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A viewpoint I've never seen addressed - if the people of this country have unmet economic needs they can only meet by using some land from the Amazon, is it rea

A viewpoint I've never seen addressed - if the people of this country have unmet economic needs they can only meet by using some land from the Amazon, is it really more important to preserve it as a landmark than for the land to go to use? I'm all for conservation but there must be some reason everyone down there wants some of this land as opposed to going elsewhere.

hulitu 5y ago
Some people "have unmet economic needs" and some people have greed. Now, my economic needs are: a nice island just for me in the pacific, one house in Beverly Hills, a couple of sport cars, a private jet. The best way to achieve my economic needs is to destroy some ecosystem and raise cattle or trees plantages.
framecowbird 5y ago
A lot of the people doing deforestation in the Amazon are incredibly poor, and deforestation is the only option to them to increase their standard of living. However, to say we are preserving the Amazon as a "landmark" is not quite right. Globally speaking the best use for the Amazon is as a carbon sink and biodiversity hotspot. What should be happening is that the global community should be paying for this benefit: a big capital flow from the whole world to Brazil. But they are not, they are just free-riding.
- hulitu 5y ago
  And a lot of those poor people have specialised machines to cut the forest. Always blame the poor. It works so well.
slymon99 5y ago
> is it really more important to preserve it as a landmark than for the land to go to use The Amazon has 10% of the worlds biodiversity, I wouldn't exactly call it a landmark, this isn't historic preservation - and the land is already "in use". Also I'm not sure that "the people of the country" are buying and farming cattle on large chunks of the Amazon, I'd assume the economic gains are highly concentrated amongst a few companies (this is conjecture). Either way, lowering demand for cattle raised in the Amazon would be one way to make this less common.
- framecowbird 5y ago
  Very true that it's focused on just a few companies. Mostly JBS: they are massive. However while these companies take the lion's share of the profit it is poor people who are doing the deforestation to improve their standard of living, often hired by those companies via various intermediaries to hide their links to deforestation.

hulitu 5y ago

Some people "have unmet economic needs" and some people have greed. Now, my economic needs are: a nice island just for me in the pacific, one house in Beverly Hills, a couple of sport cars, a private jet. The best way to achieve my economic needs is to destroy some ecosystem and raise cattle or trees plantages.

framecowbird 5y ago

A lot of the people doing deforestation in the Amazon are incredibly poor, and deforestation is the only option to them to increase their standard of living. However, to say we are preserving the Amazon as a "landmark" is not quite right. Globally speaking the best use for the Amazon is as a carbon sink and biodiversity hotspot. What should be happening is that the global community should be paying for this benefit: a big capital flow from the whole world to Brazil. But they are not, they are just free-riding.

hulitu 5y ago
And a lot of those poor people have specialised machines to cut the forest. Always blame the poor. It works so well.

slymon99 5y ago

> is it really more important to preserve it as a landmark than for the land to go to use The Amazon has 10% of the worlds biodiversity, I wouldn't exactly call it a landmark, this isn't historic preservation - and the land is already "in use". Also I'm not sure that "the people of the country" are buying and farming cattle on large chunks of the Amazon, I'd assume the economic gains are highly concentrated amongst a few companies (this is conjecture). Either way, lowering demand for cattle raised in the Amazon would be one way to make this less common.

framecowbird 5y ago
Very true that it's focused on just a few companies. Mostly JBS: they are massive. However while these companies take the lion's share of the profit it is poor people who are doing the deforestation to improve their standard of living, often hired by those companies via various intermediaries to hide their links to deforestation.