that maintaining the protection of indigenous territories – which account for a large fifth of the Amazon – can allow the absorption of 700,000 kg of fine particles PM 2.5 each year, which then translates into terms of savings, and diseases avoided in the Amazon region.
Conversely, each hectare of forest burned generates an average cost of $2 million, they calculated.
Stop deforestation
They also established that the more forest area a municipality has, especially when the latter is not very fragmented, the fewer infections are recorded. The researchers conclude that their work can now be used “as evidence in favor of the protection of the forest and indigenous territories”.
“Combating forest fires would require reducing deforestation, strengthening environmental legislation, increasing penalties for those who deforest and burn the forest, as well as strengthening agencies” environmental, says Paula Prist, of the NGO EcoHealth Alliance in New York, co-author of the study alongside seven scientists.
The new Brazilian President Lula da Silva assured in March that he intended to approve “as soon as possible” new lands reserved for the natives, a legalization which remained at a standstill under the mandate of his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.