MANAUS, BRAZIL — In the 1980s, scientists sounded the alarm: The Amazon was burning and would be gone by the end of the century.
Two decades later, the dire predictions have not come to pass. About 80% of the world's largest remaining tropical wilderness is still standing -- a vast carpet of green crisscrossed by the Amazon River and its 1,100 tributaries.
But scientists warn that although the destruction has slowed, a Connecticut-sized chunk disappears every year for ranching, farming and logging.
The reasons for the rain forest's survival have more to do with economics and a political change of fortune than with the worldwide environmental campaign to save the Amazon.
In the 1980s, Brazil was under a military dictatorship with ambitious plans to develop the country's portion of the rain forest -- 1.6 million square miles. Had the nation not suffered in a massive debt crisis in the late '80s, "everything would be gone by now," says Philip Fearnside, a U.S. scientist at the Brazilian government's National Institute for Amazon Research.
But that's no reason for complacency, he warns. Although the rate of deforestation has dropped dramatically over the last few years, it remains alarmingly high. And new threats loom, among them corporate farms armed with the latest agricultural technology to grow soybeans, raise cattle and plant crops for biofuels.
"Total investment in the region over the last 500 years is equal to what is projected for the next 10," said Joao Meirelles, director of the Peabiru Institute, who estimates that private and public-sector investments over the next decade will top $50 billion.
The plight of the Amazon, highlighted by celebrities such as pop star Sting, is closely linked to climate change. Every year, burning rain forests release millions of tons of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.
In addition, the Amazon is an important absorber of carbon dioxide, the World Wide Fund for Nature warned in a report released at the United Nations conference on climate change in Bali, Indonesia.
"The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed," said Daniel Nepstad, the Amazon-based scientist who wrote the report.
