Brazil’s Green Court: Environmental Law in the Superior Tribunal de Justiça (High Court of Brazil)
2012; Routledge; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.58948/0738-6206.1694
ISSN0738-6206
Autores Tópico(s)Property Rights and Legal Doctrine
Resumoprevious studies, the study shows a high rate of fragmentation among remaining forests, which raises strong concerns for the conservation of biodiversity endemic to the area. 9 In the Cerrado, estimates of remaining vegetation range from 44.5 percent to 60.5 percent of total land area, leaving the biome's 7,000 plant species and numerous birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates vulnerable to habitat destruction. 10 Ever since Portuguese explorers first landed on Brazil's Atlantic coast in 1500, the country has frequently carried the image of a wild, vast territory with nearly unlimited natural resources.While the image of a "pristine" pre-Columbian continent, untouched by humans, is inaccurate, 11 five centuries of resource exploitation and commodity-driven economic growth have transformed an immense area of land, creating a culture that equates progress and modernization with large-scale development -to the detriment of environmental concerns. 12Consider the effects of 300 years of colonial mercantilist economics in Brazil: one of the main goals of the colonial Portuguese economic system was to extract minerals (especially gold) and other natural resources, such as the brazilwood -a tree so heavily overexploited during the 1500s that the Portuguese had to send guards to protect against extraction in certain areas in 1605. 13
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