5 ms·

Buying rain forest would mean nothing for illegal rare wood markets, or illegal gold mining, or illegal forest fires to stretch cattle grazing area. Most peopl

Buying rain forest would mean nothing for illegal rare wood markets, or illegal gold mining, or illegal forest fires to stretch cattle grazing area. Most people grossly underestimate how wild and pretty much lawless inland rain-forest regions are in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. There are small pockets of settlements everywhere but except for Manaus there is very sparse infrastructure, Police will take days to get somewhere by boat, Healthcare deep in the forest is pretty much a death sentence if you happen to need urgent critical care. You have people that have never been registered with social security, etc. My point is that having a piece of paper saying that a specific rosewood tree belongs to IKEA or <NGO> would mean nothing, by the time you try to enforce this, the tree would have been fellen, cut, and shipped on a boat to the highest bidder. If you want actual change in the region you need to develop the local economy with jobs that allow these people to be productive in a way that is somehow more profitable than the existing illegal activities. But the practicalities of this are much harder to implement then simply blank buying forest land.

amelius 6y ago
> by the time you try to enforce this, the tree would have been fellen, cut, and shipped on a boat to the highest bidder. That could be true, but only holds for one tree (or a small number of trees). The problem starts when people build a business around trees. By the time their businesses are fully operational you can enforce laws. And this makes it unattractive to even start in this line of business.
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  You have entire gold mining illegal operations with heavy machinery deep in the forest without any law enforcement to halt them. Murder of indigenous locals in clashes with illegal miners is also not uncommon. Similarly to coca farming in Colombia they simply relocate to another unknown location periodically. Even assuming good faith from Brazilian law enforcement/military the remoteness and shear size of the rain forest makes it a huge challenge to enforce any rule of Law.
  - amelius 6y ago
    It seems there is some hope: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145988/tracking-amazon-deforestation-from-above https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145988/tracking-ama... > A (...) satellite-based system, DETER, went into operation in 2004 (...) > “DETER completely changed the way rangers went about enforcement work,” said Rajão. Rather than doing random patrols and checking for permits, rangers would send squads of enforcement officers — with satellite images in hand — to investigate areas of recent, suspicious activity. That made it much easier to remove or apprehend equipment. The word spread among deforesters. The existence of DETER meant that environmental authorities would likely notice if large tracts of land were cleared, and fines and agents would follow soon enough.
  - kaveh_h 6y ago
    You don’t necessarily need to enforcement at the whole region but at the perimeter where heavy machinery and cargo need to pass to reach customers. But since this comes with a big cost still UN should help out with enforcing such laws.
jcims 6y ago
Pretty sure most would support repurposing Tomahawk missiles and MQ-9 Reapers for the protection of the Amazon.
- glenneroo 6y ago
  I'm not sure that firing missiles into forests is the most intelligent use of resources...
  - detritus 6y ago
    Why not? You'd likely not need IraqWarII levels of commitment - just a few enthusiastically-delivered missives at 1100kph to get the message across. A few loitering drones and a few dozen more missiles might actually be a highly efficient use of resources. I'm not sure where 'intelligence' comes into play here, beyond condescension of an idea you evidently disagree with.
    - smileybarry 6y ago
      Well, causing a forest fire with a missile is one thing we should avoid.
      - detritus 6y ago
        Why then, just use kinetic/fragmentary projectiles - easy peasy!
    - glenneroo 6y ago
      Apologies I didn't mean to be derogatory. I was just a little bit surprised at the bravado-military mentality that surfaced on a tech forum. To clarify, there are so many issues here I don't even know where to begin, just some quickies off the top of my head: - the most obvious was mentioned already: forest fires, when missiles explode in a forest you are trying to protect, things tend to burn and fire tends to spread i.e. there might be little forest left to save after you're doing killing everyone who has bad intentions. - where do you even set these up that they arrive on time to actually hit moving targets? - how do you ensure you don't kill innocents? - how do you even _find_ nefarious actors, when forest canopy makes it very hard to find anything, not to mention the Amazon forest is mind-numbingly huge. - AFAIK the military generally has an inventory of weapons they have to keep stockpiled, so the tax-payer will pay for extremely expensive weapons to be used and built again (great if you want to support military-industrial complex). As stated elsewhere, the issue is deeper and not addressable by blowing people up. The people doing this have nothing to lose because they have little or no opportunities for making money, so they take any job they can find. Do you believe we should just murder people who make questionable decisions based on their survival? You and I are sitting comfortably behind a computer having this discussion and I would venture that neither are us are qualified to talk about what it's like to be that close to starving.

amelius 6y ago

> by the time you try to enforce this, the tree would have been fellen, cut, and shipped on a boat to the highest bidder. That could be true, but only holds for one tree (or a small number of trees). The problem starts when people build a business around trees. By the time their businesses are fully operational you can enforce laws. And this makes it unattractive to even start in this line of business.

DoingIsLearning 6y ago
You have entire gold mining illegal operations with heavy machinery deep in the forest without any law enforcement to halt them. Murder of indigenous locals in clashes with illegal miners is also not uncommon. Similarly to coca farming in Colombia they simply relocate to another unknown location periodically. Even assuming good faith from Brazilian law enforcement/military the remoteness and shear size of the rain forest makes it a huge challenge to enforce any rule of Law.
- amelius 6y ago
  It seems there is some hope: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145988/tracking-amazon-deforestation-from-above https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145988/tracking-ama... > A (...) satellite-based system, DETER, went into operation in 2004 (...) > “DETER completely changed the way rangers went about enforcement work,” said Rajão. Rather than doing random patrols and checking for permits, rangers would send squads of enforcement officers — with satellite images in hand — to investigate areas of recent, suspicious activity. That made it much easier to remove or apprehend equipment. The word spread among deforesters. The existence of DETER meant that environmental authorities would likely notice if large tracts of land were cleared, and fines and agents would follow soon enough.
- kaveh_h 6y ago
  You don’t necessarily need to enforcement at the whole region but at the perimeter where heavy machinery and cargo need to pass to reach customers. But since this comes with a big cost still UN should help out with enforcing such laws.

jcims 6y ago

Pretty sure most would support repurposing Tomahawk missiles and MQ-9 Reapers for the protection of the Amazon.

glenneroo 6y ago
I'm not sure that firing missiles into forests is the most intelligent use of resources...
- detritus 6y ago
  Why not? You'd likely not need IraqWarII levels of commitment - just a few enthusiastically-delivered missives at 1100kph to get the message across. A few loitering drones and a few dozen more missiles might actually be a highly efficient use of resources. I'm not sure where 'intelligence' comes into play here, beyond condescension of an idea you evidently disagree with.
  - smileybarry 6y ago
    Well, causing a forest fire with a missile is one thing we should avoid.
    - detritus 6y ago
      Why then, just use kinetic/fragmentary projectiles - easy peasy!
  - glenneroo 6y ago
    Apologies I didn't mean to be derogatory. I was just a little bit surprised at the bravado-military mentality that surfaced on a tech forum. To clarify, there are so many issues here I don't even know where to begin, just some quickies off the top of my head: - the most obvious was mentioned already: forest fires, when missiles explode in a forest you are trying to protect, things tend to burn and fire tends to spread i.e. there might be little forest left to save after you're doing killing everyone who has bad intentions. - where do you even set these up that they arrive on time to actually hit moving targets? - how do you ensure you don't kill innocents? - how do you even _find_ nefarious actors, when forest canopy makes it very hard to find anything, not to mention the Amazon forest is mind-numbingly huge. - AFAIK the military generally has an inventory of weapons they have to keep stockpiled, so the tax-payer will pay for extremely expensive weapons to be used and built again (great if you want to support military-industrial complex). As stated elsewhere, the issue is deeper and not addressable by blowing people up. The people doing this have nothing to lose because they have little or no opportunities for making money, so they take any job they can find. Do you believe we should just murder people who make questionable decisions based on their survival? You and I are sitting comfortably behind a computer having this discussion and I would venture that neither are us are qualified to talk about what it's like to be that close to starving.