Word: forested
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Deep inside the rain forest, south of the mighty Amazon River, lies a 435-mile stretch of dirt road. For many Brazilians, the paving of such rutted, often impassable routes has almost mystical significance as an essential part of economic progress. But to environmentalists this ritual of development always means destruction for the earth's largest rain forest, and in this particular case, could unleash forces that would make this road the most dangerous thoroughfare in the world...
Such concerns have not deterred the Brazilian government from its decision to pave over those 435 miles, the last unfinished portion of a highway called BR-163. That will create a 1,080-mile chain of asphalt going past the Tapajos National Forest and linking the Amazon River with southern Brazil. As has happened throughout the Amazon basin, the completion of the highway will open the forest to settlers, and they will undoubtedly set fires to clear land near the road. This area, however is regularly hit by drought and is perhaps the most vulnerable part of the forest. Fires...
...world has known for more than a decade, of course, that huge swaths of the South American rain forest are burning. I saw the devastation firsthand when I went to Brazil to report TIME's 1989 cover story "Torching the Amazon." But most of the scientists and environmentalists I talked to comforted themselves with the belief that the Amazon was simply too vast for the folly of one generation to destroy it. Now, it seems, the Brazilian government may have stumbled upon a way to do just that...
...helping do that is to set aside forests as carbon ?preserves,? called carbon sequestration in wonk-speak. If a market developed to package and sell certified reductions in greenhouse emissions, money might flow to states that took action to reduce deforestation. By one calculation, if Acre would commit to cutting in half the expected deforestation along a 500-km stretch of BR-364, the state might ultimately gain $37 million a year from the sale of greenhouse credits. The concept is risky because it might perversely encourage governments to launch development projects in the hope of selling credits to stop...
...Viana?s ideas deserve international attention because at least he recognizes the devil?s bargain in the extension of roads in the Amazon, and is trying to grapple with the problem of providing for people while protecting the forest. They also deserve attention because something vitally important to the entire world is now clearly threatened by forces that could destroy it wholesale. When I first visited this great green engine of life, scientists and environmentalists recognized the vast array of threats, but also assumed that the Amazon was too big to be destroyed by one generation?s folly. The vulnerability...