Feature Article - Natalia Carneiro

Amazonia's devastation

Located in South America, the Amazon Forest represents a big part of the continent. It’s present in nine countries: Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Equator, Suriname, Guiana and Guiana Francesa. The forest’s devastation began in 1970, when the military government decided to go in to the territory to avoid the risk of losing it. Since then the man has destroyed the forest in many ways. Nowdays the Amazon is being chased by Brazil’s economic advance with activities like cutting wood plantations, mineral extraction and hydroelectric.

The Amazon’s total deforestation in 1991 was 8,4% (426.400 km²), but nowadays it has reached 14,6% (739.928 km²). Mostly, the burns are illegal and were made to open space for cows and plantations, which the main is the soybean, that is responsible for 57% of the Brazilian emission of gases. From, 2000 to 2005, Brazil issued a total of 2,2 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. Beyond this, degradation can also be caused  by the illegal tree cutting, designated to the illegal trading.

One of the deforestation’s consequences is the extinction of different species. Many of them can help healing diseases, are used for feeding or as new raw material, are not known by the man and run the risk of been destroyed before the scientists discover them. Beyond affecting the biodiversity (the Amazon houses more than 30% of the mundial biodiversity), the deforestation affects, a lot, the local population’s life that without the resources diversity from the biggest river of the planet, find themselves without the possibility of granting their own survival, been dependents of the help from the government and from non-governmental organizations.

Although all these problems are still happening, we can see a significant decrease comparating with the past. The people environmental awareness is been alerted for the necessity of preservation. NGOs like Greenpeace, SOS Mata Atlântica, WWF, IPAM and many others, make campaigns and researches with the objective of publishing and making the sustainable development and the degradable areas recuperation easier. About the government activities, 19.440.402 hectares were converted into conservation unities in Amazon from 2002 until 2006, totalizating 29.921.322 hectares, the same of 9,98% of the territory.

It can be concluded that there’s a huge problem in our country, however, as we can see, there are many people working in solutions, but without all the population’s help this job Will be much harder or maybe impossible. We all should take part f the fight for Amazon’s salvation!

Natalia Carneiro de Castro