The brazilian Amazon in transformation II: five decades of exploitation, deforestation, and attempts at sustainable development

Abstract

In over 50 years, the Brazilian Amazonia has experienced man-made destruction of natural resources and the livelihoods of the Indigenous population. In the 1970s, the Military Government granted private capital almost unlimited access to rain forest areas in the planning region Amazônia Legal with generous financial incentives, after the state-led colonisation of landless people remained unsuccessful. Large-scale destruction of biodiversity, rising temperatures and instability of precipitation not only pose a threat to the region, but also cause global impacts related to climate change. Over the last two decades, Amazônia Legal has evolved from a CO2 sink to a source of CO2 emissions. Adeforestation rate of 20–25 % marks a tipping point at which rain forests will turn into non-forest ecosystems (humid savannahs). This “point of no return” could be imminent.