Australia's free environment friendly real estate service for agents and owners.

Podcast

 

FREE listings for enviro-friendly Australian real estate

We will email you the latest Australian enviro news FREE as it happens  (~ 3 stories a week)

Enviro News RSS Feed EnviroNews Podcast

Amazon deforestation brings economy boom,then bust Share on Facebook
Chopping down forests in the Brazilian Amazon produces a boom-and-bust economy that draws poor people to newly-cleared land but ultimately leaves them no better off, researchers reported on Thursday.

by The World Business Council for Sustainable Development. - Sunday, 14 June 2009


Environmental activists have long contended that this was the case but a new study in the journal Science quantified the phenomenon by tracking different stages of deforestation that have been occurring for decades.

"Although it's generally assumed that deforestation is the price to pay for development, we found that development is actually transitory, it's not a sustained improvement in peoples' well-being," said lead author Ana Rodrigues.

Ideally, scientists would have studied Amazon deforestation over time. Instead, they went to 286 municipalities at varying stages along the timeline of deforestation, development and decline, Rodrigues said in a telephone interview.

The scientists monitored key indicators of human prosperity -- income, education and health -- among settlers along the Amazon's deforested areas.

"We contrasted those values in different stages of the deforestation frontier: before deforestation kicks in, bang in the middle of the deforestation frontier and after it's already passed by," Rodrigues said.

The process typically works as follows:

First, poor, often landless people from around Brazil flock to places where initial logging occurs, getting a quick infusion of money and an improvement in quality of life.

The timber trade quickly gives way to farming and raising livestock. At first the land is fertile and productive but it soon declines. With no more timber to sell, settlers either stay on whatever land they have managed to possess or head for the next deforestation frontier.

"We believe that the boom we see, the quick expansion ... in income and health and education is because people are very quickly exploiting natural resources that weren't accessible before," Rodrigues said.

"What happens afterwards is a combination of population increase ... and the over-exploitation of natural resources."

The Amazon and other large old-growth forests are increasingly valuable as repositories of climate-warming carbon dioxide; vegetation on farm fields and pastures does not store nearly as much.

Any global agreement on curbing climate change is expected to include provisions to discourage deforestation.

 

Related Links

 

del.icio.us
Latest News Headlines

Wednesday, 22 December 2010 Reporters Without Borders to host mirror site for WikiLeaks

Wednesday, 22 December 2010 San Francisco Pledges Astounding 100% Green Energy by 2020

Wednesday, 22 December 2010 Towers to Generate Solar Power in the Dark?

Wednesday, 22 December 2010 La Nina May Be At Its Peak, Says Australia's Weather Bureau

Thursday, 18 February 2010 Tetley Tea To Be 100 Percent Rainforest Certified By 2016

Thursday, 18 February 2010 Hottest Temperature Ever Heads Science To Big Bang

Thursday, 18 February 2010 Big business leaves big forest footprints

Thursday, 18 February 2010 GUATEMALA: Anti-Mine Activists Encouraged by Canadian Ruling

Thursday, 28 January 2010 GM Puts Its Money Into Electric Motor Business

Thursday, 28 January 2010 Italy To Unveil New Solar Incentives

Copyright © 2004 - 2024 www.enviro.org.au
del.icio.us