With unlimited time and resources, my solution to deforestation of the Amazon rainforest would be to improve soil fertility, reforest the cleared land and help species recovery along with helping the indigenous people.
The public would likely support or try to help with what I'm proposing because more and more people are thinking about the environment and taking action to protect it. The world is beginning to understand what the Amazon rainforest does as the lungs of the planet.
Reasons for deforestation and who benefits:
Agriculture: Many people benefit from agriculture in the Amazon, whether the food is being shipped away to the americas or stays where it is produced; agriculture is necessary. Part of the reason farmers continue clearing more land, is that the forest soil is very poor, so they can only plant crops on that land for a few years before it is depleted.
Mining: Many people around the world benefit from the mining in the Amazon; for example, Peru is the biggest producer of silver and gold in the world; many people like to wear silver and gold as jewelry and have it as decorations around their houses, and use it for religious purposes. Gold is a component in computers and technology. If mining stopped, there would be very big effects all across the world.
Logging: There are many rare woods In the Amazon which are valued around the world. Some of the governments in the region are making it too hard to log legally, and are basically saying, log illegally; as a result, the loggers make more money logging illegally. If the forest was logged sustainably and legally, the deforestation could be slowed drastically.
Dams: Dams are needed for generating power in the Amazon, as not all people in the area have power. There is always a growing need for electricity, but dams prevent fish from moving freely and form big pools of water where mosquitoes that carry diseases lay eggs, thus threatening the indigenous people and all the other people around the dams, with illness.
To improve the productivity of farms, the soil has to be nutrient rich. If the soil was fertilized and improved, farmers wouldn’t need to clear more land, and they could grow productive crops and livestock on the land already have. I would support initiatives already in place, that are trying to rehabilitate the soil. Groups like the Brazilian Farm Research Corporation (Embrapa) are already researching using improved technology to get better yield from crops.
Better government polices that support a sustainable logging industry and penalize illegal logging, would slow the rate of deforestation. Consumers could become educated on the cost of deforestation, deal with the lack of rare woods or learn to purchase sustainably logged woods. My initiative would see the loggers reemployed and paid fair wages to reforest the land that they have just cleared. We would make and operate nurseries for native trees and pair up with initiatives like The Trillion Trees Initiative, which is joining with local communities to restore degraded landscapes. I would support these efforts, especially because they are working in a thoughtful way to make sure the trees have a high survival rate.
Dams are harder to deal with because there aren't very many clean substitutes to hydroelectricity. Before dams are constructed the builders should look at the impact the dam will cause and try to choose sites that minimize the effects on the surrounding area.
Ceasing construction of new mines, would help slow deforestation as well.
These efforts would keep people employed, improve the productivity of farm land, stop shrinking the rainforest and start growing it in size and if started soon, it would still be possible to restore the Amazon rainforest.
https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/04/restoring-peruvian-amazon-one-most-ecologically-valuable-forests-world
https://www.dw.com/en/the-amazon-nutrient-rich-rainforests-on-useless-soils/a-50139632
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060301090431.htm
https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_conservation.html
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
gummygunk
prguitarman
dededos
blakekathryn