Greenpeace for the Amazon

1999/08/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Ekologia
• Ingurumena

The international environmental organization
Greenpeace presented at the end of May in Rio de Janeiro.This campaign will demand the protection of the Amazon rainforest worldwide, underlining that the problem of the Amazon is global. In fact, the destruction of the forest would cause climate change worldwide and the loss of much of oxygen production. Until 1970 99% of the forest was intact, but in 29 years the exploitation has grown completely, and today what remains undestroyed is 60%. The area that would occupy Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg in the last four years has been destroyed for tropical timber, mainly due to large American and European companies.

According to Thilo Bode, director of Greenpeace, we must try to protect that remaining 60%, and for this Greenpeace has proposed alternative commercial areas such as ecotourism, rubber exploitation, jungle fruits and medicinal plants. In this way, the lives of 20 million people living in the Amazon could be achieved without destroying the ecosystem, according to Greenpeace.