Word: brazilians
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...weather surface. The decision to pave the highway is largely the product of vigorous lobbying by giant agribusinesses, which see the route as a more profitable way to export soybeans. (After the U.S., Brazil is the world?s largest exporter of the crop.) A Brazilian-American consortium is planning to build an enormous dock-and-loading system in Santar?m, the sleepy port that lies at the junction of the Tapaj?s and Amazon rivers, 700 km from the Atlantic Ocean. Exporting through Santar?m might save agribusinesses $1 per 30-kg bag of soybeans...
...Scientists have long studied the horrendous impact that fire has on the rain forest. Alberto Setzer of the Brazilian space agency, inpe, shocked the world when he used satellite imagery to show the extent of the burning in 1988. Out-of-control burning first brought me to Brazil in 1989 when I wrote the cover story for the Sept. 18 issue of Time called ?Torching the Amazon.? I have made several trips to parts of this giant ecosystem in neighboring countries since then, but this was my first trip back to the Brazilian Amazon, and there was, amid the rising...
...There has also been a remarkable turnaround in Brazilian public opinion about the rain forest. In 1989, then President Jos? Sarney was defensive and defiant about criticism of Brazil?s failure to protect the Amazon; last June, by contrast, an outpouring of popular protest forced the Brazilian Congress to drop a plan to reduce from 80% to 50% the amount of forest to be set aside as nature preserves in future Amazonian development projects. Among the most vocal opponents of the rollback was Jos? Sarney Filho, the federal Environment Minister and son of the pro-development former President. In Acre...
...Repeated over the years, the combination of drought, human despoiling and fire can transform wet tropical forest into permanent savanna. So argues Bruce Nelson, an ecologist who has worked since 1979 with inpa, the Brazilian institute for the study of the Amazon. Nelson believes pre-Columbian Indians created the Gran Sabana in Venezuela, a 75,000-sq-km area of veld stretching across the southeast corner of the country, by repeated burning of the forest. As evidence, he points out that unlike neighboring natural grasslands, the Gran Sabana lacks fire-tolerant tree species. In other words, forests burned down hundreds...
...Across the board, Brazilian environmentalists and officials I spoke with were perplexed by how the paving of BR-364 was approved without normal review and comment. It is part of the 6,245-km road network that is scheduled to be paved in the Amazon as a section of the government?s Avan?a Brasil infrastructure program for economic development. Marina Silva, a federal senator from Acre and one of a handful of environmentally oriented members of the Congress, says the entire plan went through with virtually no debate, and the decision to pave BR-163 was made without debate, public...