In my Geography tuition, we discuss environmental and sustainability issues. Current concerns are brought up regularly to the best of my ability and discussed in my Geography tuition sessions.
Two and a half months ago, many of us read with horror about the gigantic blaze that has destroyed more than 9,600 sq km of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest or 906,000 hectares, a whopping 70 percent increase over the same tracking period last year. As a Geography tutor, it is distressful to read of such news.
Don’t blame global warming, climate change, these fires are the acts of humans. With close to 40,000 fires burning, they are started by farmers, plantation companies and developers. A quarter of the Amazon rainforests have disappeared for good and more of the forests will continue to disappear at an alarming rate.
For the Brazilian Amazon, infrastructure development means not just new dams to generate electricity but also “webs of waterways, rail lines, ports and roads” that will get products like soybeans, corn and beef to market, according to Walker, a professor from the University of Florida. The ambitious infrastructural plans pushed by the new government spells doom for the forests and forest tribes.
Sources:
“Why the Amazon is burning: 4 reasons” EarthSky Voices, EARTH | HUMAN WORLD | August 27, 2019.
“People and the tropical rainforest ecosystem” GeoActive Online 232, 2000.
