Glossary

wild Amazon

The Amazon is the largest tropical forest in the world, with the largest and richest biological reservoir on the planet. The forest occupies almost the entire area of ​​its basin, where the Amazon River and its tributaries drain. It has approximately 6.7 million km2, and includes territories from 9 countries: Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. This extensive territory contains 17% to 20% of global natural water and every second 219,000 m ³ of fresh water are discharged into the Atlantic Ocean. The Amazon has 10% of the global coal reserve, more than 350 indigenous settlements and a population of 34 million people.

Predatory human activity began in the middle of the last century, with mining, logging, livestock farming, agriculture and oil and gas exploration. Deforestation, which results from logging, the expansion of the agricultural frontier and livestock farming, has put its sustainability into question and the size of the forest has been decreasing significantly. In the 1990s, the Brazilian government and several international organizations began efforts to protect the forest, and although the Amazon has continued to lose forest cover, the pace of this loss has slowed considerably as a result of these policies. However, the fires in 2019 and the policies of Jair Bolsonoaro, the president of Brazil, ruined the best predictions for the sustainable maintenance of this great ecosystem. The 9 countries that border the Amazon differ ethically, culturally, politically, economically and linguistically. These divergences translate into variations in the type of immediacy and proportionate pressure exerted on the forest, but they also open up opportunities for its conservation.

At this moment in which we find ourselves, in the 20s of the 21st century, and at a time when the world is becoming increasingly smaller (a result of globalization), there is recognition from the scientific, political and civil society communities that the Amazon Forest is valuable for maintaining a sustainable world and the practical and ethical reasons for its conservation have become increasingly obvious.

The objective of those who defend the preservation of this great ecosystem is not to transform the Amazon into a natural reserve that jeopardizes the development of local populations, but rather to defend the urgency of preventive measures and forest conservation that allow achieving a true “Development Sustainable.”

 

The deforestation

Deforestation or deforestation is the process of permanent disappearance of the forest that largely results from human intervention. In the Amazon, this process began in the middle of the last century, as a result of government policies, particularly in Brazil, which, through tax incentives, led to the expansion of infrastructure, especially roads and energy (construction of dams), which made the country the largest economy in 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. Normally, the process happens like this: farmers clear the land by cutting down trees, selling them to loggers and thus financing agriculture and livestock. Deforestation is also associated with large forest fires and the consequences that these can cause in terms of biodiversity and local (and perhaps even global) climate change, namely through the extinction of numerous species - in addition to causing the emission of greenhouse gases. greenhouse.

Although sustainable forest management seems very promising from an economic and environmental point of view, the truth is that it has not been applied, or is applied on very small scales. Several factors have contributed to this situation: 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 necessary to offset the demand from a timber company. . Furthermore, farmers are not willing to use the forest sustainably in the long term if they lack credit conditions and technical assistance in the short term. 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.

 

Biodiversity

Biodiversity is also known as the “Web of Life” because it is considered the infrastructure that supports all life on Earth. It is made up of all living things: plants, animals and microorganisms and the ecosystems of which they are part. The Amazon stands out for being the region with the greatest biodiversity on the planet, because it is home to large reserves of minerals and has one third of the world's reserves of humid tropical forests. Furthermore, it forms a single functional ecological identity - in which its many parts depend on the integrity of all - and its maintenance is essential for modern human society to exist and continue its path of progress.

The tropical forest is not suitable for conventional agriculture due to excess rainwater that impoverishes the soil, but its biology is very rich and varied. A study supported by WWF (World Wilde Fund) identified that between 1999 and 2015 an additional 1,115 plants, 468 fish, 321 amphibians, 112 reptiles, 79 birds and 65 mammals were found. In April 2016, the discovery of more than 1,000 kilometers of a long coral reef system at the mouth of the Amazon River, between French Guiana and the Brazilian border, was announced. It is estimated that there are between 6 and 8 thousand species of fish, most of which are known to date in the courses of the main rivers, close to large cities or in some more intensely studied protected areas.

Although it is recognized that maintaining biodiversity is essential for the sustainable development of the planet, the truth is that it is being threatened. The unrestrained exploitation of natural resources, the construction of dams that alter the course of rivers, unregulated deforestation outside protected areas and ongoing climate change can endanger this habitat and the population that lives there, with repercussions on the climate level throughout the world. The current rate of nature's decline unprecedented in human history is confirmed by the new report from the Intergovernmental Political Science Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the most comprehensive report on the subject.

The situation is pressing and is only not more serious because a few years ago international and local organizations began to act on the ground, with an attitude of prevention and preservation of the forest in all areas. According to some experts, the point of no return is not far from being reached. However, despite the dangers, there are many solutions to be worked on in order to invest in a better and sustainable future throughout the South American region and that benefit the rest of the world.

The rivers of the Amazon

The Amazon basin is the largest river basin in the world and its main river, the Amazon, is the largest in South America and the largest in the world in terms of water volume and with the largest number of tributaries. The Amazon rises high in the Peruvian Andes at an altitude of 5,598 m and after an initial drop in elevation, it stabilizes its descent towards the Atlantic Ocean at a rate of 1.5 cm for every kilometer over a distance of more than 6,400 km - in some places the river reaches a width of 10 km. The waterway from the Andes creates seasonal currents in huge stretches of the Amazon and regional differences create unique ecosystems. The Marañon River in Peru is the westernmost major tributary of the Amazon River and joins the Ucayali (considered the main tributary). The peculiar flow and its geography create a unique ecosystem, including the rainforest's dry season. The extensive plain areas that border the main river and its tributaries are called “floodplains” and are subject to annual flooding, with consequent enrichment of the soil. More than two-thirds of the basin is covered by immense tropical forest, which transitions to dry forest and savanna on the higher northern and southern edges and to montane forest in the Andes to the west.

Rivers are unpredictable, and nowhere is this more true than in the Amazon River Basin, which is subject to radical seasonal changes throughout the year. It is estimated that around a fifth of all the water that drains from the Earth's surface is transported by the Amazon.

Every year, the Amazon rainforest receives torrential rain. Eastern trade winds blowing from the Atlantic Ocean account for about half of the rainfall, with the other half due to evapotranspiration - the loss of water from the soil through evaporation and the transpiration of plants in the Amazon River Basin.

Climate change could severely increase the course of rivers and plans to build 20 hydroelectric dams on the Marañon will definitively alter the sediment load, critical for primary production downstream. Rivers transport sediment and seeds and form sandbar changes used for fish migration and spawning, reptile and bird breeding, and plant colonization. If evapotranspiration and its role in maintaining ecological balance are disrupted, the climate across the region will be significantly compromised.

Protected Areas

The term “protected area” involves a wide variety of conservation models, such as management areas focused only on nature conservation, management to support cultural, spiritual and other values ​​of indigenous peoples; maintaining traditional extraction from reserves, low impact on natural resources and management of private protected areas to conserve tourism revenue, among others.

Protected areas in the Amazon have been the driving force for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services and supporting local ways of life, national development and the global environment. Today, protected areas cover around 2.1 million km ² and have generally shown that they are effective in preventing and reducing deforestation, known as deforestation. Indigenous territories generally prevent deforestation, with one study showing that there is only 2 percent forest loss in indigenous territories compared to 5 percent in protected areas. To guarantee the role of indigenous territories, WWF (World Wild Fund) and the Coordinator of the Indigenous Amazon Organization (COICA) developed a conservation strategy for indigenous territories, with the aim of promoting and guaranteeing autonomy through consolidating the integrity of the territory . This strategy has proven to be fundamental for the lives of indigenous populations and nationalities in the Amazon basin, a process that is carried out through holistic management of natural and cultural heritage in their territories.

Before 2008 there was an increase in protected areas, especially in the area of ​​French Guiana where protection increased from 11.3% to 53.2%, due to the Declaration of the Amazon Guiana Park, measuring 20,300 km ² , one of the largest national parks in the world, which increased coverage from 2.1% to 5.3%. Protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon have 4 times less deforestation than unprotected areas, even those that are easily accessible. There are currently more protected areas and efforts to stop deforestation are more coordinated. According to experts, the secret to long-term success will be managing the Amazon as an integrated natural system. There are 713 protected natural areas and 2,467 indigenous territories in the Amazon. They cover 51% of the region, a larger area than India.

Regarding this work and the biodiversity of the Amazon, writes Pope Francis in his encyclical Our Common Home “The task of international bodies and civil society organizations that raise awareness among populations and collaborate in a critical way, including using pressure mechanisms to that each government fulfills its own and non-delegable duty to preserve the environment and natural resources of its country without selling it to spurious local or international interests”.