Deforestation In The Amazon Rainforest

Deforestation presents in an abundance of ways, including fires, clear-cutting for agriculture, ranching and development, unsustainable logging for timber, and degradation due to climate change. The foremost reason of deforestation in Latin America is the requirement for food, fuel, shelter, and foreign exchange. Year on year, a space of tropical forest the size of Great Britain is "converted" from an area equal to the size of Europe. Ever since 1950, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), half of the world 's forests have disappeared. “Latin America has lost 37 percent of its tropical forests,” says the FAO. As more and more of Latin American forest are degraded, more and more detrimental effects are being seen. Deforestation is changing a number of resources for tribal groups, altering their way of life, temperatures are increasing at a dangerous rate because of a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, habitats and species such as plants and wildlife are being annexed due to the destructive effects of deforestation. Deforestation is inarguably helpful to supplying money to countries that sell the products from the forest, but huge wealth being generated from the forests comes with large-scale environmental and social costs. The local residences are not benefitting and the funds are being siphoned out of the region.

Brazil’s rainforests and America’s rainforests are great examples of the negative effect that deforestation has on these specific areas. One of the rising challenges in our rapidly growing world is the destruction of rainforests and how it is slowly ruining the world that we live in. Deforestation has a lot of destructive impacts on the environment that is surrounding us, one of the most important being its effect on the climate. The fast rise in the world’s population, calling for high demand of resources, is only hastening the effects of deforestation, which can hopefully be put an end to through the enforcement of a handful of simple, key, and sustainable solutions.

Deforestation poses an alarming threat to Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, and it has been a serious concern for over 40 years. For thousands of years, the abundant, valuable resources in the Amazon were familiar only to the indigenous people of the region. In the 1500’s, before European colonization of Brazil, there were an estimated six to nine million individuals part of different cultures that made up a rich Amazonian society (“History”). Surrounded by the luxuriant rainforest and its natural resources, these indigenous tribes were able to thrive by utilizing the resources without destroying their habitat. After European emigration, the government of Brazil exploited the value of the Amazon’s resources in the twentieth century. In the 1970’s, the Brazilian government discovered the “untapped source of boundless potential” hiding in the Amazon and began using incentives to persuade settlers to develop its resources (Casey). Once economists realized the importance of the resources found within the rainforest, European pioneers set out to transform the Amazon into their home. By endorsing colonization, the government could not only boost the country’s economy, but also gain control over Brazil’s vast territory. The government supported migration to the rainforest and campaigned for the construction of infrastructure (“History”). In concurrence, the development of roads such as the Trans-Amazonian Highway, a 2,000 mile road built in 1972, granted people and machinery entrance to

However, due to more people searching for plots there is greater pressure on the amount of available land. The logging industry is responsible for a relatively small level of deforestation, accounting for 3% in Brazil. Consequently, all these activity contribute together to the rapid loss of what is left of the rainforest and a large proportion of the world’s biodiversity. All of the resources that the rainforest provides could be lost in the next 40 years.

Today, the total percentage of forest cover of the earth is approximately thirty percent (“Deforestation”). That is about nine percent of the world’s total surface. The largest rainforest is the Amazon River Basin, located in South America. The Amazon is home to many species of animals, insects, plants and trees. Many of the trees and plants in the Amazon produce about twenty percent of the oxygen on earth, and absorb carbon. However, the Amazon is decreasing in size every day due to the ongoing deforestation of the land. Deforestation is when the forest of the land are cleared or destroyed, in order to be used for other actions (“Deforestation”). The Amazon is twenty percent less than it was about forty years ago (Wallace). In just about

This policy memo addresses the development and expansion of the cattle ranching industry in Brazil, which has contributed to the mass deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon in the last 40 years. It exposes the regional and global consequences to deforestation and provides strategies for the Brazilian government to sustainably manage cattle ranching industries while protecting the future of the Amazon. The rainforest ecosystem is an immense reserve of natural recourses that is far more valuable than the beef produced on Brazilian cattle ranches. Not only does the rainforest create habitat for up to 65% of the world’s biodiversity, but when harvested sustainably, it provides humans with an abundance of spices, foods, oils, medicines

The Amazon Rainforest is a mighty jungle filled with an array of exotic species of wood, like mahogany, and rich natural resources such as gold, copper, tin, and nickel. Naturally, people want to make a profit, but the rainforest’s trees stand in the way. Logging is the main source of deforestation. Every year, millions of trees are cut down to be made into timber. Many times, these logging operations are illegal. These operations will keep exploiting the Amazon for its exotic timber, not caring that many of these species of plants are either rare, or help support rare species and ecosystems. Mining also creates deforestation, but not as severely as logging. Trees are cut down to make way for mining operations that dig for non renewable resources like copper and gold. Trees are also used as charcoal to help produce pig iron. A third cause of deforestation is agriculture. Cattle ranches and soy plantations are created where the Amazon Rainforest once stood. As people expand their farms, they must cut down the areas they now use for farming. Trees are also cut to make space for animal pens. Governments also contribute to the deforestation problem by building roads and creating infrastructure. Although these roads help with communication and navigation, they cut through the rainforest, and often help illegal loggers create new roads from their operations in the jungle to these roads that connect with civilization. All of these factors have helped cut down the Amazon Rainforest. In the past

The Amazon rainforest, known as well as the Amazonia, is considered as the “lung of the planet,” due to it produces about 20% of earth’s oxygen. The Amazon is contained by the countries of Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and the three Guianas (Amazon Rainforest). Unfortunately, one phenomenon that has been affecting the Amazon rainforest is the deforestation; according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, deforestation is the transformation of forest to non-forest land cover by human activities.

When the majority of the population is exposed to the words, “the Amazon”, through some form of written or spoken communications, most likely their initial, instinctive response is to visualize the Amazon rainforest as it is portrayed by a staggering amount of both past and present media outlets. This portrayal tends to be one consisting of a vibrantly colored rainforest, brimming with an abundance of diverse and exotic flora and fauna, and, a thriving and well-balanced collection of ecosystems which is, frankly, not even remotely accurate to the actual Amazon rainforest. Behind its deceptive facade endorsed by television, books, and occasionally even news, the Amazon rainforest occupies many dark truths relevant to degradation of the state of the earth’s various ecosystems and environments. Over the last several decades the Amazon has undergone numerous dramatic and, in fact, damaging changes all of which have been attributed to the area’s extensive deforestation.

Although Brazil has had a reduction in deforestation, this was mainly due to a decline in agriculture markets, other than an increased level of legislature to protect the forests (Brazil's Success in Reducing Deforestation). With the explosion of societies that consume high levels of soy, further deforestation is inevitable unless safeguards are put in place to ensure expansion does not cause more harm to the biosphere (Soy).

Marcio Astrini, a coordinator from the Amazon campaign, a convention that makes donations to save the rainforest, says, “You can’t argue with numbers, this is not alarmist, it’s a real and measured inversion of what had been a positive trend” (Newstrack). Marcio is one of the people who thinks the Rainforest is important to the people in South America and North America. Scientists have come up with different solutions to help the rainforest, but also for people to get their resources. Governments of Brazil make up laws to save their rainforest, so they try to add nature reserves or place a law that farmers and lumberjacks to chop down trees from a different forest. This effort should continue because it could help the Amazon Rainforest to continue to grow new trees. This could allow the rainforest to grow larger than before. The Rainforest is the biggest out of all of the forests out there, the Brazilian governments are struggling with what laws would be effective to pass on. Their congress established regulations “limiting forest burnings, logging, and large landholdings” (Johnson

Brazil is addressing the SDGs goal of sustainably managing forests, combating desertification, halting and reversing land degradation, and halting biodiversity loss by implementing laws to limit deforestation, taking action to protect the Amazon, and promoting the drastic damage of deforestation. Brazil has established laws that preserve the Amazon. Brazil’s economy, as well as other economies worldwide. have realized the long-term economic value an intact rainforest offers. Laws have been made to protect the Amazon, like declaring “over 50% of the forest national parks”(McCarthy). Furthermore, Brazil has enacted a “national moratorium”(McCarthy) on soybean farming on recently deforested land. Soybean farming, in addition to cattle farming,

They are cutting and the pulverizing the rainforest. “ Satellite data released today by the Brazilian government confirmed a rise in Amazon deforestation over this time last year.Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) says that deforestation during the month of May amounted to 268 square miles, a rise of 144 percent over May 2010. 35 percent of the clearing occurred in Mato Grosso, the state where agricultural expansion is fast-occurring.” One of Brazil’s most valuable property is it a dense covering of rainforests. The greater part of the rainforest zones in Brazil are concentrated inside the Amazon Basin, which is especially sticky, with year-round precipitation, making for the perfect "wilderness" environment. It would be a cause for celebration when the Brazilian government announced last week that the removal of trees in the Amazon forest rates has fallen for the third year in a row. But for a long time, it did not spend on advertising even nominate About complicity happened between a subsidiary of the Brazilian Government agencies themselves with logging companies started these companies are entitled to access to high-value timber areas in the Amazon jungle, which was banned by those companies. It was active in the Greenpeace office in Brazil have shown evidence that incra worked with timber

Deforestation. Deforestation is one of the most critical problems in Brazil. Destroying natural habitat is a direct threat to biodiversity (Wilson et al., 2015). Historically, deforestation rates have been high in Brazil fluctuating between 25,000 to 50,000 kilometers squared per year. If deforestation were to continue at the historical rates, then most of the Amazon would disappear within 50 to 100 years (Shukla, 1990). While contemporary deforestation rates are not so severe, they are still high and have recently begun to increase. In 2009, Brazilian deforestation was estimated at 7,008 kilometers squared (May et al., 2011). After a slight decrease in the deforestation rate, with a valley in 2012 at 4,571 kilometers

Even though agricultural expansion in Amazonia may appear to increase the world food supply, many experts in the academic and scientific community are justifiably skeptical on whether such expansion would actually benefit humans. Ioulia Fenton, the leader of the food and agriculture research stream at the Institute of Advanced Developmental Studies in Bolivia, is certainly one of many skeptics who are worried about the potential environmental damage of agriculture-induced deforestation. She notes that “since 1990, the world’s primary forest area has decreased by 300 million hectares… Yet, without the ecosystem services that forests provide, many natural and human processes would collapse” (Fenton). Instead of seeing Amazonian land solely as