Deathwatch

观命术

Brazil has the power to save Earth’s greatest rainforest—or destroy it

巴西有能力拯救或摧毁地球上最大的雨林

Although its cradle is the sparsely wooded savannah, humankind has long looked to forests for food, fuel, timber and sublime inspiration. Still a livelihood for 1.5bn people, forests maintain local and regional ecosystems and, for the other 6.2bn, provide a—fragile and creaking—buffer against climate change. Now droughts, wildfires and other human-induced changes are compounding the damage from chainsaws. In the tropics, which contain half of the world’s forest biomass, tree-cover loss has accelerated by two-thirds since 2015; if it were a country, the shrinkage would make the tropical rainforest the world’s third biggest carbon-dioxide emitter, after China and America.

尽管它的发源地是树木稀少的大草原，但人类长期以来一直从森林中寻找食物、燃料、木材和崇高的灵感。森林仍然是15亿人的生计，维持着当地和地区的生态系统，同时也扮演着为另外62亿人应对气候变化提供的脆弱且虚弱的缓冲装置。如今，干旱、野火和其他人为因素导致的改变正在使链锯造成的破坏变得更加严重。热带地区的森林生物量占全球的一半，自2015年以来，森林覆盖率的下降速度加快了三分之二;如果将森林区域比作一个国家，那么森林覆盖率的减少将使得这个热带雨林将成为世界上第三大二氧化碳排放国，仅次于中国和美国。

词汇

Cradle/摇篮；发源地

Savannah/热带和亚热带草原

Sublime/庄严的；令人崇敬的

Fragile/  脆的；易碎的

Creaking/（过劳或紧张）显得虚弱

Compound/混合；恶化，加重

Tropics/热带地区

Biomass/（单位面积或体积内的）[生态] 生物量

Shrinkage/收缩；减低

 

Nowhere are the stakes higher than in the Amazon basin— and not just because it contains 40% of Earth’s rainforests and harbours 10-15% of the world’s terrestrial species. South America’s natural wonder may be perilously close to the tipping-point beyond which its gradual transformation into something closer to steppe cannot be stopped or reversed, even if people lay down their axes. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, is hastening the process—in the name, he claims, of development. The ecological collapse his policies may precipitate would be felt most acutely within his country’s borders, which encircle 80% of the basin— but would go far beyond them, too. It must be averted.

没有什么地方比亚马逊盆地把持的筹码更大，不仅仅是因为它囊括了地球上40%的雨林以及包含了世界上10-15%的陆地物种。南美洲的自然奇观可能正危险地接近转折点，一旦超过临界点，即使人们放下手中的斧头，它逐渐向更接近草原模式的转变的过程也无法停止或逆转。巴西总统博尔索纳罗正以发展的名义加速这一进程。他的政策而可能引发的猛然间的生态崩溃，在他的国家边界内感受最为强烈，这个国家包围了了亚马逊盆地的80%的面积，甚至还远高于这个数据。人们必须避免生态崩溃的情况发生。

词汇

Basin/水池；流域；盆地

Harbour/为……提供住所（或动物栖息地）

Terrestrial/陆生的

Perilously/危机四伏地；充满危险地

Precipitate/使（坏事等）突然发生

 

 

Humans have been chipping away at the Amazon rainforest since they settled there well over ten millennia ago. Since the 1970s they have done so on an industrial scale. In the past 50 years Brazil has relinquished 17% of the forest’s original extent, more than the area of France, to road- and dambuilding, logging, mining, soyabean farming and cattle ranching. After a seven-year government effort to slow the destruction, it picked up in 2013 because of weakened enforcement and an amnesty for past deforestation. Recession and political crisis further pared back the government’s ability to enforce the rules.

自从一万多年前人类在亚马逊雨林定居以来，他们就一直在蚕食雨林。自上世纪70年代以来，它们一直在工业规模上这么做。在过去的50年里，巴西放手了17%的原始森林面积，这已是超过了法国的面积，用于道路建设、筑坝、伐木、采矿、大豆种植和畜牧业。政府花费了7年的努力来减缓破坏速度，但在2013年由于执法力度减弱和对过去毁林行为的赦免，人们再度拿起破坏森林的斧子。经济衰退和政治危机进一步削弱了政府执行规则的能力。

词汇

Millennia/千年期

Relinquish/放弃；放手

Dam/水库；水坝

amnesty/大赦，特赦

pare back/缩减；消减

 

Now Mr Bolsonaro has gleefully taken a buzz saw to them. Although congress and the courts have blocked some of his efforts to strip parts of the Amazon of their protected status, he has made it clear that rule-breakers have nothing to fear, despite the fact that he was elected to restore law and order. Because 70-80% of logging in the Amazon is illegal, the destruction has soared to record levels. Since he took office in January, trees have been disappearing at a rate of over two Manhattans a week.

现在，博尔索纳罗先生高兴地把拿起锯子的权利还给了他们。尽管国会和法院限制了他“开发”亚马逊部分受保护地位地区的“行动”，但他明确表示，尽管他当选总统是为了恢复法律和秩序，可是违法者没有什么可害怕的。由于亚马逊地区70-80%的伐木是非法的，破坏已经飙升到创纪录的水平。自他1月份上任以来，树木以每周超过两个曼哈顿的速度消失。

 

The Amazon is unusual in that it recycles much of its own water. As the forest shrivels, less recycling takes place. At a certain threshold, that causes more of the forest to wither so that, over a matter of decades, the process feeds on itself. Climate change is bringing the threshold closer every year as the forest heats up. Mr Bolsonaro is pushing it towards the edge. Pessimists fear that the cycle of runaway degradation may kick in when another 3-8% of the forest vanishes—which, under Mr Bolsonaro, could happen soon. There are hints the pessimists may be correct (see Briefing). In the past 15 years the Amazon has suffered three severe droughts. Fires are on the rise.

亚马逊河的不同寻常之处在于，它的大部分水都是循环利用的。随着森林的萎缩，回收利用就会减少。一旦达到一特定阈值，这将因此导致更多的森林枯萎，而在过去几十年的时间里，这个过程是一种作用于雨林自身的自我调节。随着森林温度的升高，气候变化正使这一门槛逐年逼近。博尔索纳罗正将其推向边缘。悲观主义者担心，当另外3-8%的森林消失时，失控的退化循环可能会开始——在博尔索纳罗的领导下，这一现象可能很快就会发生。有迹象表明悲观主义者可能是正确的。在过去的15年里，亚马逊遭受了三次严重的干旱。火灾在增加。

词汇

Wither/枯萎；凋谢

Brazil’s president dismisses such findings, as he does science more broadly. He accuses outsiders of hypocrisy—did rich countries not fell their own forests?—and, sometimes, of using environmental dogma as a pretext to keep Brazil poor. “The Amazon is ours,” the president thundered recently. What happens in the Brazilian Amazon, he thinks, is Brazil’s business.

巴西总统对这类现象不屑一顾，他在更广泛的科学领域也是如此。他指责外人虚伪——“难道富裕国家没有砍伐自己的森林吗?”，“而且，（西方国家）有时还会以环境教条为借口，让巴西继续贫穷下去。”“亚马逊是我们的，”总统最近怒吼道。他认为，巴西亚马逊发生的一切都是巴西的事情。

词汇

Hypocrisy/虚伪；伪善

Dogma/教条，教理；武断的意见

Pretext/借口；托辞

Except it isn’t. A “dieback” would directly hurt the seven other countries with which Brazil shares the river basin. It would reduce the moisture channelled along the Andes as far south as Buenos Aires. If Brazil were damming a real river, not choking off an aerial one, downstream nations could consider it an act of war. As the vast Amazonian store of carbon burned and rotted, the world could heat up by as much as 0.1°C by 2100—not a lot, you may think, but the preferred target of the Paris climate agreement allows further warming of only 0.5°C or so.

除了它不是。“萎缩”将直接伤害与巴西共享这条河流域的其他7个国家。它将减少沿安第斯山脉向南输送到布宜诺斯艾利斯的水分。如果巴西要在一条真正的河流上筑坝，而不是阻塞一条空中河流，下游国家可能会认为这是一种战争行为。随着亚马逊地区大量碳的燃烧和（植被）腐烂，到2100年，全球气温将升高0.1摄氏度——你可能认为这不是很多，但《巴黎气候协定》的首选目标只允许气温进一步升高0.5摄氏度左右。

 

Mr Bolsonaro’s other arguments are also flawed. Yes, the rich world has razed its forests. Brazil should not copy its mistakes, but learn from them instead as, say, France has, by reforesting while it still can. Paranoia about Western scheming is just that. The knowledge economy values the genetic information sequestered in the forest more highly than land or dead trees. Even if it did not, deforestation is not a necessary price of development. Brazil’s output of soyabeans and beef rose between 2004 and 2012, when forest-clearing slowed by 80%. In fact, aside from the Amazon itself, Brazilian agriculture may be deforestation’s biggest victim. The drought of 2015 caused maize farmers in the central Brazilian state of Mato Grosso to lose a third of their harvest.

博尔索纳罗的其他论点也有缺陷。的确，发达国家已经把森林夷为平地。但巴西不应该效仿他们的错误，而是应该像法国那样，趁现在为时不晚重新造林，从中吸取教训。但他们对西方阴谋的偏执的认识表达出的反映就是这样。知识经济包括与世隔绝的树林里所包含的遗传信息，这比陆上或死去的树木更加珍贵。即使没有，砍伐森林也不是发展的必要代价。2004年至2012年间，巴西的大豆和牛肉产量上升，当时森林砍伐速度放缓了80%。事实上，除了亚马逊本身，巴西农业可能是森林砍伐的最大受害者。2015年的干旱导致巴西中部马托格罗索州的玉米农民损失了三分之一的收成。

词汇

Raze/夷为平地；破坏

Paranoia/偏执狂，妄想狂

Sequester/使隔绝；使隐退；没收，扣押

Maize/玉米

 

For all these reasons, the world ought to make clear to Mr Bolsonaro that it will not tolerate his vandalism. Food companies, pressed by consumers, should spurn soyabeans and beef produced on illegally logged Amazonian land, as they did in the mid-2000s. Brazil’s trading partners should make deals contingent on its good behaviour. The agreement reached in June by the eu and Mercosur, a South American trading bloc of which Brazil is the biggest member, already includes provisions to protect the rainforest. It is overwhelmingly in the parties’ interest to enforce them. So too for China, which is anxious about global warming and needs Brazilian agriculture to feed its livestock. Rich signatories of the Paris agreement, who pledged to pay developing ones to plant carbonconsuming trees, ought to do so. Deforestation accounts for 8% of global greenhouse-gas emissions but attracts only 3% of the aid earmarked for combating climate change.

基于所有这些原因，世界应该向博尔索纳罗先生表明，世界不会容忍他的破坏行为。在消费者的压力下，食品公司应该像本世纪头十年中期那样，拒收在亚马逊非法采伐的土地上生产大豆和牛肉。巴西的贸易伙伴应该视其良好表现而定交易。今年6月，欧盟与南美贸易集团南方共同市场(Mercosur)达成协议，其中已包括保护热带雨林的条款。巴西是该集团最大的成员国。强制执行这些协议绝对符合各方的利益。对中国来说也是如此，中国担心全球变暖，同时也需要巴西的农业来喂养牲畜。《巴黎协定》的富裕签署国承诺向发展中国家支付种植碳消耗树木的费用，他们应该这样做。森林砍伐占全球温室气体排放的8%，但只吸引了3%定向款的用于应对气候变化的援助。

词汇

Spurn/唾弃；冷落；一脚踢开

Contingent/依情况而变的

Bloc/集团

Deforestation/采伐森林，森林开伐

Earmark/指定

The wood and the trees

树林和树木

 

If there is a green shoot in Mr Bolsonaro’s scorched-earth tactics towards the rainforest, it is that they have made the Amazon’s plight harder to ignore—and not just for outsiders. Brazil’s agriculture minister urged Mr Bolsonaro to stay in the Paris agreement. Unchecked deforestation could end up hurting Brazilian farmers if it leads to foreign boycotts of Brazilian farm goods. Ordinary Brazilians should press their president to reverse course. They have been blessed with a unique planetary patrimony, whose value is intrinsic and life-sustaining as much as it is commercial. Letting it perish would be a needless catastrophe.

如果说博尔索纳罗先生对热带雨林“焦土策略”中有一个绿色的亮点，那就是它们使得亚马逊的困境更难被忽视——而且不仅仅是对局外人而言。巴西农业部长敦促博尔索纳罗留在巴黎协议中。如果无限制地砍伐森林导致外国抵制巴西农产品，最终可能会伤害巴西农民。普通的巴西人应该敦促他们的总统改变路线。他们有幸拥有独一无二的地球遗产，其价值不仅具有商业价值，而且具有内在价值和维持生命的价值。让它灭亡将是一场不必要的灾难。

词汇

scorched-earth tactics/焦土战术

Patrimony/遗产