The Brazilian rainforests are in the news again:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7399109.stm
There is a plan to develop the region to make it economically successful whilst at the same time satisfying environmental concerns. The man in charge of the plan is “Former Harvard law professor” Roberto Unger. He says:
“We do not see any contradiction in principle between an active economic project and the conservation of this treasure for humanity”
I’m glad he is so confident but I’m not, and what the hell is a law professor doing administering this plan anyway? The plan is to limit the number of trees that can be chopped down every year, and develop infrastructure. Sounds fine in principle, but that’s the legal logging. There is also illegal logging. The effort to prevent illegal logging is described here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7397782.stm
But unfortunately the strenuous efforts to prevent this are insufficient: deforestation rates went up at the end of 2007 and so far in 2008 too.
This is a very difficult situation. I can perfectly understand the locals’ wish to use the great and valuable tree resource they have in order to make money. But if they over-log the area, they deprive themselves of long-term income for short-term gain, destroy a treasure-trove of wildlife and have potentially serious impact on the climate of the whole planet. I have a bad feeling about this situation.
My title comes from Jah Wobble’s “Take Me to God” album. The track “No Change is Sexy” features a heavy stream-of-consciousness rant over intense music, and “I’ll Never See The Rainforest Anyway” occurs during it. Youtube let me down, so I had upload it myself with inappropriate images of waves - I should have used some forest pictures really, but I didn’t have any. It’s an excellent track and well worth a listen. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGxYcyIsdNo
Cheers, Tom.
Ryan407
I can't remember where and when I heard this, although I think there's a good chance it was on the news recently.
One man who I believe was Brazilian (although I can't remember if this is true either =/) commented on how it is funny that is usually the Western World and the United States who voice concern over too much deforestation in places like South America, as they on the whole have very few areas of forestry to even debate over. Despite the fact I can't remember exactly when or where it was said or who said it, I think the person raised a very interesting point. Maybe the Western World and the USA don't want to see Brazil make the same mistakes they did but the whole thing is just a little hypocritical in my opinion.
Don't get me wrong, I agree something should be done but I can definitely understand where the Brazilian decision makers are coming from when they use the 'why shouldn't we?' argument.