AMAZONIA COLLECTION

Deforestation or deforestation is the process of permanent disappearance of the forest that results, in large part, from human intervention. In the Amazon, this process began in the mid-20th century as a result of fiscal incentive policies, particularly in Brazil, the result of which was the expansion of infrastructure, especially roads and energy (construction of dams), which made the country the largest economy in the world. Latin America, but also the main responsible for deforestation in the region.

Deforestation is also a consequence of logging, the expansion of the agricultural frontier and livestock farming. In other words, farmers clear the land by cutting down trees, selling them to loggers and thus financing agriculture and livestock. Large forest fires, with consequences for forest biodiversity associated with local climate change - extinction of numerous species and emission of greenhouse gases - are also responsible for deforestation.

Although sustainable forest management seems very promising from an economic - and also environmental - point of view, it is applied on very small scales. There are several reasons: widespread ignorance of the benefits of this type of practice, the short-term profit that traditional exploitation allows, disregard for forestry legislation and the size of the forest area needed to offset the demand from a timber company.

For all these reasons, it is necessary to concentrate efforts to recover deforested areas through the creation of a set of development reserves, in order to guarantee the protection of still virgin forests and the habitat of indigenous populations.

The development of the Amazon must be done by reducing the social and ecological costs of resource exploitation, as well as improving living conditions in cities and controlling tropical diseases. “The current state of knowledge and its future progress allow us to envisage a sustainable development of the Amazon that should privilege, not the exploration and domination of nature by man, but the link between man and nature.” - in Environment and Global Change, GeoInova, Magazine of the Department of Geography and Regional Planning, number 9, 2004.