Deforestation of the Amazon Rainfores- Humanities Essay

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Benjamin Waraich 11AS

Humanities- Ms Alderton

Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest

GCSE Humanities Coursework

This essay will investigate the hypothesis (Statement) “Deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest is a major global issue that only the Brazilian government can solve” and whether the evidence or the arguments’ support this hypothesis or not.

The Amazon rainforest is the largest of its kind on the earth. It is therefore also called the lungs of the earth (as the rainforest cuts down a major part of the total amount of the Co2 emissions). It is situated in 9 countries in South America with the most of it being in Brazil (60%) and the rest of it in Columbia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guiana, Suriname and French Guiana. The rainforest encompasses an area of 1.2billion acres which is equal to 7million kilometres sq. Tropical rainforest are a very important ecosystem for the earth. Half of the world’s species live and exist in the rainforest and this is very unique. The Amazon rainforest has a very large unexplored bio diversity which means that it may provide us with a lot of medicines and herbs for the future. There may be cures still to be found for diseases such as leukaemia.

The rainforest is environmentally important to us because it’s like the earth’s lungs as it absorbs a vast majority of the co2 produced by the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal and this Co2 (Carbon Dioxide) is absorbed and transformed into O2 (Oxygen). The climate is regulated by the process of transpiration which happens in plants, this process regulates the temperatures and it also controls the levels of humidity (amount of water vapour in the air) which means that when the air is not humid enough there will be more rapid transpiration and vice versa. The Amazonian rainforests store over half of the earth’s rainwater. Without rainforests continually recycling huge quantities of water, feeding the rivers, lakes and irrigation systems, droughts would become more common, potentially leading to widespread famine and disease. Soil in the rainforests is very poor in nutrients as all the nutrients are stored in the vast number of trees and plants. The tree roots hold the soil together. The canopy protects this poor nutritious soil from heavy rains. When a tree dies and it falls to the forest floor it decays and all the nutrients are recycled. However if trees are removed from the forests then the nutrients and the rain protection from the canopy will be removed. Not to mention that the tree roots which were anchoring the soil will be removed as well. Left behind is unprotected dusty/sandy soil which is then washed away in heavy rains. This can then cause blockages and flood in lowland rivers and will also leave highland rivers dry.

The rainforests also provide a home for many indigenous people (tribes such as Kaiowa and Guarani) whom have been living peacefully in the rainforests for thousands of years. They depend on the rainforest for their food, shelter and medicines. When oil and logging come to remove huge areas of their forest they also bring diseases with them which the indigenous people have no immunisation against. Sometimes they are forced away from their homes to places they don't even know and they are even chances of them being killed in this process of moving to a different area. The Amazon rainforest has a very large unexplored bio diversity which means that it may provide us with a lot of medicines and herbs for the future. More than 25% of our modern medicines originate from tropical forest plants. We have so far only learnt have to use 1% of the total number of Amazonian plants, imagine what cures and medicines we could get from the other 99% of plants.

Source A suggests that there has been an increase in the amount of deaths by suicide in the Mato Grosso du Sul state. More than 348 indigenous people have committed suicide since 1986. Source A is an article from a Brazilian newspaper from June 2002. As it is from a newspaper it was intended audience is the public (anyone who reads the paper). The source’s purpose was to inform people about the problems indigenous people are facing living in the Amazon rainforest. It was written by a journalist working for the paper. The source is in no way biased as it just trying to communicate the truth and it is not debating anything, the newspaper just want to share information which some members of the public might not have known of. One problem with the source is however that it was written 5 years ago and a lot of changes could have occurred since then so the source is not that reliable. The source is also not verifiable as it does not state where the data and statistics came from. The source links to my hypothesis that deforestation is not just the Brazilian government’s problem because the indigenous people affected by deforestation of the Amazon rainforest do not only live in Brazil, they live in Paraguay and Bolivia as well.

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The way in which the Amazon rainforest is destroyed is very wasteful because huge chunks of the forest are removed. One method is using massive chains attached to bull dozers which then drive and tear apart the forest and leave nothing but innutritious soil behind (this method is mainly used for logging). Another method is the slash and burn method which consists of burning massive areas of the forest just to clear land (this method is used to clear land for new roads, mining, HEP stations, cattle ranching,  small scale farming and large scale). They also sometimes flood huge areas ...

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