Journals

   Still in Belem, we find our days filled with lecture after lecture, and while some are overwhelming and over my already overloaded head, some present enlightening information to perk up for.  Today, July 19th, 2007, we visit the Imazon NGO, which studies trends in agribusiness and logging in the Brazilian Amazon.       Dr. Paulo Barreto is our speaker.  We begin with introductory material, such as the statistics of the Amazon within Brazil's borders - it covers 9 states, encompasses 23 million people, 45 percent of which officially live in poverty.  The deforestation that occured between the years of 2000 and 2005 accounted for a staggering 42 percent of the world's net forest loss.  For an exceptionally short summation of how it got to this point - the loggers opened the frontier and the ranchers were quick to move in to exploit it, all the while the government failed to take notice.       Cattle ranching, he tells us, is how 80 percent of the deforested land is used, albeit quite inefficiently.  The growth of cattle herds is on the upswing at seven percent per year.  This growing rate is due to a combination of factors: competitive prices in a global market, diseases such as mad cow and foot and mouth, and the paving of transamazonian highways like BR-163 by the Brazilian government.  It should then come as no suprise that we learn Brazil has been the world's number one meat exporter since 2003, and the main reason for why they have recently just barely been on the outside of summits such as the G8.       Now with the ever-expanding international desire for soybeans the evolution of soybean plantations have taken over center-stage in the arguement for land protection in the Amazon.  Soybean production there has leaped from from 13 percent in 1990 to 30 percent in 2004.  In the past few years, however, there has been a backlash against soybeans coming from deforested areas, spearheaded by movements such as Greenpeace and small NGO's like Imazon working to establish control mechanisms against increasing protection.       There are many more facts I am leaving out, but the message is this: How do you reverse the trends that have been worn is so well by a rush to profit on the Amazon?  In this the global warming era, with the media swarm  surrounding it being the highest its ever been, how can country's such as Brazil arrive at a comfortable place of peace between economic gain and environmental loss.  How will these countries chose to treat this precious land knowing they stand to benefit tremendously off it in the immediate future?  Has the damage that's been done so far not enough to tell them their environment is more important than the money they seek to gain by its continued injury?  The real question seems to be, can the incentives to protect the earth manage to match those which already exist working towards its destruction?