1B-+Infrastructure

 Infrastructure and Its Impact On The Rainforest INFRASTRUCTURE- What does it do?—Road construction gives developers and ranchers access to previously inaccessible forest lands in the Amazon. Infrastructure improvements can reduce the costs of shipping and packing beef, while larger and more modern slaughterhouses have made cattle processing more efficient. The Amazon rainforest is the biggest rainforest in the world, yet is is being destroyed faster than it can sustain itself. Infastructure is only speeding up this process.

The Truth About The Diminishing Forest 1. One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second due to human tampering.

2. Corporate giants like Mitsubishi Corporation, Georgia Pacific, Texaco and Unocal are the main reason that infrastructure is destroying the Amazon rainforest.

3. Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases that would help us greatly.

4. The main reason for the buildup of infrastructure in the Amazon rainforest is to clear land for ranching and farming.

5. The paper industry in particular likes the Amazon rainforest, the abundance of trees is perfect for paper production.

6. The Brazilian government wishes to raze the land in order to create more space for homes and industry.

7. The native people of the Amazon rainforest numbers have dwindled as the result of infrastructure- less than 200,00 are believed to remain. The most notorious of the infrastructure projects that would affect the Amazon rainforest is the Trans-Amazonian Highway. The Trans-Amazonian highway was one of the most ambitious resettlement-economic development programs ever devised, and one of the greatest failures. In the 1970s, Brazil planned a 2000-mile highway that would bisect the massive Amazon forest, opening rainforest lands to settlement by peasants from the crowded, drought-plagued north and development of its timber and mineral resources to maintain the country's impressive economic growth.

Colonists would be given a 250-acre lot, six months' salary, and easy access to agricultural loans, in exchange for settling along the highway and converting the surrounding rainforest into agricultural land. The plan would grow to cost Brazil US$65,000 (1980 dollars) to settle each family, a staggering amount for Brazil, a developing country at the time. The project was plagued from the start. The sediments of the Amazon Basin rendered the highway unstable and subject to inundation during heavy rains, blocking traffic and leaving crops to rot. Harvest yields for peasants were dismal since the forest soils were quickly exhausted, and new forest had to be cleared annually. Logging was difficult due to the widespread distribution of commercially valuable trees. Rampant erosion, up to 40 tons of soil per acre (100 tons/ha) occurred after clearing. Many colonists, unfamiliar with banking and lured by easy credit, went deep into debt.

Adding to the economic and social failures of the project, are the long term environmental costs. After the construction of the Trans-Amazonian highway, Brazilian deforestation accelerated to levels never before seen and vast swaths of forest were cleared for subsistence farmers and cattle-ranching schemes. The Trans-Amazonian highway is a prime example of the environmental havoc that is caused by road construction in the rainforest.

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