Essay on “We do not have to destroy the Amazon to develop it”

Introduction

The Amazon is already 10 million years old. The large river system, habitat to 390 billion trees, prevails over South America and is an unsurpassed habitat of ecosystems. Biologists find different species just about every day from the blue morpho butterflies to monarch seahorses to sparkly river dolphins. The very first humans from Central America transitioned to the Amazon approximately 13,000 years ago. 10 million tribal people ended up living in fortified settlements, constructing symbolic excavations and promoting woodlands and farms. The Amazon's ranges to 1,000 miles northeast. The Amazon Rainforest has been represented as the "Lungs of the World" as it offers the vital environmental function of converting carbon dioxide consistently into oxygen worldwide. In the Amazon Rainforest more than 20% of the world's oxygen is generated.

This incredible and beautiful rainforest experiences one-and-a-half acre loss of land with devastating results for both developing and industrial nations. Amazon rainforest is being ruined so because value of rainforest land is viewed by short-sighted government bodies, multi-national logging organizations, and property owners as merely the worth of its timber. Much of Amazon's sections are cut for its forest interest by sledgehammers, dump trucks and explosions, accompanied by agriculture and raising livestock activities, like global giants such as Mitsubishi Company, Unocal, Texaco and Georgia Pacific etc. 

Amazon rainforest: Its importance and significance

The Amazon is considered the planet's largest rainforest and river basin in the world, incorporates an area of average the size of the United States (the 48 contiguous states), includes much of the planet's plant and animal species, and contribute to environmental climate changes. It is estimated that the area is home to 10 per cent of documented organisms on Earth. Of the species of plants in this area, 75% are distinct to the Amazon, and there are 3,000 species of fish, the highest species diversity of freshwater species of fish. This natural marvel is vanishing at an unprecedented pace due to deforestation and the wildlife, plants and ultimately humans will also vanish with it. This pertains to all plants, animals and humans, not just the one inhabiting this South American area. If the Amazon rainforest disintegrates, the rest of the human race will certainly suffer the same consequences that would lead from the climate changes. This frightening circumstance has been well recorded over the past couple of decades by ecological organizations, regulatory studies, independent organization evaluations and academic papers.

The Amazon rainforest accounts for almost half of the rainforest countries in the world. Predictions of its size differ but the overall opinion is that the rainforest of the Amazon encompasses about two million miles. It accounts for 40% of the continent of South America, such as Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guyana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. The luxuriant area offers significant benefits for populations living close and far. The Amazon rainforest is host to approximately 500 indigenous populations. It is a massively biodiverse environment which is habitat to countless plant and animal species. The rainforest has the potential to make its own weather and impact climates worldwide. Regrettably, the delicate economy face a high risk of deforestation and last year in 2019 saw tragic wildlife fires.

• Humans’ irrational behavior towards forest

Nevertheless, the almost limitless rainforest is diminishing at a fast rate due to deforestation, which eventually will have significant repercussions for both the country and the world. Deforestation defines the clearing along with many other plant species, and is human activity caused by the development name. Deforestation has lost roughly 20% of Amazon's rainforest since 1970. This figure may be under-representative, because it does not include trees that have been destroyed by selective logging methods that are less evident than clear-cutting, but still cause severe damage.

• Development through Trees cutting

The rainforest of the Amazon has been regarded as the 'lungs of the world.' It is remarkable that while people understand that without trees, they are without oxygen, trees continue to fall at extremely higher rates. Trees are a source of energy that can be restocked if cutting is handled properly yet in the Amazon this was nothing but the case. The world's collective rainforests behave as an environment sponge that stores much of the rainwater worldwide, of which the Amazon rainforest forms the bulk. The rainforest trees recover water from the tropical forests. Trees purify the environment by taking in carbon dioxide and by supplying oxygen. Burning wood in the rainforest enhances the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, while decreases the quantity of trees required to consume it. Which leads to global warming, a trend that already challenges the planet's existence. Amazon faces deforestation and devastation for the sake of growth, such as roads, highways and utilities, which produce the worrying situation for all this ecosystem.

• Development thought Soy bean farming

The production of soybean cultivation has adversely impacted rainforest in the Amazon. The soy farmers have a tremendous impact in the governments of the South American countries. Further than the huge removal of trees to have more agricultural land, soy farm workers are consistently persuading government officials to widen roads, allowing plenty of those with both reasonable and illicit trade to obtain so much rainforest regions. The criticism may be mostly directed at the demand-side, as in logging. Few examples of large corporate food chains such as KFC and McDonalds were excoriated for “reinsurance deforestation in the Amazon by buying soybean-based animals cultivated in the amazon region.”

• Amazon Rainforest: A source of world’s oxygen

The Amazon rainforest plays a massive role in controlling the oxygen and carbon cycles around the planet. It provides around 6% of the world's oxygen and has traditionally been regarded to serve as a trap of carbon, ensuring it consumes vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the environment easily. A fair assumption concerning the existing population of the Brazilian Amazon is around four people per square mile in an area that contributes for 60% of the land area of Brazil. But the rate of progress is sweltering. The road system is growing so steadily that maps are increasingly becoming obsolete. The rain forest recedes before forces that are greater than themselves; and the vast river awakens from the night of spatial loneliness and economic stagnation. The Amazon, as well, is now a place of socioeconomic fighting and yet another staging ground for the “economic development” attire of the dictatorial regime.

• Heavy cost for Economic Development

Currently, as a consequence of unstable industrial growth, the Amazon confronts a plethora of potential risks; 20 per cent of the Amazon ecosystem has already been destroyed and the phenomenon would deteriorate if uncontrolled. Amazon is the world's largest deforestation front and immediate action is required to avoid a huge, unprecedented environmental collapse.

Market pressures, growing populations and developments in infrastructure continue to wide range of different activities that hurt the rainforest of the Amazons. As the threat infecting the area increases in frequency, it becomes abundantly evident that the price charged is indeed a threat to biodiversity and ecosystems, but also a declining standard of living for humans. National government initiatives and programs are aggressively heading for continuous development, frequently motivating blind forest authorization for raising cattle, oil exploration or soybean manufacturing. These measures are directed at ensuring far-needed foreign exchange and usually at develop economies. As the Amazon nations are rapidly incorporated into the world economy and competition forevermore-limited natural resources becomes growing, attempts to conserve the region tend to be undermined by unrealistic socioeconomic activities.

Thanks to the massive amounts of energy, goods, facilities we take from it, the ever-growing human use as well as development is the greatest cause of forest devastation. According to the World Resource Institute, "Each year about 18 meters hectares of woodland is removed, a region of the scale of England and Wales." However, the WWF reports that by 2030, 27% i.e. more than a quarter, of the Amazon jungle would be stripped of trees if the present pace of deforestation persists.

• Trend and Causes of destruction in Amazon

Deforestation incidents have decreased in the Amazon over the last decade but persist at an unprecedented pace. Brazil is responsible for the majority of the deforestation in the Amazon, but deforestation is continuing to increase in the regions of the Andean Amazon such as Bolivia and Peru. In specific, deforestation is intensified in 25 "site-fronts" which represent different states. The places with the highest deforestation rates are the ones with more highways, roads and infrastructures. The positive connection between the proximity of the deforestation fields and the existence of established roads or proposed road forecasts indicates that isolated deforestation fields would be linked in the foreseeable future with significant infrastructure growth pathways. Because most government officials and staff see artificial infrastructure development and consequently destroy natural beauty and resources.

Huge national investment on roads, bridges, farms and remote towns, all too frequently backed up by intergovernmental construction funds, replaces or eliminates vast forest reserves for ventures of uncertain economic benefit. Other significant drivers of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon are “Amid Brazil's farming growth, infrastructure expansion, especially of roads and railways, has also contributed to more internal and external clear land in association with rapid expansion, transportation, trade, and commodity demand.” In addition, the explosive growth of hydropower across the last 60 years has significantly changed the river and nearby biodiversity, pushing numerous plants and animals towards extinction. Therefore, it is not wrong to say that the state of Brazil's Amazon rainforest is just yet another illustration of developed countries causing environmental destruction at the possible cost of less developing countries. Brazil has damaged huge chunks of its rainforest to exploit the land for other activities.

• Warning from Environmentalists and Ecologists

Environmentalists and ecologists predict that the next 20 years will see about 20% loss of wildlife and wildland. If that were to happen, the natural structure that preserves the forest would continue to collapse, and hence the weather patterns of the earth. The Amazon rainforest currently produces half of the rainfall it consumes, but reducing an additional 20% will hinder this occurrence to the point that most of the forest land will suffer from lack of water vapor.

• Lack of Policy Framework

One of the potential risks to ecological degradation and environmental deterioration in the Amazon is due to absence of policy frameworks to support sustainability, economic development and the protection of natural resources, political turmoil, the unwillingness of certain organizational and governmental bodies to create and implement wildlife and environment protection legislation, and economic hardship and social injustices. Directly and indirectly, governments and their unrestrained, unanticipated and disorganized development of natural resources are the principal risks to rainforest biodiversity.

Conclusion 

Amazon rainforest is known as the “Lungs of the World” and offers unrivaled biological diversity. Yet in modern years the entire world is in risk because of deforestation in the Amazon. Because when ecological failures and rainforest deterioration have yet to reach a tipping point of downfall, the continued removal of wildlands and the loss of their species is enraging. Yet, the greatest problem here is that human so-called economic and infrastructural development triggers this devastation. Biodiversity is keeping life for humans on earth sustainable. We (humans) are annihilating a portion of ourselves by removing breeding grounds of ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforest. Preceding extinctions have shown that the reconstruction of ecosystems to the comparable level to that leading up to the mass extinction takes at least five million years. Human actions under the name of development today will ascertain if the Earth will be biologically underprivileged for the 500 trillion or more human beings who will lived on the land in the coming years. In simple words, if urgent measures are not undertaken to counter the recent situation of deforestation created by human acts of irresponsibility, the vast Amazon rainforest will shortly become a desert region not unlike the Sahara in Africa. The consequences are inevitable once that step is under way. Several other researchers believe the forest-desert transition could occur as early as the coming year. Studies suggest that even in its present condition, the Amazon rainforest cannot survive three years of drought without initiating the irreversible way towards becoming the Amazon desert.