Planet In Crisis - Trying To Find Right Solutions To Fight Climate Change

Dr Rina Mukherji reviews Amitav Ghosh’s book The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis.

- Dr Rina Mukherji

In recent years, deforestation in the Amazon rainforests has been a matter of much concern. With deforestation currently at 18 per cent, scientists and environmentalists fear that the Amazon will soon reach its tipping point, wherein it cannot manage to rejuvenate itself.

The need to feed a growing population worldwide has seen a rapid decline of leaf tree cover in the Amazon, which stretches over 1.4 billion acres spanning Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Surinam, Bolivia, Venezuela and French Guiana, and is home to a staggering 40,000 species of plants, 2400 species of fish and 370 reptilian species, besides being the last refuge of harpy eagles, pink river dolphins, pygmy marmosets, and thousands of birds and butterflies. The 2.6 million square miles spanned by the Amazon basin covers 40 per cent of South America and is also home to several indigenous communities. The 90–140 billion tonnes of carbon which the Amazon rainforests contain help stabilize local and global climate.

Yet, large-scale deforestation, especially in recent times, has seen rapid depletion of its tree cover, either for food production, hydroelectric projects or for soya plantations. Areas where canopy cover was reduced below 70 per cent, saw a rise in daytime land surface temperature by 0.44 degree Celsius, while areas of severe deforestation saw warming as much as 1.5 degrees Celsius, especially during the dry season. But is such destruction only recent? Amitav Ghosh tells us it is not so, in his latest book—