“地球之肺”仍在燃烧：虚惊一场or岌岌可危?

亚马逊地区正在经历一场史无前例的大火。郁郁葱葱的热带雨林已布满刺眼的火星，也灼痛了全世界人们的心。火情目前如何？到底是天灾还是人祸？人类将付出什么代价？让小Q带你一探究竟。

八月初至今，亚马逊地区的森林大火已持续燃烧了一个半月，这片670 万平方公里、世界上最大的亚马逊雨林在八月份单月的焚烧面积就高达250万公顷。

但最近一篇华盛顿邮报的文章提出，大火的实际情况并没有人们想象的那么糟糕。

....something unexpected happens when you map satellite data showing both the fires this year and those that have burned in the previous four years: The bulk of the forest remains almost entirely intact.

今年和过去四年火灾的卫星数据显示出一个出人意料的结果:亚马逊雨林的主体部分几乎完好无损。

Confused? That’s because the heart of the Amazon is not actually on fire. Instead, most of the fires are burning at the fringes of the forest. That’s where the real story, and the real solution to these fires, lie.

想不通吗?这是因为亚马逊雨林的中心地带并没有着火。大多数火灾发生在森林边缘地带。这才是真实的情况，也是解决这些火灾的真正办法所在。

下图放大了亚马逊州阿普伊镇的地图。第一张图片上的白色区域显示了之前被砍伐的森林区域。第二幅图上的黄色表示的是上个月发生火灾的区域。火灾发生的大部分区域与之前被砍伐的森林区域重叠，这表示大部分火灾发生的区域不在森林里，而是在森林的边缘。

虽然还无法完全确定雨林核心是否受到了伤害，但大火造成的损失无疑是巨大的。在这场大火中，已有超过4 万种植物、1,300 种鸟类、426 种哺乳动物的生存备受威胁。

专家指出，根据土壤被烧毁的程度、灾损区域和受保护的森林之间的距离，以及气候变化等不同的因素，被大火吞噬的森林，至少要20、30 年，甚至数百年的光景才能复原。

其中气候变化因素更是极难预测和控制，如果全球暖化，温度过高，亚马逊将不能产生足够的雨水来保持雨林；环境变得太热，雨林可能变成草原。

Yes, but some areas have suffered far more than usual. In the worst-affected Brazilian state of Amazonas, the peak day this month was 700% higher than the average for the same date over the past 15 years. In other states, the amount of ash and other particulates in August has hit the highest level since 2010.

亚马逊地区的确经常发生火灾，但今年一些地区遭受的损失格外严重。在受影响最严重的巴西亚马逊州，本月的峰值比过去15年同期的平均水平高出700%。在其他州，8月份的火山灰和其他颗粒物含量达到了2010年以来的最高水平。

由于新政府一直在积极鼓励农业活动和发展，亚马逊地区非法砍伐森林的执法力度也大大减弱，今年的火灾比起去年同期多了80%。下图反映了2003以来火灾发生的频率。

Most of the fires are agricultural, either smallholders burning stubble after harvest, or farmers clearing forest for cropland. Illegal land-grabbers also destroy trees so they can raise the value of the property they seize. But they are manmade and mostly deliberate. Unlike the huge recent blazes in Siberia and Alaska, the Amazon fires are very unlikely to have been caused by lightning.

大多数火灾是农业生产造成的，一些小农户在收割庄稼后焚烧秸秆，或者一些农民为了获得更多的农田而砍伐森林。还有一些非法土地掠夺者，他们摧毁森林来提高他们所掠夺的土地价值。这些情况都是人为的，并且大多数都是蓄意为之。不同于最近西伯利亚和阿拉斯加的大火，亚马逊大火不太可能是由闪电引起的。

Jair Bolsonaro has made things a lot worse by weakening the environment agency, attacking conservation NGOs and promoting the opening of the Amazon to mining, farming and logging. 

此前，巴西总统雅伊尔•博尔索纳罗削弱了环境署的权力，攻击提倡环保的非政府组织，并推动亚马逊向矿业、农业和伐木业开发，他的种种措施让情况持续恶化。

The far-right leader has dismissed satellite data on deforestation and fired the head of the space agency. But it is not solely his fault. The agricultural lobby is powerful in Brazil and it has steadily eroded the protection system that was so successful from 2005-2014. Deforestation crept up in the past five years under the previous presidents Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer. The rate has accelerated rapidly in the first eight months of Bolsonaro’s rule. But this is not just about him, politics or Brazil. There are also huge fires in Bolivia, which has a leftwing populist president.

这位极右翼的领导人驳斥了与毁林有关的卫星数据，并解雇了航天局局长。但这不仅仅是他一个人的过错。农业游说团体在巴西很有影响力，他们不断侵蚀在2005-2014年间成功运作的保护体系。过去五年里，在前总统迪尔玛•罗塞夫和米歇尔•特梅尔的领导下，森林砍伐悄然增多。在博尔索纳罗执政的头8个月，这一速度迅速加快。

但这不仅仅是他个人、他的政策和巴西一个国家的事情。玻利维亚也发生了大火，而该国总统是一位左翼民粹主义者。

亚马逊大火的影响究竟有多大？

亚马逊有超过6000亿棵大树，它们每一天，都能吸收土壤里的水分，通过“蒸腾作用”，将水分从树叶释放到大气中，足足200亿吨水。不仅仅是土壤中的水分，似乎全世界的水汽都逃不过亚马逊的法眼。大西洋海面的水蒸气率先被吸引到大陆上，而后与各路水汽在空中汇集成了一条看不见的大河，生生不息，普降甘霖。

Carlos Nobre is a University of Sao Paulo climate scientist. He said a better way to think about the Amazon's role is as a sink, taking heat-trapping carbon dioxide, or CO2, from the atmosphere.Currently, the world is releasing around 36 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. And the Amazon absorbs about five percent of the CO2 making it important in preventing climate change.

保罗大学的气候科学家卡洛斯•诺布雷认为，要更好的描述亚马逊的作用，我们可以将其看作一个水槽，这个水槽能够吸收大气中吸热的二氧化碳。目前，全球每年都向大气中排放大约360亿公吨的二氧化碳。亚马逊森林吸收了其中5%的二氧化碳，对预防气候变化起到了重要作用。

In July, deforestation spiked to a level not seen in more than a decade. According to preliminary satellite data from Brazil’s space agency, trees were being cleared at the rate of five football pitches every minute. Over the single month, 2,254 sq km (870 sq miles) were lost, a rise of 278% on the same month last year. Scientists say this year could be the first for 10 years in which 10,000 sq km of Amazon are lost.

今年7月，森林砍伐的剧烈程度达到了十多年来的最高水平。巴西航天局的原始卫星数据显示，每分钟就会有五个足球场面积大小的树林被砍伐。仅在一个月之内就失去了2254平方公里(870平方英里)的树林，比去年同期增长了278%。科学家表示，今年可能是10年来首次有1万平方公里的亚马逊雨林消失。

这场大火虽说不会减少氧气的供给，但燃烧排放了上百万公吨的二氧化碳和大量热量，同时也大面积毁坏了吸收二氧化碳等各种吸热气体及温室气体的森林。温室气体，将会导致全球气候变化，而这种变化会让全世界各地的极端天气更加频繁，旱涝灾害更难预测，也让森林和草原上的野火烧的更久、更旺、更难扑灭。每倒下一棵树，恶性循环就增强一分。

有树木时，水分在土壤、树木、大气间不断循环；没有树木时，降下的雨水无法回到空中，雨水就越来越少。而降雨减少会带来怎样的严重后果？

Ecologist Dan Nepstad has studied the Amazon for more than 30 years. He said,“You know, really, every time a little droplet of water leaves a leaf and goes into vapor, it's absorbing energy and it's cooling things down. And the Amazon is so big that if we lose it, it's going to change the way air and energy move around the planet, and that means our climate will change. For me, that's something that really ties us to the health of the Amazon wherever we are on the planet.”

生态学家丹•斯泰德已经做了30多年对亚马逊地区的研究。他说道：“真的，每一次，哪怕是一小滴水从一片叶子中蒸发出来，它就在吸收能量，并起到降温的作用。而亚马逊森林是如此之大，一旦我们失去它，对于我来说，空气和能量在地球上的循环方式将会改变，而这也意味着我们的气候会变化。仅此一点就能将所有人都和亚马逊的健康紧紧联系在一起，无论你来自这个地球的何方。”

Deforestation makes rains less frequent, extending the dry season. Carlos Nobre estimates that if 20 to 25 percent of the forest were destroyed, the dry season would expand. That would mean the area would no longer be a rainforest, but a tropical savannah, or an area with grasslands and few trees. Nobre added, "Unfortunately, we are already seeing signs of the Amazon turning into a savannah."

烧林减少了降雨的频率，这就延长了旱季。卡洛斯•诺布雷估计，如果20%到25%的森林被毁坏，旱季就会增加。这将意味着亚马逊不再是一个雨林，而是一个热带无树大草原，或者是一片只有草原、几乎没有树木的地方。卡洛斯补充到：“不幸的是，我们已经看到了亚马逊雨林变成无树大草原的征兆。”

This forest in Brazil’s Acre stata has beeen cut and partially burned to make way for cattle to graze.(LightRocket)

Hailing from Nova Mamoré, a small town 186 miles away, where the fires are even more intense than around Porto Velho, de Oliveira says she is particularly worried about her nine-year-old son inhaling the dirty air.

de Oliveria来自186英里外的新马莫雷，那里的火势比韦柳港更为严重，她说她十分担心她九岁的孩子会吸入受污染的空气。

Residents here don’t appear to let the smoky air stop them from going about their normal lives. On Thursday night, a young crowd at an outside bar attached to the main shopping mall in Porto Velho sang along loudly to a live band as the smoke whirled around the street lights. The title of the song? “Everybody will suffer.”

这里的居民的日常生活似乎没有受到火灾烟雾的影响，在周四晚上，在靠近位于Porto Velho的大商场周围的一个露天酒吧里，一群年轻人随着乐队大声高歌，街灯旁烟雾缭绕。这首歌的歌名？“无人幸免”。

一些媒体声称，这场大火背后的原因之一是中美贸易战。中国在停止从美国进口大豆之后，大量增加了对巴西的大豆进口，从而加剧了巴西砍伐雨林种植大豆的步伐。事实果真如此吗？

CBS是这样报道此事的：

Although the reasons behind this environmental calamity are complex, including local politics and industrial-scale plundering for profit, the U.S. also gave Brazil commercial incentives to raze parts of the Amazon when the Trump administration last year jacked up tariffs on Chinese imports. China, the world's largest soybean buyer, subsequently stopped its purchases of American soybeans. U.S. farmers put their crop in storage, while China was forced to look elsewhere for 30 million to 40 million tons of seeds.

尽管这一环境灾难背后的原因很复杂，包括当地政策和为盈利而进行大规模掠夺的工业界，但在特朗普政府去年提高对中国进口商品的关税时，美国却向巴西提供了商业激励措施，鼓励其开垦亚马逊的部分地区。中国，作为世界上最大的大豆进口国，随后就停止了对美国大豆的购买。美国农民只有将作物储藏起来，而中国也被迫从其他地方寻找购买3000万到4000万吨大豆种子。

That place turned out to be Brazil, which went from exporting soybeans to China for half the year to selling them year-round. From May 2018 through this April, China imported 71 million tons of soybeans from Brazil — an amount equal to all Chinese soybean imports five years ago, according to Bloomberg.

这个地方就是巴西，它对中国的大豆销售已从半年变为全年销售。据彭博社报道，从2018年5月到今年4月，中国从巴西进口了7100万吨大豆，相当于五年前中国大豆总进口量。

Bloomberg也发表过类似观点文章：

“The danger of the current situation is that China’s hunger for soy may derail the halting recent progress in ending deforestation.”

“当前形势的危险在于中国对大豆的渴求，这可能会破坏近期停止砍伐森林的进程。”

二者之间的联系真的成立吗？

An article Is Trump’s trade war to blame for the Amazon wildfires? That’s a reach in politifact website, which is a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others on its Truth-O-Meter., analyzed in this way.

一篇名为《亚马逊大火真的该归咎于特朗普的贸易战吗？太扯了 》文章出自政治真相新闻网（一个美国事实核查网站，对一些官员或者其他人的说法进行准确核实）。文章分析道：

We reached out to experts from a variety of fields — economics, trade, politics, environmental sciences — who told is that no single factor alone is responsible for the uptick in Amazon wildfires this year.

我们联系了来自不同领域的专家——经济、贸易、政治、环境科学——他们说，今年亚马逊森林的迅猛大火不是单一因素造成的。

"The main economic reason for the fires is pent-up demand — under previous Brazilian presidents — for new acreage for cattle and crops," said Gary Hufbauer, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which supports free trade. "The Bolsonaro government relaxed controls and the burning escalated.

"While I deplore Trump’s trade war," he said, "I think the tie to Amazon fires is remote."

支持自由贸易的彼得森国际经济研究所研究员Gary Hufbauer表示:“火灾的主要经济原因是，在前几任巴西总统任内，人们对新耕地的需求被压抑。博尔索纳罗政府却放松了控制，导致火势升级。”

“虽然我谴责特朗普的贸易战，”他说，“但我认为与亚马逊大火的联系很遥远。

U.S.-Chinese trade tensions have expanded South American farmers’ opportunity to sell soybeans in China, which in turn has created an economic incentive to burn Amazon land so it can be used for crop production. But a more direct cause of the surge in wildfires is the loosening of deforestation rules under the current Brazilian government that favor the country’s agricultural and business interests.

中美之间的贸易紧张关系增加了南美农民向中国销售大豆的机会，转而又创造了一种经济动机，促使他们烧掉亚马逊的土地，以便用于农作物生产。但森林大火激增的一个更直接的原因是，在当前巴西政府的领导下，政府着眼于国家的农业和商业利益，而对于保护雨林的规定放松了警惕。

We rate this False.

该网站最终的判断是：这样的联系是不成立的。

About 80% of the Amazon is still intact. "We are at an early stage where we can still do lots to save the forest," says Prof Malhi. But he says that climate change and deforestation are a dangerous combination. A reduction in rainfall would create dry conditions for fires to spread. If 30-40% of the Amazon was cleared, then there would be a danger of changing the forest's entire climate, he says.

目前大约80%的亚马逊雨林仍然完好无损。“现在还处于早期阶段，我们仍然可以做很多事情来拯救森林，”马尔希教授表示。

但是他说，气候变化和森林砍伐是一个危险的组合。降雨量的减少将为火灾的蔓延创造干燥这一条件。马尔希教授还说，如果30-40%的亚马逊雨林被砍伐，那么整个森林的气候就有可能被改变。

"The forest takes around 20-40 years if it's allowed to regenerate," says Prof Malhi. Prof Malhi is worried that if the Amazon is hit by fires every few years large parts of it will shift to a degraded shrubby state. "Once you've had multiple fires there's the chance of permanent damage," he says. 

“森林再生需要20-40年，如果它还能再生的话。”马尔希教授说。他担心，如果亚马逊每隔几年就发生火灾，其大部分地区将会退化成灌木状态。“一旦发生多次火灾，就有可能造成永久性损害。”