Analysis Of Unit Four Project: Deforestation In The Amazon
Nathan Updike
English 101
Unit Four Project: Deforestation in the Amazon The Amazon Jungle is the world’s largest tropical rainforest. It is nearly 6 million square kilometers in size and houses the widest variety of plant and animal life than any other place on the planet. It also is home to the second largest river on Earth, the Amazon River. The jungle is mostly in Brazil, but it also spreads to eight neighboring countries in South America; Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guyana. (Webmaster, “Amazon Jungle facts and history in brief”) There are believed to be around 6,000 different species of trees just in the Brazilian region of the Amazon. (Browder 247) Because of the mass amounts of plant …show more content…
life in the Amazonia, a great amount of oxygen is produced through photosynthesis. This creates more than 20% of the Earth 's total oxygen. It is why it is referred to as the "Lungs of the Planet". (Sanchez, “Amazon Rainforest Facts…”) With such a massive jungle that is so beneficial to the environment, it is hard to believe that anyone would want to alter or change it in any way.
The truth of this though is that we as humans are trying to industrialize and develop the Amazon more and more every day for our own purposes. We are deforesting the forest; also known as deforestation. Since 1980 more than 580,000 square kilometers (224,000 square miles) of the Amazon forest has been destroyed due to deforestation. (Butler, “Deforestation in the Amazon”) Deforestation has been a largely debated issue around the world for years, but most of the talk of deforestation involves the Amazon. Both sides of this issue have to be looked at before one can truly make an informed decision about whether or not this is a good direction to take for Brazil. The biggest reason for deforestation in the Amazon is the clearing of rainforest lands for cattle pastures. Today, Brazil is the world 's largest exporter and producer of beef. (Butler, “Deforestation in the Amazon”) So raising cattle is understandably a big deal for Brazil. A developing country like Brazil is always looking for new ways to advance and to generate more and more income for their country. It is only logical for them to want to keep expanding their beef production to better develop their country. This leads them to look to the …show more content…
rainforest. As I said before, the Amazon is an extremely vast jungle that occupies a lot of space in Brazil. This is why they are clearing rainforest land for cattle pastures. They just have so much of it. What I don’t think people who are completely against deforestation realize, is that although the jungle is a great natural resource, it is also somewhat of a large waste of space. By “waste” I do not mean that it has no purpose. I simply mean that maybe some of this ginormous jungle could be used for other things; or at least the land that it is on could. It is great to preserve something like the Amazon, but I am not sure whether or not all of it needs to be preserved. A great point that can be brought up to counteract this argument though is the possibility that through clearing for cattle pastures and alike, you could be destroying thousands of plants, animals, and microorganisms both known and unknown. The Amazon is so diverse and has such a great variety of organisms that all are not known yet. It is kind of a scary thought to think that just by clearing a small section of the jungle you could potentially be destroying an entire species. Now this is pretty unlikely, but it’s still a possibility. Another big business in Brazil is the logging of tropical hardwoods. Logging can generate a lot of money for developing countries like Brazil, and it only makes sense that the Brazilian government would try to utilize their large amount of natural resources to make some quick money. The government has tried to regulate the logging of the Amazon as much as possible, but most of their rules and regulations have been ignored:
However, there is significant evidence that illegal logging is quite widespread in Brazil. In recent years, Ibama—Brazil 's environmental enforcement agency—has made several large seizures of illegally harvested timber including one in September 2003 when 17 people were arrested for allegedly cutting 10,000 hectares worth of timber. (Butler, “Deforestation in the Amazon”) Even though the Brazilian government is letting these companies log in the jungle to make money, they actually do not see much of the profit themselves. Most of what is made goes to large multinational companies. These companies pay governments little in comparison to the actual value of what the timber is worth to have huge logging businesses in Brazil on massive areas of the rainforest. They then earn extra profit by gathering the timber in the most inexpensive way possible. (Taylor) Another leading cause of deforestation is commercial agriculture.
Commercial agriculture is the production of crops for sales. It usually involves the harvesting of things like wheat, tea, coffee, and cotton. In Brazil, the production of soy beans is growing rapidly. The video clip “Deforestation in Amazonia” talks about the effects of the soy bean business in the small town of Santarem. “The impact of soy beans is that secondary and primary forests were cleared to be taken place by soy bean fields, and so the small communities that were living along the road were bought out entirely by soy bean growers…” (Lorimer, “Deforestation in Amazonia”) In Santarem, the soy bean farmers came to plant their crops. Eventually this lead to the development of a soy bean port in Santarem in 2003. This port allowed massive ships to sail up the river and load up with thousands of tons of beans. By 2004 the rates of deforestation had doubled around Santarem. (Lorimer, “Deforestation in Amazonia”) For the business to keep expanding they needed to keep planting more and more fields. This lead to a large-scale deforestation around the town of Santarem and also brought a lot more people to the area. The last big contributing factor to deforestation in the amazon is subsistence farming.
Subsistence farming is basically the government’s way to get people to settle in to the land.
By tradition, wild lands and unsettled lands in the rainforest are free to those who clear the forest and till the soil. The government encourages poor farmers to settle on lands in the jungle. If one of these people is to stay on a single piece of land for more than five years, they then gain ownership of the land and the right to sell it. (Butler, “Deforestation in the Amazon”) The only problem is that none of these people can stay in one place for that long because they are so deprived and have to keep providing for their families. They also need to keep moving because the soil is bad almost everywhere in the Amazon, causing them relocate in search of new fresh soil to plant their crops. These farmers usually follow the logging companies down the roads and then turn what they left behind in to their
land.
Most of these settlers clear the land by burning. Once the land is cleared they began to plant their crops. After about a year or two the soil no longer holds the nutrients in it to produce more crops, so the settlers migrate further in to the deep Amazon forest. They usually leave behind fields of baked clay filled with stagnant pools of polluted water. (Taylor) This is how these people survive and it is not healthy for them or the land which they live on. They are constantly moving deeper and deeper in to the Amazon leaving behind completely unfertile soils that can’t really be used for anything. It may be a slow process, but it is still making an impact on the environment of the Amazon.
All of these reasons for and against deforestation are mostly valid. Deforestation in the Amazon is pretty justifiable, at least on a smaller scale, and not having deforestation in the Amazon can also make sense. The last point that I am going to bring up is that ultimately it is Brazil’s choice because it is their land. Were we as Americans any different in our colonization of North America? Not really. In fact, both colonization’s are pretty similar.
To begin with, when the Americans came to America and began to explore and own the land, they had to kick and destroy the Indian tribes that were already there. It didn’t matter that they had lived there forever because we had bought the land. The Brazil government is doing the same thing. One Brazilian official said that "not until all Amazonas is colonized by real Brazilians, not Indians, can we truly say we own it." (Taylor) I think that this is exactly what the Americans were thinking when they purchased the land of North America. They wanted to truly own it all. Another similarity is that both America and Brazil have made a call to the world to tell all that they have “land for the landless” (Taylor), which is almost exactly the call that Brazil has made in an attempt to get people to migrate and colonize in the Amazon. When the Americans began to colonize North America and make use of all of its natural resources, nobody saw it as an environmentally damaging thing. People saw it as just colonization. There was nobody saying that it was a bad decision for the environment to cut down nearly 90% of North America’s virgin forests. (Taylor) Same goes for other countries that have been developed for many years. Nowadays though, we label countries like Brazil as environmental villain’s and treat them as if it is really their fault if the environment becomes worse. When we made the environment “bad” in the first place! They are just trying to develop like the rest of the world has, but for some reason it seems like it is everybody else’s business to stick their noses in and tell Brazil how to handle it. It is kind of a frustrating thing. I do want Brazil to preserve their beautiful jungle lands, but when it really comes down to it, it is their choice. Not any other countries choice. I think that if there could be a happy-medium between utilizing the Amazon jungle and then preserving it that would be good; kind of how Americans have preserved National Forests. It all comes down to what Brazil wants to do with it. In the end, they will make the decision that is best for them, and not what is best for the world.
Work Cited
Browder, John O. “Public Policy and Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.” Public Policies and the Misuse of Forest Resources. Ed. Repetto, Robert, and Malcolm Gillis. Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 247-263. Print.
Butler, Rhett A. “Deforestation in the Amazon.” Mongabay. Mongabay, 20 May 2012. Web. 7 Nov. 2012.
Lorimer, Will. “Deforestation in Amazonia.” Online video clip. Atlantic Rising. Royal Geographic Society, n.d. Web. 7 Nov. 2012.
Sanchez, Roberto. “Amazon Rainforest Facts…” Unique-Southamerica-Travel-Experience. n.p., 22 Sept. 2006. Web. 9 Nov. 2012.
Taylor, Leslie. The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs. New York: Square One Publishers, Inc., 2004. Print.
Webmaster. “Amazon Jungle facts and history in brief.” Bernhardt. Bernhardt, 24 May 2009. Web. 9 Nov. 2012
English 101
Unit Four Project: Deforestation in the Amazon The Amazon Jungle is the world’s largest tropical rainforest. It is nearly 6 million square kilometers in size and houses the widest variety of plant and animal life than any other place on the planet. It also is home to the second largest river on Earth, the Amazon River. The jungle is mostly in Brazil, but it also spreads to eight neighboring countries in South America; Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guyana. (Webmaster, “Amazon Jungle facts and history in brief”) There are believed to be around 6,000 different species of trees just in the Brazilian region of the Amazon. (Browder 247) Because of the mass amounts of plant …show more content…
life in the Amazonia, a great amount of oxygen is produced through photosynthesis. This creates more than 20% of the Earth 's total oxygen. It is why it is referred to as the "Lungs of the Planet". (Sanchez, “Amazon Rainforest Facts…”) With such a massive jungle that is so beneficial to the environment, it is hard to believe that anyone would want to alter or change it in any way.
The truth of this though is that we as humans are trying to industrialize and develop the Amazon more and more every day for our own purposes. We are deforesting the forest; also known as deforestation. Since 1980 more than 580,000 square kilometers (224,000 square miles) of the Amazon forest has been destroyed due to deforestation. (Butler, “Deforestation in the Amazon”) Deforestation has been a largely debated issue around the world for years, but most of the talk of deforestation involves the Amazon. Both sides of this issue have to be looked at before one can truly make an informed decision about whether or not this is a good direction to take for Brazil. The biggest reason for deforestation in the Amazon is the clearing of rainforest lands for cattle pastures. Today, Brazil is the world 's largest exporter and producer of beef. (Butler, “Deforestation in the Amazon”) So raising cattle is understandably a big deal for Brazil. A developing country like Brazil is always looking for new ways to advance and to generate more and more income for their country. It is only logical for them to want to keep expanding their beef production to better develop their country. This leads them to look to the …show more content…
rainforest. As I said before, the Amazon is an extremely vast jungle that occupies a lot of space in Brazil. This is why they are clearing rainforest land for cattle pastures. They just have so much of it. What I don’t think people who are completely against deforestation realize, is that although the jungle is a great natural resource, it is also somewhat of a large waste of space. By “waste” I do not mean that it has no purpose. I simply mean that maybe some of this ginormous jungle could be used for other things; or at least the land that it is on could. It is great to preserve something like the Amazon, but I am not sure whether or not all of it needs to be preserved. A great point that can be brought up to counteract this argument though is the possibility that through clearing for cattle pastures and alike, you could be destroying thousands of plants, animals, and microorganisms both known and unknown. The Amazon is so diverse and has such a great variety of organisms that all are not known yet. It is kind of a scary thought to think that just by clearing a small section of the jungle you could potentially be destroying an entire species. Now this is pretty unlikely, but it’s still a possibility. Another big business in Brazil is the logging of tropical hardwoods. Logging can generate a lot of money for developing countries like Brazil, and it only makes sense that the Brazilian government would try to utilize their large amount of natural resources to make some quick money. The government has tried to regulate the logging of the Amazon as much as possible, but most of their rules and regulations have been ignored:
However, there is significant evidence that illegal logging is quite widespread in Brazil. In recent years, Ibama—Brazil 's environmental enforcement agency—has made several large seizures of illegally harvested timber including one in September 2003 when 17 people were arrested for allegedly cutting 10,000 hectares worth of timber. (Butler, “Deforestation in the Amazon”) Even though the Brazilian government is letting these companies log in the jungle to make money, they actually do not see much of the profit themselves. Most of what is made goes to large multinational companies. These companies pay governments little in comparison to the actual value of what the timber is worth to have huge logging businesses in Brazil on massive areas of the rainforest. They then earn extra profit by gathering the timber in the most inexpensive way possible. (Taylor) Another leading cause of deforestation is commercial agriculture.
Commercial agriculture is the production of crops for sales. It usually involves the harvesting of things like wheat, tea, coffee, and cotton. In Brazil, the production of soy beans is growing rapidly. The video clip “Deforestation in Amazonia” talks about the effects of the soy bean business in the small town of Santarem. “The impact of soy beans is that secondary and primary forests were cleared to be taken place by soy bean fields, and so the small communities that were living along the road were bought out entirely by soy bean growers…” (Lorimer, “Deforestation in Amazonia”) In Santarem, the soy bean farmers came to plant their crops. Eventually this lead to the development of a soy bean port in Santarem in 2003. This port allowed massive ships to sail up the river and load up with thousands of tons of beans. By 2004 the rates of deforestation had doubled around Santarem. (Lorimer, “Deforestation in Amazonia”) For the business to keep expanding they needed to keep planting more and more fields. This lead to a large-scale deforestation around the town of Santarem and also brought a lot more people to the area. The last big contributing factor to deforestation in the amazon is subsistence farming.
Subsistence farming is basically the government’s way to get people to settle in to the land.
By tradition, wild lands and unsettled lands in the rainforest are free to those who clear the forest and till the soil. The government encourages poor farmers to settle on lands in the jungle. If one of these people is to stay on a single piece of land for more than five years, they then gain ownership of the land and the right to sell it. (Butler, “Deforestation in the Amazon”) The only problem is that none of these people can stay in one place for that long because they are so deprived and have to keep providing for their families. They also need to keep moving because the soil is bad almost everywhere in the Amazon, causing them relocate in search of new fresh soil to plant their crops. These farmers usually follow the logging companies down the roads and then turn what they left behind in to their
land.
Most of these settlers clear the land by burning. Once the land is cleared they began to plant their crops. After about a year or two the soil no longer holds the nutrients in it to produce more crops, so the settlers migrate further in to the deep Amazon forest. They usually leave behind fields of baked clay filled with stagnant pools of polluted water. (Taylor) This is how these people survive and it is not healthy for them or the land which they live on. They are constantly moving deeper and deeper in to the Amazon leaving behind completely unfertile soils that can’t really be used for anything. It may be a slow process, but it is still making an impact on the environment of the Amazon.
All of these reasons for and against deforestation are mostly valid. Deforestation in the Amazon is pretty justifiable, at least on a smaller scale, and not having deforestation in the Amazon can also make sense. The last point that I am going to bring up is that ultimately it is Brazil’s choice because it is their land. Were we as Americans any different in our colonization of North America? Not really. In fact, both colonization’s are pretty similar.
To begin with, when the Americans came to America and began to explore and own the land, they had to kick and destroy the Indian tribes that were already there. It didn’t matter that they had lived there forever because we had bought the land. The Brazil government is doing the same thing. One Brazilian official said that "not until all Amazonas is colonized by real Brazilians, not Indians, can we truly say we own it." (Taylor) I think that this is exactly what the Americans were thinking when they purchased the land of North America. They wanted to truly own it all. Another similarity is that both America and Brazil have made a call to the world to tell all that they have “land for the landless” (Taylor), which is almost exactly the call that Brazil has made in an attempt to get people to migrate and colonize in the Amazon. When the Americans began to colonize North America and make use of all of its natural resources, nobody saw it as an environmentally damaging thing. People saw it as just colonization. There was nobody saying that it was a bad decision for the environment to cut down nearly 90% of North America’s virgin forests. (Taylor) Same goes for other countries that have been developed for many years. Nowadays though, we label countries like Brazil as environmental villain’s and treat them as if it is really their fault if the environment becomes worse. When we made the environment “bad” in the first place! They are just trying to develop like the rest of the world has, but for some reason it seems like it is everybody else’s business to stick their noses in and tell Brazil how to handle it. It is kind of a frustrating thing. I do want Brazil to preserve their beautiful jungle lands, but when it really comes down to it, it is their choice. Not any other countries choice. I think that if there could be a happy-medium between utilizing the Amazon jungle and then preserving it that would be good; kind of how Americans have preserved National Forests. It all comes down to what Brazil wants to do with it. In the end, they will make the decision that is best for them, and not what is best for the world.
Work Cited
Browder, John O. “Public Policy and Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.” Public Policies and the Misuse of Forest Resources. Ed. Repetto, Robert, and Malcolm Gillis. Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 247-263. Print.
Butler, Rhett A. “Deforestation in the Amazon.” Mongabay. Mongabay, 20 May 2012. Web. 7 Nov. 2012.
Lorimer, Will. “Deforestation in Amazonia.” Online video clip. Atlantic Rising. Royal Geographic Society, n.d. Web. 7 Nov. 2012.
Sanchez, Roberto. “Amazon Rainforest Facts…” Unique-Southamerica-Travel-Experience. n.p., 22 Sept. 2006. Web. 9 Nov. 2012.
Taylor, Leslie. The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs. New York: Square One Publishers, Inc., 2004. Print.
Webmaster. “Amazon Jungle facts and history in brief.” Bernhardt. Bernhardt, 24 May 2009. Web. 9 Nov. 2012