http://www.guardian.co.uk/
I've committed a large part of my professional and personal life to Brazil and understand the problems it has in achieving its social and economic goals, but the rainforest issue hangs over the country like the dark clouds before a storm in the Amazon. I really believe there is a complicity between the government and loggers/charcoal burners to the effect that statements will be made publicly in favour of conservation while nothing will actually be done to stop the destruction because of the contribution hardwoods make to exports and charcoal to being cheap fuel for industry.
The point is that it is OUR problem, or will be when the reduction of the rainforest to isolated reserves has destroyed the greatest lung in the world and eliminated uncalculated and incalculable measures of biodiversity. The Brazilian argument that the 'Western world' destroyed its forests to achieve industrialisation is invalid (a) because the countries involved never had tropical rainforests and (b) the USA in particular has employed an immense REforestation programme of its temperate woodlands. I challenge any Brazilian to show evidence of reforestation of the Atlantic or Amazonian rainforests and of a single illegal logger being imprisoned or given a significant fine.
And let's not forget that the victim here, like Chico Mendes, is a Brazilian - he was not a foreign missionary like Dorothy Stang, who was murdered for the same reasons and who might be dismissed as a go-gooder from outside. Brazilians who know the forest and grew up there want to preserve it.
Please send this news item on to other people as we should keep nagging away from the outside world because one thing Brazil does care about is its image abroad, especially in terms of its ambitions for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council (for whatever good that will do it).
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