Brazil’s Next Tropical Hot Spot Is Getting Hotter
The cerrado, a vast savanna three times the size of Texas, has fallen even faster than the Amazon.
There’s room for compromise.
Photographer: Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images
With peak burning season in the Amazon basin still to come, the commotion over destruction of the storied rainforest will grow. Yet even as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro prepares to lecture the United Nations General Assembly on who’s boss in the jungle and enjoins Brazilians to don the national colors to show that “Amazonia is ours,” the next tropical hot spot is already under duress. And given the economic stakes, expect the outrage to spread.
No one marches along Ipanema beach to save the Brazilian savanna. Still, the sprawl of scrub and low-lying forest three times the size of Texas on the lower lip of the Amazon basin is falling fast, and so has become cause for global concern. The heightened scrutiny is an opportunity for officials already on the defensive to get something right. That won’t happen, however, unless producers, politicians and environmentalists drop their fists, use their collective heads and stop treating the savanna as a zero-sum game.