Word: viana
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...those parts of the Amazon where people have seen the effects of paving, attitudes are also changing. Governor Viana and many of Acre?s citizens don?t want to see uncontrolled development spread through the rest of their wild and beautiful state, as it did through neighboring Rond?nia. ?Our struggle here,? says Viana, ?is to make sure that what happened in Rond?nia won?t happen here...
...rollback was Jos? Sarney Filho, the federal Environment Minister and son of the pro-development former President. In Acre, the frontier state where environmental martyr Chico Mendes was assassinated in 1988 by ranchers angered by his efforts to halt deforestation, change is more drastic. The current Governor, Jorge Viana, was elected in 1988 in an explicitly environmentalist campaign. He has since shelved plans from the previous administration to pave 2,000 km of roads in the state. (Viana was chosen by Time in 1999 as one of its regional Leaders for the New Millennium...
...Viana does not so much come out against roads?suicide for any politician?as offer alternative ways to meet the aspirations of Acre?s citizens. He argues that Acre?s many navigable waterways offer a commercial connection to markets without the risk of deforestation. To deal with emergencies, the state is expanding a system of airports in remote villages. Viana is promoting a ?forest economy? that profits from the wilderness without destroying it. In one town, for instance, a condom factory is being built that will provide a market for latex collected by local rubber tappers. By capturing more...
...Viana?s government, along with others, is exploring every opportunity to find profit in standing forest. In fact, with the world increasingly alarmed about global warming, state governments in the Amazon see a potential gold mine in the use of virgin forest as a storehouse for atmospheric carbon. The Amazon Basin releases between 100 million and 300 million tons of carbon a year into the atmosphere through deforestation; the amount doubles in years when fires devastate the forest. The U.N.-sponsored greenhouse-gas agreement, worked out in Kyoto in 1998 to combat the threat of climate change (not yet ratified...
...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...