Brazil, Amazon, Deforestation

Brazil, Amazon, Deforestation

1. The Amazon covers a area 8 million km

   • however since 1970 over 600,000 km have been destroyed
     • 1) 60% was caused by cattle ranching
     • 2) 33% was caused by small-scale subsistences farming
     • 3) 3% was cause by logging
     • 5) 3% was caused by mining, urbanisation, road construction, dams and fires
     • 4) 1% was caused by large scale commercial famring

2. Environmental impacts

   • Habitat and loss of biodiversity
     • number of endangered species went from 218 in 1989 to 628 in 2008
   • the Amazon stores around 100 billion tonnes of carbon
     • deforestation will release the carbon dioxide, which causes global warming

3. Social impacts

   • local ways of life have been affected
   • native tribes have been forced to move
   • there's conflict between large land owners, subsistence and native people

4. econmic impact

   • farming make a lot of money for countries in the rainforest
     • in 2008, Brazil made $6.9 million from cattle trading
   • the mining industry creates jobs for loads of people
     • the Buenaventura mining company in Peru employs over 3100 people

5. sustainable management

   • deforest areas are being replanted with new trees
     • Peru plans to replant more than 100,000 km of forest before 2018
   • reducing the amount of hard wood logging
   • Ecotourism is becoming more popular
   • national parks