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Set deep in among the southern edge of the Amazon rainforest, the Xingu Indigenous Park seems isolated from the problems of the world.

But the tribal leaders here were pleased to welcome a British minister who will play a key role in this year’s summit in Copenhagen on climate change.

It seemed a long way from the corridors of Whitehall for Energy and Climate Minister Ed Miliband, but the issues confronting the world’s largest continuous rainforest have a much wider resonance.

In Brazil deforestation is responsible for more than half of carbon emissions, while across the world it is blamed for up to 20% of the gases that are said to be heating the planet.

“The cutting down of the forests is responsible for about a fifth of the world’s carbon emissions,” Mr Miliband told the BBC News website.

“That is more than the whole of the transport sector – cars, aeroplanes, and everything in the world put together.

“So it is absolutely critical that we get an agreement at Copenhagen that involves reducing those rates of deforestation.
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Crackdown against ‘environmental criminals’ follows Greenpeace report.

Some of the world’s top footwear brands, including Clarks, Adidas, Nike and Timberland, have demanded an immediate moratorium on destruction of the Amazon rainforest from their leather suppliers in Brazil.

The move is the first major development since the Guardian revealed a three-year undercover investigation by Greenpeace in June. The investigation said leading Brazilian suppliers of leather and beef for products sold in Britain had obtained cattle from farms involved in illegal deforestation.

“The decision is good news,” said Carlos Minc, Brazil’s environment minister. “With government pressure on one side and with the pressure of the consumer on the other, we have started to close in on [environmental] criminals.”
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A botanist has surveyed 100 woods where the plant life was recorded in detail in the 1930s. She has found dramatic differences including loss of diversity and character – and modern farming methods are to blame.

Woodland scenes in Britain 1935 and 2009. Photograph: Composite.

The gentle pleasures of a summer’s woodland walk have become darker and duller, thanks to fertiliser from farms and the ancient art of coppicing dying out.

The discovery came after botanist Sally Keith retraced the steps of the pioneering ecologist Professor Ronald Good, who cycled the lanes of Dorset in the 1930s, recording in great detail the plants he found. Of the 1,500 woodland sites Good noted, Keith revisited almost 100, as close to the day and month of the original survey as possible.
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