The Amazon rainforest is shared by 9 countries, among which 60% of it resides in Brazil. It is home to countless species of animals and plants – more than any other ecosystem on our planet. Unknown to many of us, this sheer wonder is being destroyed this very minute by the process of economic development.
Economic development is the underlying culprit of the depletion of the world’s largest rainforest. Wealthy capitalists have access to the valuable resources within the rainforest. These greedy groups of people clear the rainforest and exploit human labour. Workers are forced to work under insufferable conditions and are offered meagre income levels. Driven to levels of subsistence, they resort to subsistence timbering. They cannot be blamed for resorting to these means for survival, for it is the timbering that brings food to their tables. Furthermore, subsistence timbering is not the greatest contribution to the depleting rainforest.
The short-sighted government values the rainforest as the value of timber that lies on it. While ugly, this way of thought is not unsupported. The decline in deforestation from 1988- 1991 matched Brazil’s economic slowdown and the rocketing deforestation matched the country’s rapid rate of economic growth (http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html). Without the clearing of the rainforest, the economy that relies on the rainforest to generate wealth comes to a standstill. The income required by developers and the government’s access to funds for tax offering is not generated. The choice of saving the rainforest or alleviating the people’s suffering is not ours to make and it can’t be denied that corruption exists. While the people of Brazil might not receive funds of any sort from the government, we as onlookers of the suffering should not condemn these people for needing a glimmer of hope.
It is the capitalists we have to blame for the plight of the people. Besides exploiting the abundant labour they have access to, they clear forest land for investment purposes and cattle pastureland. Their ability to obtain funds without difficulty allows them to purchase rainforest land and do as they wish. Land is cleared to make way for cattle pastureland and to build roads for easier access to transport meat to the import countries. Evidence of the increase in cattle rearing is shown by the surge in the percentage of Europe’s processed meat imports from Brazil. It has increased from a previous 40% to a current 74%, 80% of which originates from the Amazon (http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html).The leading cause of the Amazon’s depletion has to be eliminated before experts’ prediction that the rainforest will disappear within 40years is fulfilled.
Furthermore, land is often cleared in the easiest way possible – fires. Fires are set to clear trees quickly and the nutrients that come from the ashes act as fertilizers as well. At the Madre Selva biological station, it is estimated that a hectare of land holds up to 640 trees and 310 distinct tree species can be identified from among them. (http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0817-amazonas_new_tree.html) The sheer number of unidentified species of plants and animals that will cease to exist together with the rainforest alone is astounding.
Trees are being cut down faster than new ones are being planted and given the time to grow. Reforestation movements like “plant two trees for every one being cut down” and “adopt a tree plot” are just two of the many that are being widely promoted. Those of us who lack the financial ability to support these movements can contribute in their own ways: cutting down on paper consumption, recycling, reducing dependency on the forest. More individuals have to be educated on the consequences of their actions that indivertibly contribute to the rapid process of deforestation today and it has to be done quickly before it gets too late.
