what would Buddha do?
A superhighway project in the Brazillian amazon could clear thousands of square kilometers of rainforest. The project is still under planning and consideration, but it if the Brazillian government gets its way. It will be built within four years, for the typical capitalist/mercantilist/imperialist bullshit reasoning governments and businesses are known for. It is supposed to bring in development and open trade to foreign investors in Europe and Asia. However, as Cícero Pereira da Silva Oliveira, who is the had of a union of workers in rural Trairão, said, "it will bring ruin to the region—more land grabbing, more drug trafficking. Total violence will arrive."
This on top of the environmental concerns:
"That would be a local disaster with global implications. During the 1990s, deforestation may have accounted for 10-20% of the carbon released into the atmosphere. Road development could deforest 30-40% of the Amazon by 2020, according to one estimate. But the paving of the BR–163 is supposed to be a different sort of roadworks, bringing growth that is ordered rather than chaotic, reducing social inequities rather than exacerbating them, preserving the Amazon rather than despoiling it." (from the article)
As the road is now, it has already brought trauma into the region. An indigenous tribe of people "was decimated by viruses brought by the settlers and expelled from its traditional territory" and the region of the highway has "the highest concentration of slave labour in the known world."
Let us try to stop this mess. Most governments have pledged their promise to pave the road, and it doesn't look like time is on our side either with deforestation accelerating, but I can bet that most people are with us in opposition to the destruction of our planet.
Something also needs to be done about the people of the region, though. The ardent advocates of the road project are involved in the Soya industry, which contributes to much of the deforestation and also employs few people. With other factors, the people in the forest are practically "condemned to poverty." Something needs to open up their lives to the rest of the world. There just has to be a better way.
This on top of the environmental concerns:
"That would be a local disaster with global implications. During the 1990s, deforestation may have accounted for 10-20% of the carbon released into the atmosphere. Road development could deforest 30-40% of the Amazon by 2020, according to one estimate. But the paving of the BR–163 is supposed to be a different sort of roadworks, bringing growth that is ordered rather than chaotic, reducing social inequities rather than exacerbating them, preserving the Amazon rather than despoiling it." (from the article)
As the road is now, it has already brought trauma into the region. An indigenous tribe of people "was decimated by viruses brought by the settlers and expelled from its traditional territory" and the region of the highway has "the highest concentration of slave labour in the known world."
Let us try to stop this mess. Most governments have pledged their promise to pave the road, and it doesn't look like time is on our side either with deforestation accelerating, but I can bet that most people are with us in opposition to the destruction of our planet.
Something also needs to be done about the people of the region, though. The ardent advocates of the road project are involved in the Soya industry, which contributes to much of the deforestation and also employs few people. With other factors, the people in the forest are practically "condemned to poverty." Something needs to open up their lives to the rest of the world. There just has to be a better way.
posted by sdskyle at 9:29 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home