There are palm trees that have been affected by a virus in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.
The Amazon rainforest in Brazil saw a 15-year high in deforestation in 2021, as it emerged that the forest has begun emitting more carbon than it can absorb.
The greatest area lost to rainforest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon since 2006 was estimated last month by the National Institute for Space Research.
The Amazon rainforest covers land in nine countries.
One-third of the Amazon destruction is linked to land grabbing, mainly driven by meat producers clearing space for cattle ranches.
At the COP26 climate summit in November, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed an international pledge to end deforestation.
There has been an increase in the number of trees being cut down. He has been criticized for encouraging activities in the Amazon and for trying to pass laws that would allow commercial developments on protected land. The president has offered financial incentives to the indigenous tribes who develop their land into soy plantations.
The lower house of Congress in Brazil passed a bill in August that will make it easier for people to take over public land. The lower house passed a bill in May that paved the way for mining, agriculture and other projects in the Amazon to be greenlit more easily. The Senate of Brazil will now consider the bills.
Luciana Gatti is a climate scientist at INPE.
She told CNBC that it is a nightmare for scientists because they are not listened to and that it is crazy and selfdestructive. We need the Amazon to absorb CO2.
Gatti said that illegal activity in the Amazon was driving the current rate of destruction, but argued that many countries were participating in the destruction of the rainforest by imports of wood and beef from Brazil.
She said that if you import beef from Brazil, 40% of it comes from the Amazon. The problem in the last few years has been that Brazil's money has become very cheap, so for producers to export beef or corn or soybeans it's much more lucrative, and then they grow the size of their sites in the Amazon.
Bolsonaro's administration has pledged to open Brazil's economy up to the world through international trade. Brazil was accused of failing to protect the rainforest after forest fires raged in the Amazon in 2019. China is the country's biggest export market and Bolsonaro responded with anger to those suggestions.
Gatti said that mining in the rainforest was poisoning the water that indigenous people and wildlife relied on to survive.
She said that the government doesn't see that the Amazon is the biggest treasure. The Amazon absorbs carbon and produces precipitation. Each dry season is hotter and drier. They don't listen, and what they are producing for Brazil is a nightmare.
Federal workers are under pressure to take the government line on issues like the environment, according to Gatti.
She told CNBC that they feel pressure to not say anything that the government doesn't like. They don't like hearing about climate change and they have crazy ideas from people who think the earth is flat. They don't like me because I say things that they don't agree with. They want to stop me from talking.
When contacted by CNBC, a Brazilian government spokesman was not available.
Bolsonaro clashed with world leaders over his handling of huge forest fires raging through the Amazon and allegedly fired the former head of INPE after the space agency published data showing a massive surge in forest fires.
The situation in the Amazon is getting worse with activities like logging and forest fires, according to Philip Fearnside, an ecologist at Brazil's National Institute for Research in Amazonia.
He said in a phone call that most of the fires are started by people. It is not a coniferous forest like the ones in North America, where you have that common cause. You also have legal and illegal logging.
Many things used to be illegal, but now they are legal. If things don't increase, the numbers will stay high, because we have at least one more year of the current president.
The legalization of claims on public land in the Amazon had made land grabbing even more attractive, Fearnside said, noting that this had stimulated forest loss as the way you stake your claim to the land.
In the state of Amazonas, he said, around 45% of the state fell into the category of designated public land, which was vulnerable to land grabbers.
Fearnside said that the president and ministers below were sending the message that if you break the laws you will be pardoned.
The water that is recycled by the forest is also an emission of greenhouse gases.
We had a very severe dry year this year. He said that it was linked to global warming. Reducing the transport of water from Amazonia would be catastrophic for Brazil. Brazil is the main victim, but Argentina and other countries are also affected. It is not a global thing, but it has huge consequences in this part of the world.
The story has been changed to say that it is square miles.
