Deforestation in Brazil

In my daily perusal of the BBC online I found an interesting article on deforestation in Brazil. The article explains how the government of Brazil has been working in the past years to fight back against illegal deforestation of the Amazon rain forest. In fact they have even claimed some success in the fact that for three years prior to this year they saw a decline in deforestation. However this year they are now estimating a three to four percent increase. The government believes that an increase in the price of food and other commodities has driven farmers to cut down trees as a means of making the money they need to keep in stride with the increase in prices.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7756241.stm

Reading this article got me thinking about the different risks of deforestation, especially in the case of the Amazon rain forest. I see two different aspects of deforestation that apply specifically to environmental anthropology. The first is the loss of biodiversity that occurs when deforestation is allowed to happen. An article on wsws.org explained how much forest was actually being taken away and talked about that effect on the biodiversity of the area. It is especially frightening to think about a loss of biodiversity in the Amazon because it is historically one of the very most biologically diverse places on earth. This means that destroying this area is effectively destroying huge amounts of plant and animal species which could easily lead to the total destruction of these species since many of them live in very specialized parts of the Amazon and do not traditionally exist anywhere else on the earth.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/amaz-j15.shtml

I think it is also important to consider the damage that is being done to the native people who live in the Amazon. Deforestation not only limits their home lands but it also harms their culture because of the loss in biodiversity. These cultures are dependent on the resources of the Amazon. They utilize thousands of different plant species but deforestation is threatening these species and therefore the native people who depend on them.

By Aaron Talmage