If human stupidity destroys forests, artificial intelligence can save it

World Rainforest Day 2023: Conserve. Restore. Regenerate. This year’s theme captures the role that AI and Indigenous rights play in saving rainforests

June 22^nd: World Rainforest Day chosen and founded by the Rainforest Partnership

World Rainforest Day is observed on June 22^nd every year. This recurrence was created and founded by the Rainforest Partnership to highlight their work in protecting and restoring rainforests around the world. Not only to raise awareness about rainforests but also about all the biotic species that live in them. The organization is set to be looking at the both tropical and temperate rainforest habitats, studying and classifying the biodiversity, and closely watching at how human behavior is affecting the rainforest environment and the creatures that live within it. 

Based in Austin, Texas, the Rainforest Partnership helps educate communities in the United States about the role played by rainforests in climate protection while working to help rainforest communities in Latin America become economically self-sufficient. 

The main culprits of forest loss are typically agriculture, pasture for livestock production, mineral mining and increasing urbanization in uncontacted areas, dangerous activities that are entering the Amazon very strongly. The main drivers of deforestation remain illegal invasion and logging.

The reasons why we should protect and restore rainforests

The conjunct work of world organizations and conferences push the adoption of more environment-friendly policies from governments aimed at the protection and restoration of endangered rainforests. Here’s why: rainforests, filled with evergreen and laurel trees, are a dense carbon store. 

Compared to regular forests, rainforests have a high amount of rainfall, more than 80 inches a year. Moreover, rainforest’s local biomimicry has had a huge influence on biomedical science, helping us develop new treatments for diseases like cancer. As per a fact, a quarter of all modern medicines come from tropical forest plants. 

But it is also having an impact on physical sciences, engineering and technology: certain species of chameleons have in fact been the inspiration for vibrant new inks for 3D printing, and ants living in the Amazon for the algorithms of self-driving cars. 

Currently, of the world’s three largest tropical rainforests, Amazon, Daintree and Congo Basin, only the latter has enough standing forest to remain a strong net carbon sink.

A global movement in defense of forests: World Rainforest Movement (WRM)

Alongside the work of global organizations, the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) serves to strengthen the global movement in defence of forests. It is an international initiative created in order to fight deforestation and forest degradation, with headquarters in Paraguay. It was founded in 1986 by activists from around the world. 

Monthly, the WRM distributes an electronic bulletin in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese to more than 10,000 individuals and organizations in 131 countries around the world. The bulletin serves as an information dissemination tool of local struggles and on global processes which may affect local forests and peoples. 

The great Amazon, the largest rainforest in the world

Spanning nine South American countries, the Amazon rainforest is the largest rainforest in the world. A literal biodiversity hotspot and the world’s richest and most-varied biological reservoir, containing several million species of insects, plants, birds, and other forms of life, many still under observation by science. 

The Amazon rainforest is partitioned into protected areas, Indigenous territories and non-designated areas. There are two categories of protected areas: areas designated for biodiversity conservation, which subsequently have more forest cover and less deforestation pressure called strict protection, and the ones designated for sustainable use, where people are able to use its resources and sustainably manage nature. 

To this day, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has promised a crackdown on deforestation and to protect Indigenous people from the illegal enterprises exploiting the lands with the government data reporting a 40% reduction in land clearing when compared to the same period in 2022.

Not only that, but the Brazilian government is on its way to fulfill a commitment to completely end deforestation by 2030.

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The uncontacted Indigenous tribes are the most effective stewards of tropical rainforests

The Amazon has been inhabited by Indigenous groups for at least 11 200 years. Within the first 100 years of European colonization, this population decreased by a massive 90%. European explorers had brought with them illnesses like smallpox, measles, and the common cold that the native groups had no immunity to. 

Today, it’s not just disease that native groups have to fear, but the problems that arise from the legal and illegal exploitation of the forest, including drug trafficking, logging, rubber tapping, mining, ranching, and finally deforestation.

Indigenous tribes play a role in the maintenance of Rainforest areas

Amazonian Indigenous people are divided into about 400 tribes, each with its own language, culture and territory. There are still many uncontacted tribes that have had no contact at all.

Groups such as the Yanomamo, Kayapo, Awá-Guajá and Nukak have been living in the Amazon for thousands of years, slowly accumulating a detailed knowledge of the rainforest and methods to subsist from it. Studies report that these tribes play a vital role in the maintenance of these areas, as the ones they live in are the Amazon’s least-deforested. They spend their time collecting seeds, repairing what was deforested, contributing periodically to strengthen forest conservation. 

PrevisIA: The AI that could save the Amazon rainforest

PrevisIA is an artificial intelligence platform created by researchers at environmental nonprofit Imazon. Instead of trying to repair damage already done after the fact, PrevisIA works by finding a way to prevent deforestation from happening at all. 

In the APA (Environmental Protection Area) in the South-Eastern corner of the Brazilian Amazon, in the state of Pará, was individuated the forest in Triunfo do Xingu at highest risk of deforestation in 2023, with 271.52 sq km of forest in the conservation area expected to be lost by the end of the year.

Prodes, the annual government monitoring system for deforestation in the Amazon

Imazon is now working to establish partnerships with authorities across the region, with the aim of stopping deforestation before it starts. They explained that the model for studying and predicting geological approaches to a determined area focuses on looking at historical data from Prodes, the annual government monitoring system for deforestation in the Amazon, and then observing the variables that put the brakes on deforestation.

Of course PrevisIA needs a robust computational platform and the ability to update road maps more quickly to work efficiently. Since 2021 the team at Imazon has partnered with Microsoft and Fundo Vale, acquiring the cloud computing power they needed to run the AI algorithm for mapping roads.

World Rainforest Movement (WRM)

The World Rainforest Movement is an international initiative created to strengthen the global movement in defense of forests, in order to fight deforestation and forest degradation. It was founded in 1986 by activists from around the world.

Martina Tondo