Name: The destruction of the Amazon, explained
Uploaded: 2020-11-02T18:05:04.000Z
Duration: 11 min 45 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

"And in South America tonight, an environmental problem

"The destruction of the Amazon rainforest."

In the 1980s, the world learned that the Amazon was in danger.

"Trees are falling at a startling rate..."

"... an area twice the size of Belgium..."

"Half of the species of life on earth is in these forests."

"...An ecosystem the entire world needs for its survival."

By the 1990s, it seemed like it was too late.

"More than twice as fast as previously believed."

"The annual destruction rate of the Amazon rainforest has dropped...

"The lowest rate of deforestation since records began."

"The Amazon could achieve the end of deforestation.

But in order to keep it safe, there was one condition:

"Protecting the forest is a continual process."

"...as more and more trees are cut down."

"Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest hit its highest rate in a decade."

Today, the Amazon is being destroyed, all over again.

The first wave of deforestation started in the 1970s.

That's when Brazil's military regime saw the potential for profit deep in the Amazon.

There were almost 5 million square kilometers of rainforest filled with natural resources.

food, fiber, and forest resources are vast."

So the government started building the Trans-Amazonian Highway

run for 3200 kilometers connecting remote parts of the rainforest.

At the time, most of Brazil's population lived in the southeast; in cities like

And the government wanted to move people out here - to cultivate the land and grow the economy.

So they offered free land along the highway and paid Brazilians to settle deeper in the rainforest.

As the road advanced, settlers followed, rapidly clearing the forest around it.

Most of them turned the land into pasture, where they raised cows to sell as beef.

And when these ranchers needed more land, they seized another plot, cleared it, and moved their cattle in.

This expansion deeper into the Amazon drove up deforestation.

Between 1978 and 1988, an average of over 20,000 square kilometers were cut down each year.

Over time this area became known as the Arc of Deforestation.

And soon, a different product pushed this even further.

People around the world were eating more meat, decade after decade.

That trend raised the need for more soybeans; which served as high-protein feed for farmed animals.

This created a huge opportunity for countries most suitable for growing soybeans,

Soybean exports from Brazil shot up in the mid '90s, boosting the economy.

By the early 2000s, farmers took over these pastures and turned them into massive soy farms.

And the ranchers who sold their pastures, moved their cattle further into the rainforest,

clearing more of the Amazon, often illegally.

This aggressive expansion created a profitable pattern in the Amazon.

But it came at the cost of the rainforest.

By the early 2000s, Brazil's beef and soy industries were driving a booming economy,

as well as unprecedented rates of deforestation...

Which caused this arc to expand further north.

The staggering deforestation in the Amazon attracted fierce resistance from environmental groups.

"An area of ancient forest, the size of a football field

The Brazilian government, under president Lula da Silva, finally stepped in.

She was Brazil's Environment Minister in 2003, when she helped craft a plan to stop deforestation.

It started with the government expanding the amount of rainforest under protection.

At the time, only about 28% was protected, and there was very little oversight.

But this new plan added more reserves, where business activities were strictly banned,

and also created more sustainable-use reserves, where some businesses,

like Brazillian nut harvesting and rubber-tapping, which didn't destroy the rainforest, were allowed.

More land was also demarcated for indigenous people, who preserved the forest.

Over time, hundreds of new protected lands were added, transforming the Amazon into a

Eventually, almost half the Amazon would be put under some form of protection,

while the rest of it remained a mix of pasture, farms and rainforest.

To prevent further deforestation here, the government strengthened the Forest Code:

which said landowners could only clear 20% of their private land.

This law was monitored by the Forest Service, which was part of the Environmental Ministry,

which had jurisdiction over all of these protected lands.

And the key to enforcing this entire plan was strengthening IBAMA:

a police agency that would track and fine people for illegal deforestation.

with deforestation rates falling by more than half in 2006.

At the same time, an activist movement was forcing the agricultural industry

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The destruction of the Amazon, explained

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