The Law, Politics, and Economics of Amazonian Deforestation
1994; Indiana University Press; Volume: 1; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1543-0367
Autores Tópico(s)Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
ResumoThe ineffectiveness of laws alone to protect the environment is nowhere as evident as in the contemporary destruction of the Amazonian rain and moist forests. Since 1975 the rate of deforestation has steadily accelerated with a four-fold increase to 125,000 square kilometers by 1980 and twenty fold to 600,000 square kilometers by 1988.1 The peak was reached in 1987 when up to 8 million hectares of forest were burned.2 There is reason to be concerned with this scale of destruction. Not only does forest cutting and burning release earth-warming gases, but the diversity of the earth's species may be destroyed. The Amazon contains 26.5 percent of the planet's moist forests, estimated to contain 50 percent of all the world's species.3 The blame for deforestation has been assigned to very different actors. A number of analysts and government officials have been quick to blame the poor, small-scale farmers for most of the deforestation.4 In the Brazilian Amazon, and most of Latin America, the bulk of the deforestation is a result of fiscal incentives and tax holidays given to cattle ranches.5 Recent studies have increasingly blamed traditional elites for the bulk of
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