Amazonia

Over 500 major fires were recorded in the Amazon in 2020. As reported by Mongabay, “The majority (90%) of the major fires this year detected by MAAP [Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project] occurred in the Brazilian Amazon. Here, fires aren’t natural but are mostly ignited by humans on deforested lands to clear existing agricultural fields of pests and weeds, or, of far greater concern, as a way for land grabbers to convert forested conserved public lands into private agricultural lands. In 2019, say analysts, most Amazon fires followed a pattern of intentional, often illegal, deforestation to make way for cattle and crops. However, this year a startling number of major fires (41%) burned in standing Amazon rainforest, where fires were not historically naturally occurring.For fire to burn inside the rainforest, it must be a particularly dry year — now likely the result of climate change — with human ignition sources typically on neighboring lands. MAAP estimates that nearly 5.4 million acres (2.2 million hectares) of the Brazilian Amazon’s standing rainforest burned this year, an area roughly the size of the country of Wales in the United Kingdom.”

"Surrounded by lush vegetation and rare butterflies, the San Rafael Waterfall was one of the most captivating landscapes in Ecuador. With water dropping 150 meters (490 feet), the river and falls cut through a thick patch of cloud forest at the intersection of the Andes Mountains and the Amazon Basin. As the country’s tallest waterfall, it attracted tens of thousands of visitors per year. But now, the cascade has disappeared. It stopped flowing on February 2, 2020. The images above and below show the falls and the surrounding river basin while water still flowed on August 4, 2014 (above) and after it stopped on March 15, 2020 (below). These images were acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. The image at the top of the page shows a photograph of the falls on November 28, 2012...The cause of the sinkhole is under investigation. Some geologists think the deformation occurred naturally, while other researchers suspect it may be tied to the new construction of the country’s largest hydroelectric plant.”

"There was a time, a brilliant weather when the moon would transform into Naiá and the sun would hide so this lady would shine in the shadowed night she would call the enchanted ones protectors of the forest, river, and sea. But man, son of the earth, who was shaped from her, enslaved to arrogance, money, a sin, dried up the river, slashed the earth, changed everything. He frightened the animals, deceived the enchanted ones, dragged out the grand samaúma tree and the birds, driven to despair, searched for a dwelling but saw only open country."

“The Amazon Forest is my economic strategy,” said the Brazilian president, elected in 2019.

“We, the indigenous women, have mobilized in Brazil’s capital city, to say that we won’t stand for genocide politics against us. They say they must integrate us into contemporary society, but what kind of society is that? …The destruction of our environment is our own destruction.”

"The Brazilian government is building the world's third largest hydroelectric dam on the Xingu River, a major Amazon tributary...the Belo Monte Dam complex is designed to divert eighty percent of the Xingu River's flow which will thus devastate an area of over 1,500 square kilometers of Brazilian rainforest and cause the forced displacement of up to over 20,000 people... Belo Monte is the first in a planned network of mega-dam projects which will pose additional devastation to an already threatened region."

“Gold mining has probably impacted the Tapajós Valley more than any other tributary valley in the Amazon Basin… The number of streams excavated for gold is unknown, but it is undoubtedly in the thousands. Prior to gold mining in the region, crystalline waters flowed in nearly all of its streams. Excavation, sluicing, and placer mining transformed clearwater streams into turbid slurries. Heavy loads of stream sediments, in addition to dredge mining in the larger channels, turned the clearwater Tapajós into a slightly turbid river until the gold rush largely ended in the mid-1990s, when new deposits were difficult to find and gold prices fell. Tapajós gold mining created two principal environmental problems—destruction of clearwater streams and mercury pollution.”

Dorothy Stang, a nun who opposed rainforest destruction and defended land rights for indigenous poor in the Amazon, killed by hired gunmen. Shortly before her death she wrote, “I don't want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the battle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest. They have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can live and work with dignity while respecting the environment.”

In response the pressure from the environmental movement, in 1998 the Brazilian government sponsored the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program with the World Bank and the WWF to expand protection of the Amazon Rainforest. The goals of the program included creating additional protected areas, strengthening management of existing preserves, and overseeing sustainable use areas including extractive reserves for indigenous people. Largely due to initial actions taken by ARPA in 2003, "between 2003 and 2008 Brazil was responsible for 74 percent of all the preservation areas created in the world.”

“To me, a 40 percent increase in deforestation doesn’t mean anything at all, and I don’t feel the slightest guilt about what we are doing here... We’re talking about an area larger than Europe that has barely been touched, so there is nothing to get worried about...It’s no secret that I want to build roads and expand agricultural production... The people voted for that, so I don’t see a problem.”

“The Central Amazon Conservation Complex makes up the largest protected area in the Amazon Basin (over 6 million hectares) and is one of the planet’s richest regions in terms of biodiversity. It also includes an important sample of varzea ecosystems, igapó forests, lakes and channels which take the form of a constantly evolving aquatic mosaic that is home to the largest array of electric fish in the world.”

“The Brazilian government’s seven year U.S.$10-$40 billion set of projects to boost its infrastructure and exports for the Amazon. The program, called Avança Brasil (forward Brazil), called for the paving of thousands of kilometers of Amazon roads, the deepening and straightening of key rivers for shipping, and the construction of ports. Gas and oilfields, pipelines, power lines, logging concessions, and dams were also part of the project. Much of this development was geared to provide a cheaper outlet to the sea for soy farmers in Brazil’s booming Center West agricultural belt.” But the plan had massive ecological implications. The “nonoptimistic” outlook for the future indicated ‘that only 4.7 percent of the Amazon would be left in its wild state in 2020.’”

“Nothing I have read or fantasized about has prepared me for this place. It looks as though high explosive, rather than a river, has split through this last mile of the Andes. The walls are sharply fractured, with rocky overhangs, sheared off like the stumps of shattered bridges. Lianas hang down to the water, some tipped with orange-red flowers like upturned candelabra. Water, pouring constantly down smooth, black, mossy flanks, has worn the rock into weird and wonderful shapes—symmetrical fluted surfaces, perfectly smoothed bowls, caves, and chambers.”

"Suriname, located within the larger Amazon Basin, has opened up its immense tropical forests to extractive industries, all of which operate without local consent or oversight... Wanze Eduards and Hugo Jabini successfully organized their communities against logging on their traditional lands, ultimately leading to a landmark ruling for indigenous and tribal peoples throughout the Americas to control resource exploitation in their territories.” When the government of Suriname would not recognize the Saramaka's land rights, Eduards and Jabini took their case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which set the legal precedent for "informed consent" from indigenous tribes making traditional use of lands.