In the time it takes to read this paper, an area of Brazil's rainforest larger than two hundred football fields will have been destroyed. The market forces of globalization are invading the Amazon, hastening the demise of the forest and thwarting its most committed stewards. In the past three decades, hundreds of people have died in land wars; countless others endure fear and uncertainty, their lives threatened by those who profit from the theft of timber and land.
In this Wild West frontier of guns, chain saws, and bulldozers, government agents are often corrupt and ineffective or ill-equipped and outmatched. Now, industrial-scale soybean producers are joining loggers and cattle ranchers in the land grab, speeding up destruction and further
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Around the world, it’s human activities that are driving deforestation, and the Amazon is no different. Illegal logging is one of the first steps in a vicious cycle of forest destruction. It begins when farmers in the Amazon remove the most valuable timber from areas they’ve illegally occupied. Then, more land grabbers build will build roads into the pristine rainforest, opening the door for further exploitation and forest loss. Between 60 and 80 percent of all logging in the Brazilian Amazon is estimated to be illegal. Of the timber that is cut, as much as 70 percent is wasted at mills. The US is the largest importer of Brazilian timber, and US companies have a huge responsibility in squashing illegal logging. Brazil is now the world’s largest beef exporter. Clearing rainforest for this multi-billion dollar industry is now responsible for 80 percent of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon. Between 2004 and 2005, around 1.2 million hectares of soya was planted in the Brazilian Amazon. Most of the forest cleared for soya crops was cleared illegally, but the demand for soya continues to drive deforestation. As if current trends weren’t enough, Brazil’s powerful agribusiness lobby is fighting make forest destruction easier. Big companies are pushing for changes to Brazil’s conservation laws that would allow landowners to clear larger areas of land, while pardoning those who already cleared their land illegally. Pig iron is a driver of Amazon deforestation that rarely gets any attention. Charcoal producers are illegally burning wood and vegetation from the nearby rainforest to supply coal to iron-working companies in
Wright, David, Heather LaRocca, and Grant DeJongh. "Global Problems." The Amazonian Rainforest: Forest to Farmland? The University of Michigan, 2007. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.
brought forth the large-scale injustices which occurred as a result of Monsanto patenting the soybean seed. Currently, Monsanto owns over 90% of the global soybean industry and therefore has a personal responsibility to remove any perceived threats to their multi-billion-dollar monopoly. If it’s soybean; it’s theirs! Monsanto is essentially the Big brother of the industry; carefully watching and listening to every soybean farmer to ensure nothing gets in the way of them and their fat wads of cash. The patents that Monsanto own, legally give them the “right” to sue farmers who refuse to purchase their seeds seasonally, or use a private seed bank. Essentially, Big Brother has moved on from watching people through Telescreens, and has now opted for a far more pleasurable method of manipulation: bank statements and receipts. Their aim is to “peacefully”, through manipulation and threats, force all soybean farmers to cease the practice of saving and replanting the seeds of successful crops- a once millennia old practice. But hey, it’s the twenty-first century, who hasn’t been forced to do something unsavoury by a totalitarian company corrupted by capitalism? Furthermore, you can be assured that the modified seeds have a terminating gene which renders their daughter seeds sterile and hence completely useless. Thus forcing the farmers to re-purchase seeds every season, so that Monsanto can continue growing their monopoly. I don’t know about you, but I think that this
The Amazon Rain Forest Is in Danger of Being Destroyed" by Devadas Vittal. Rain Forests. HaiSong Harvey, Ed. At Issue Series. Greenhaven Press, 2002. Reprinted from Devadas Vittal, Introduction: What Is the Amazon Rainforest? Internet: http://www.homepages.go.com/homepages/d/v/i/dvittal/amazon/intro.html, November 1999, by permission of the author. http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?displayGroupName=Viewpoints&disableHighlighting=false&prodId=OVIC&action=e&windowstate=normal&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010021212&mode=view
Did you know about the loggers that are cutting down the Amazon rainforest for the sake of you and other people? Wwho are the loggers? The loggers think that we should cut down the rainforest for paper and other useful materials. Yyou might think trees are not important but they are.There are some negative things about the loggers. The loggers have been around since the 1960s and cut down hundreds of trees. know you should know some fast facts on the Amazon rainforest and the loggers that work there.
Monsanto scrutinizes neighboring farms, practicing their right to enforce their patent and contract. What they take into account and chose to ignore is that their genetic product is natural and cannot be controlled completely. Monsanto’s patent allows them to prosecute neighboring farms for any concentration of their patented genetic code in their crops, regardless of whether a farmer knowingly involved themselves in infringement or was the victim of natural pollination. Barlett and Steele cite the increasing number of legal cases and settlements as means of pressuring contracted farmers to follow procedure and of allegedly pressuring uncontracted farmers to sign with Monsanto to avoid
This policy memo addresses the development and expansion of the cattle ranching industry in Brazil, which has contributed to the mass deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon in the last 40 years. It exposes the regional and global consequences to deforestation and provides strategies for the Brazilian government to sustainably manage cattle ranching industries while protecting the future of the Amazon. The rainforest ecosystem is an immense reserve of natural recourses that is far more valuable than the beef produced on Brazilian cattle ranches. Not only does the rainforest create habitat for up to 65% of the world’s biodiversity, but when harvested sustainably, it provides humans with an abundance of spices, foods, oils, medicines and vital research areas (NEWMAN).
Deforestation is fast becoming one of the world’s worst environmental/geographical occurring disasters known to mankind, and is due to humankind’s greed, ignorance and carelessness when considering the future of our environment.
In South America lies the largest and most wondrous rainforest in the world, the Amazon Rainforest. This 1.4 billion acre forest represents over half of the planets remaining rainforests, and comprises the largest and most bio-diverse tract of rainforest in the world. Ten percent of all known species on the planet are found in this rain forest, most of which have yet to be discovered. For the past century, the Amazon has been gradually decreasing in size due to agricultural expansion, ranching, infrastructure projects, energy exploration and illegal logging. At its current state, the Amazon is losing land equal to the size of the state of Delaware every year. The destruction of this forest releases 340 million tons of carbon per year according to the World Wildlife Foundation, or WWF, which in turn cause climate changes everywhere around the world. Undiscovered species can hold the key to curing a plethora of diseases, but if those species become extinct those keys are lost forever. If nothing is done to prevent this, the world’s treasure trove of bio-diversity will cease to exist, creating irreversible damage to not only the South American people but also the rest of the world.
The devastating effects of hunting are made worse by logging companies that “provide the physical and social infrastructure for this anarchic exploitation. They supply the roads, workers, and ammunition to carry out this growing un-policed commercial enterprise. In the case of the Brazilian Amazon, the building of major roads for loggers to enter inaccessible regions has caused major forest loss, which directly threatens primate populations.
For many years, Amazon has been held as a gold standard of product distribution. They are highly efficient at providing quality products to their customers. According to Amazon, they are able to do so ethically. However, their history has not been without controversy. Most recently, the New York Times released a report that called treatment of their employees unethical (Kantor and Streitfeld). The purpose of this paper is to determine which of the four ethical theories Amazon would claim to be using as a guide to their social responsibility practices. I will begin with a brief description of Amazon and its company values, and an explanation of each ethical theory. Then, I will use Amazon as a case study for these theories. The last question I will address is whether Amazon’s practices are sustainable over time.
The Amazon Rainforest is the world's largest tropical rainforest that we have today on our planet. It covers a wide range expanding almost entirely across from East to West of South America. It is most famous for its broad biodiversity and includes the famous Amazon River that is home to rare and diverse species. Today, the Amazon Rainforest is under threat of complete deforestation and has greatly lost more than half of its tropical rainforest due to cattle ranching, soy bean farming, sugar cane plantations, palm oil and biofuel agriculture. The indigenous people are doing their best to fight against the government to protect their land and conserve the rainforest but without capital finance, it is seeming to be an impossible project.
Clear cutting in the Amazon is a major issue, where deforestation has remained at 19600km2/year for a 9-year period starting at 1996 (Bowman et al. 2012). However, in 2010 deforestation decreased significantly, only to increase again in 2011 demonstrating human ignorance (Bowman et al. 2012). Since the largest use of land amongst agricultural activities in the Amazon is due to cattle ranching, it plays a major role in deforestation and land conversion (Bowman et al. 2012). The Brazilian cattle herd is of the largest in the world, and to account for this massive herd, an extensive amount of land is required (Bowman et al. 2012). 83% of this land came from the Amazon between the years 1990 to 2007 (Bowman et al. 2012). This is a huge problem because the
Although subsistence activities have dominated agriculture-driven deforestation in the tropics to date, large-scale commercial activities are playing an increasingly significant role. In the Amazon, industrial-scale cattle ranching and soybean production for world markets are increasingly important causes of deforestation, and in Indonesia, the conversion of tropical forest to commercial palm tree plantations to produce bio-fuels for export is a major cause of deforestation on Borneo and Sumatra.
The Disappearing Rainforests Conserving the rainforest is a global issue of great importance. Tropical rainforests provide a habitat for animals, a unique ecosystem for vegetation, and an abundance of resources for humans, yet they are being destroyed at an astonishing rate. Experts estimate that if these endangered territories continue to be consumed in this manner, no more will be standing in forty years (Rainforest). Examining the social, environmental, and economic costs of the continued destruction of the Earth's tropical rainforests will prove that deforestation for short-term profit is ultimately not viable.
Illegal logging occurs throughout every region of the Earth whether a vulnerable region such as the smaller countries in the Amazon Basin, Southeast Asia, or Central Africa along with more developed areas such as North America, the Russian Frontier, and Europe.