Name: Brazil's Amazon rainforest: how crime drives deforestation | FT Features
Uploaded: 2020-03-07T16:14:24.000Z
Duration: 17 min 44 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...

of timber, of gold, of coltan, of animals and livestock.

And right now, there is a gold rush, a scramble,

a plundering underway of all of its vast resources.

ROBERT MUGGAH: Under the current administration

There is an incentivization of land grabbing.

There is an easing of the penalties associated

with those who may be abusing existing legislation.

to set thresholds and limits around deforestation

and the political economy that's driving that business

Around 80% deforestation in the Amazon is illegal.

Land grabbers occupy the land for cattle farming, soy,

They might be financed by corrupt politician,

a local rancher, drug cartels, or militia.

And they often clear the land like setting fire

RICARDO SALLES: The fact is that the laws and regulations that

were enacted and used for the past, let's say 10, 20 years,

that it has restricted development to those areas.

And, that in that sense, people go to the other--

don't have any other space to do something under the law

RICARDO SALLES: You cannot punish 20 million people.

We need to give them some sort of alternative.

What you have to give them is a reasonable path of work,

is a combination of players in this criminal ecosystem

A key issue is that they have a high level of impunity

because law enforcement is weak AND environmental fines are

To that you can add collusion and corruption

for looking the other way, or maybe more deeply involved,

even driving people off the land themselves

Once occupied, land titles for public land

and occupiers might expect to benefit from amnesties

As we've seen this gold rush and this timber rush

and the allure of the profits that the Amazon can yield

emerge, you've seen a massive migration of populations

And so many cities have ballooned in size

You get all sorts of forms of concentrated disadvantage

and poverty and inequality and that tends

groups that are manipulating and working in concert politicians

to drive this business, but it's also the ambient crime

And today many of the interior cities across the Amazon

are some of the most violent in the world.

ROBERT MUGGAH: Over the last two decades though,

there was a generally widespread improvement

in the overall stewardship of the Amazon.

There was introduction of several protections.

There is an expansion of the number of reserves.

And what we saw was actually a decline in deforestation,

increasing management of some aspects of the mining

industries, and more corporate social responsibility

for many companies that were involved in these activities.

But the reality is right now, that without leadership,

without strong vision from the top trying

for the Amazon, but instead the opposite, the opening up

going to see the situation get much worse.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Brazil's Amazon rainforest: how crime drives deforestation | FT Features

extraordinary

alternative

grab

vast