The Amazon region and its peoples are at a crossroads. The degradation of natural resources, due to factors such as poor pasture management, unsustainable slash-and-burn agriculture, large-scale commercial agriculture, and logging, has intensified in recent decades. Global climate change (CC) is also an issue: the Amazon is both contributor to CC due to greenhouse gas emissions resulting from land conversion (especially slash-and-burn agriculture) and livestock and will be victim to heating and drying as the effects of CC become more pronounced. Current far-reaching programs for regional economic and infrastructural integration, coupled with continuing population growth, are likely to contribute to more deforestation, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, with drastic impacts on livelihoods of vulnerable local people and on the Amazon environment itself.
Publication year
2007
Language
English
Keywords
planning, ecological zones, innovation, governance, environment, services
Geographic
Brazil
