The Deforestation Of The Amazon Rainforest

It is through the theories of the tragedy of the commons and environmental rights that we realize that all of society is invading one another’s environmental rights through the tragedy of the commons. This is done very inconspicuously in some cases such as that of the Coral Reefs.

The long-term removal of tree cover, deforestation, is a global issue that can be catastrophic if not resolved and is one of the most urgent of issues. Deforestation is a global issue, not only because it happens all around the world, in multiple countries but also because its causes are produced by globally-drive motives. Politically, Socially and Environmentally, deforestation is a global issue that delves deeply in almost all aspects of organism life. This essay will explore into the intricacy of the global issue of deforestation and its surface and root causes. Although deforestation occurs mostly in tropical rainforests, which are primarily in developing countries, this does not equate it to national problems, instead it is an issue, which through the rise of economic globalization, means that the global population are bearing down on the forests as well. The surface issues are agricultural expansion and infrastructure expansion, with deeper root causes, which fall under the political and social scope. These underlying causes “are fundamental forces that underpin the more obvious or proximate causes of deforestation” (Geist, Lambin, 2001, pg.8) This essay will draw from academic sources and will elaborate on author’s theories and opinions on the topic of the causes of deforestation. By doing this, a mixture of neo liberal, liberal and emancipatory social action approaches will be taken to be able to fully understand the surface and underlying causes of deforestation.

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

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

Deforestation is the clearing of a forest and/or cutting down of trees for human benefits such as agriculture, wood exports, etc. Deforestation is the cause of numerous environmental impacts such as habitat loss, flooding and soil erosion. It can also cause climate change, by reducing the amount of rainfall and changing the amount of sunlight reflected from Earth’s surface and increases the risk of forest . Tree growth is important for biodiversity because they absorb carbon dioxide which is a harmful greenhouse gas . However, since deforestation reduces natural carbon sinks, it disrupts the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air causing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air to increase. This poses a serious

Tropical rainforests are the Earth?s oldest, richest, most productive, and most complex living ecosystems. They are located throughout many of the world?s continents including South America, Africa, and Asia and are defined by a few specific factors. Their location must be within the regions of the tropics and they must receive between 4-8 meters of rain per year (compared to about 1-2 meters in the United States). These forests also have no ?seasonality?, which means that they lack a definite dry or cold season of slowed growth.

The contemporary social phenomenon that I would like to discuss is the topic involving the destruction of ecosystems. Like a human community, an ecosystem operates in a similar fashion with plants, animals and other living things sharing an environment's resources such as air, food, and water (soil in the case of plants). In order for the ecosystem to maintain itself every living organism has to play a part in retaining the balance, but when this balance is disrupted the impact can be significant for many of the living things that rely on the ecosystem. An area with an issue such as this is the Amazon rainforest located in Brazil, which has one of the most complex ecosystem environments in the world and yet suffers from the ongoing act of deforestation

Laws partially exist to impose self-control where it might not otherwise occur. As a society, we have a tendency to view our freedoms and resources as limitless, to use as we see fit. Individuals are willfully blind, they are the cause of their now limited freedoms and resources. If a person owns something, they are absolutely free to use it right up until it threatens another person. In the case “The Fight over the Redwoods”, the environment’s free, but limited God-given resources are continuously depleting, from our exploitations. Adam Smith’s invisible hand theory and Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of commons” make prevalent in their theories the consequences of these particular attitudes. An individual’s along with society’s self-interest can

“Between 2000 and 2013, 2.3 Million square kilometers (890,000 square miles) of forest around the world were cut down.” We are slowly precipitating an Earth that will fail in providing resources. To take in consideration that only 6.2 million square kilometers of forest remains, from the original 16 million, shows how consumers encourage deforestation and in the matter of 13 years, were able to destroy 12.5% of nature. One of the ways Sanders exposes these corporations by stating,“The scale of devastation caused by human activity is unprecedented, and it is accelerating, spurred on by a global system of nation-states battling for advantage, and by an economic system addicted to growth and waste. So the work of conservation becomes ever more urgent” (Sanders 212).

Individuals have been deforesting the Earth for a large number of years, fundamentally to clear land for yields or domesticated animals. "Deforestation" is the lasting devastation of timberlands with a specific end goal to make the area accessible for different uses; what's more, as indicated by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization an expected 18 million sections of land of backwoods, which is generally the nation's extent of Panama, are lost every year; Although tropical woods are to a great extent bound to creating nations, they aren't simply meeting nearby or national needs; monetary globalization implies that the needs and needs of the worldwide populace are hunkering down on them also.

Brazil has been said to be one the of the most beautiful and pleasant places on Earth, but with the secrets hiding behind their closed doors, will they even last long enough in their dying nation to see the success that tourists do? Brazil is on the path to collapse because they are unable to survive as a nation on their own. According to CNN, “⅓ of Brazilian Southerners vaguely favor some form of secession.” Brazil has a weak central government, they don’t pay much regard to the tremendous financial crisis and debt, and one of their most beautiful locations is on the verge of moribund. Citizens of Brazil have paradoxically been reported to feel “alienated” because their own government seems disinterested in public affairs and do not directly address them.

The three factors/ approaches that best explain the current patterns of forest decline and recovery are population/markets, political economy, and ethics. The population/markets approach introduces the concept of forest transition theory which talks about how the economic growth that destroys forests is also necessary for its restoration and return. The initial expansion in population and economic activity puts pressure on forest resources, resulting in rampant deforestation that clears land for agricultural use. The intensification of agriculture then allows more crops to be grown on less land, in turn freeing up unneeded land for forest recovery. From a political economy standpoint however, a decrease in forest cover is viewed as an expansion

With the global warming and climate change being such a hot topic and less of a debate more compassion for the planet should not be up for debate. With a rainforest as important to the planet the high rates of deforestation occurring in the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil, it should be a national issue, yet is rarely discussed in terms of politics. Even with its contributions to Brazil on terms of tourism, as well as being the home to about 10 percent of the known species, twenty percent has been lost in just the last 40 years. In 2005 deforestation accounted for as much as sixty percent of Brazils total greenhouse gases. Although forest degradation can be the after effect of soy farming, dams, new roads and logging, cattle ranching is by far

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has dropped substantially after a peak of over 27 thousand square kilometers in 2004. Starting in 2008, the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment has regularly published blacklists of critical districts with high annual forest loss. Farms in blacklisted districts face additional administrative hurdles to obtain authorization for clearing forests. In this paper we add to the existing literature on evaluating the Brazilian anti-deforestation policies by specifically quantifying the impact of blacklisting on deforestation. We first use spatial matching techniques using a set of covariates that includes official blacklisting criteria to identify control districts. We then explore the effect of blacklisting

The Amazon Rain Forest is a beautiful place. It is a vast region that spans across eight countries and is 1.4 billion acres of dense forest. The Amazon by itself is half of the planet’s remaining tropical forests and we are loosing them quickly. Because of this deforestation, we are causing a lot of problems for ourselves and the animals that reside in those forests. One of these problems is that we are seeing an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. This is causing an increase because forests helped to get rid of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions. Since the trees are being cut down and/or burned, they become sources of carbon themselves making this problem worse. Along with the rise in these gases comes the rise in temperature.