Brazil working to reclaim Amazon rainforest

[Louisiana1976]

MANAUS, Brazil -- The aging mayor of this crammed jungle city in the heart of the Amazon once handed out chainsaws to cut down the rainforest.

Now he throws around slogans to save it.

That legendary shift is part of a new attitude that's driving a wave of innovation by Brazilian business and government. Those efforts are helping to slash deforestation to its lowest level on record, and have emboldened Brazilian leaders to seek a key role this week at global climate talks in Copenhagen.

``We must add economic value to the forest,'' said Amazonas state Gov. Eduardo Braga, whose eco-subsidies, environmental endowment and plans to sell carbon credits to California have made the area around Manaus a public lab for sustainable forestry.

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http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/1372596.html

[JonQ]

1. "We must add economic value to the forest"

Bingo. We need more efforts to create financial incentives to protecting existing forests.

[kestrel91316]

2. Why do YOU care? You don't believe in global warming or man's role in it.

[JonQ]

3. Global warming

and trees being cut down are separate issues.

Chop down a forest and you no longer have a forest, with me so far? That doesn't require anything other than observation. And I like forests.

Here I'll try this another way: if I pour arsenic in one lake, does that make the world warmer? Obviously not. Does it harm the local environment? Obviously.

Now do you understand?

Now stop following me around, it's creepy.

[joshcryer]

4. Mahogany and cattle farms are the incentive they have now.

Ban mahogany like we did ivory. They'll build roads many miles long into the middle of the forest just to cut down one mahogany tree.

Stopping the Europeans from eating grass fed beef will be somewhat harder. Factory farming as the answer? :O

[JonQ]

5. A big part of the push recently

to chop down more forests was the increase in grain prices due to our own misguided attempts at biofuel. Drive up the cost of corn, more people are going to grow corn, which means there is a greater demand for corn and whatever other crops are no longer being produced because people have shifted to making corn now.

Law of unintended consequences: biofuel initiatives here leading to burning rainforests in brazil.

[joshcryer]

6. Agriculture pales in comparison to cattle farming as a cause of Amazonian destruction, though.

Even mahogany pales to it. Mahogany is just a get rich quick scheme, you get $30k per tree, so if you're a poor Brazilian, you'll make yourself a road to get at it.

[JonQ]

7. I wonder which will prove the greatest incentive

the need for grass fed organic meat over large production lots, or the desire to preserve the rainforests?

[joshcryer]

8. I don't know why the save the rainforest campigns don't go after EU beef eaters, tbh.

Brazil is clamping down on them, if only because of the mafia type stuff that goes on in the Brazilian cattle industry.

[Nihil]

9. To take a side track on one point ...

> Stopping the Europeans from eating grass fed beef will be somewhat harder.

The point isn't to stop them/us from eating grass-fed beef, it is to stop
them/us from eating grass-fed beef *from abroad* as the cheapest stuff will
always result in exploitation of "some foreign resource".

My "treat" is a steak from free range, organic, grass-fed beef in Scotland.
It's a luxury that I accept I have to pay for (hence it doesn't happen often).

People who view "cheap meat" as a good thing need educating as to where the
real cost of their "saving" is being felt.

Unfortunately, when countries try to act to prevent this exploitation,
they get flak both from the consumers (who have to pay more) and the
supplying nations (who claim "protectionism"). This means that it has to
be a consumer decision, not an administrative one (although tariffs will
always help to balance the decisions IMO) so this requires something
between the government information level (boring & ignored) and the PETA
level (pointlessly over the top & ignored).


> Factory farming as the answer?

God I hope not. I would go totally ovo-lacto-vegetarian if that was the
only alternative (as opposed to the half-way house that I'm at now).

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. See Also…

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=220272&mesg_id=220272