Something paradoxical is happening in Brazil. Agriculture is dying to make way for agriculture. The constant need to expand the number of cultivated fields has driven deforestation rates to alarming levels: last month alone they exceeded May 2020 figures by 67 per cent.

Without trees, however, the land dries out. Without their capacity to reduce temperature and the amount of carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere, the mercury rises. Compromising the integrity of one of the most important biomes (a biome being an ecosystem characterised by a specific type of flora and fauna) on the entire planet — the Amazon rainforest — means irreversibly altering the climate and the water cycle. And that explains everything: agriculture in Brazil is dying because it no longer rains and drought is consuming every form of life.

Current and future consequences of the drought in Brazil

The inhabitants of the vast South American country are facing the worst drought in ninety years. The rural states are particularly hard hit, especially São Paulo and Mato Grosso do Sul. The consequences fall first and foremost on citizens, who are being forced to pay higher bills. Although Brazil has reduced its dependence on hydroelectric power from 90 to 65 per cent, the use of thermoelectric power remains more costly. There is also the risk of blackouts.

We are facing the perfect storm.

Liana Anderson, biologist

Households have been urged to cut their consumption of electricity and water, which could even be rationed. The recent rainy season was the poorest in twenty years, and water reserves are in an extremely dire state. The Iguazú Falls, the most extensive in the world, make a striking impression: rather than flowing in all their magnificence, they seem to trickle like a leaking tap.

Agriculture, Brazil's strongest sector, is on its knees, and this risks undermining the recovery of a country already torn apart by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 500,000 lives. A further cause for concern is the imminent fire season — both spontaneous and deliberate — which usually begins in July and which, given current conditions, risks being particularly devastating for the Amazon. "We are facing the perfect storm," warns Liana Anderson, a biologist at Brazil's national centre for natural disaster monitoring. "The situation today will make it really difficult to keep the fires under control."

Deforestation, desertification: two sides of the same coin

The alarm had been raised in May, and even President Jair Bolsonaro, known for playing down the dangers of the pandemic, appeared to have taken seriously the threat of a possible water shortage in his country, even though he has not adopted effective measures against deforestation, regarding the Amazon as a mere resource.

"It has been eight years since it rained as much as it should," meteorologist Marcelo Seluchi explains to the New York Times. "It's as if we're drawing from a cistern that is never refilled, and every year we use more and more water in the hope that things will improve. But so far that hasn't been the case."

Seluchi adds that phenomena such as La Niña, combined with climate change and the reduction of green areas, are causing all of this. The link between desertification and deforestation is also confirmed by Greenpeace Brazil: Marcelo Laterman points out that the forest's water recovery system plays a fundamental role in the distribution of rainfall across all of South America.

A study conducted by Argemiro Leite-Filho, an environmental scientist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais who examined data covering the period 1999–2019, has shown that a 10 per cent increase in deforestation in the Amazon reduces annual rainfall levels by 49 millimetres.

Climate change has, in parallel, altered a cycle that scientists call the "flying river" — a movement of large quantities of water vapour originating from the Atlantic Ocean and transported through the atmosphere by the Amazon basin to other parts of South America. This, climatologist José Marengo points out, is another reason why it rains less.

It is essential to raise farmers' awareness of these issues, because many do not believe there is a connection between cutting down trees and the grave risk their livelihoods are facing. Rather than relying solely on top-down decisions — Bolsonaro's announcement of his intention to combat illegal deforestation has yet to be followed by concrete action beyond the deployment of military forces, which some consider inadequate to tackle the problem — it might also be useful to cultivate awareness from the bottom up. Who better than farmers, who risk being left without work and their families without food, to become defenders of the forest? It may seem absurd, but it is not. To solve complex problems, simple solutions sometimes suffice. Like choosing not to cut down a tree.