Word: brazile
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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First it was Venezuela, spending $4 billion on Russian fighter planes, Kalashnikovs and perhaps even submarines. Then it was Brazil, in August announcing a 53% increase in its military budget for 2008, the biggest such increase in more than a decade. The competition is still in the early stages but when two of Latin America's nouveau riche oil powers start splashing out on weapons, alarm bells ring over an arms race...
Indeed, Chavez's spending spree has given Brazil's long-dormant arms industry a bit of a political kick-start. Says Brazilian Senator Jose Sarney, a regular critic of Venezuela's president: "Hugo Chavez's armed forces have ordered 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 50 attack and transport helicopters, smart bombs, 24 Sukhoi Su-30 fighter planes. There is also talk of them buying nine submarines from Russia for $3 billion. It's very worrying. As Venezuela turns itself into a major military power, it obliges the other nations in South America to increase the power of their own forces...
...that Brazil and Venezuela have territory to fight over. Venezuela's border beefs are with its other neighbors, Colombia (over gas-rich waters) and Guyana (over areas west of the Essequibo river). He is unlikely to use arms to solve those disputes, either. His army is not as battle hardened as Colombia's - which has been fighting a prolonged civil war; and any intervention against Guyana is likely to draw in the U.S. and Guyana's former colonial ruler, Britain...
...also release carbon - as a main element of the climate change deal that will eventually succeed the Kyoto Protocol. That will eventually open up a new market that could be worth billions, as industrialized nations that need to reduce carbon emissions could choose to pay tropical nations like Brazil and Indonesia to preserve their own forests. The private market - which has been the engine of forest destruction in the form of logging - could end up saving the trees. "We have to solve this market failure by turning to market measures," says Mitchell...
...forests may be to the world as a carbon sink, however, they matter even more to the people whose lives and livelihoods depend on them. Some environmentalists fear that a rush to cash in on forest conservation could end up hurting the indigenous people - whether the rubber tappers of Brazil or the forest dwellers of Aceh - that it should benefit most. After all, history has not been good to native people in the developing world who dwell on suddenly valuable land. The key will be to manage avoided deforestation projects properly, to make sure they are truly...