Putting a value on rainforests

Biodiversity doesn't sell! At least that was the frustrated cry of at least one delegate at a conference of corporations, NGO's and financiers who met to explore innovations in biodiversity and business in New York last week.

At present, natural capital remains largely off balance sheet to all but the most innovative companies.

But all that may be about to change with the announcement of a ground breaking deal by a group of London based investors who aim to change the way the economy values the environment, by investing in rainforests as a global life support system and to fight climate change.

advertisement

The deal, announced by Canopy Capital at the world's first 'Biodiversity and Ecosystem Finance Conference', involves guaranteed payments over five years to the Iwokrama International Centre in Guyana in return for rights to the ecosystem services produced by a rainforest reserve two and a half times the size of London, which the Centre manages on behalf of the Commonwealth.

The funds will be used to provide livelihoods for the 7,000 indigenous people dependent of the reserve and to help support the conservation of the rainforest.

Canopy Capital aims to repackage the rights into novel financial instruments such as a forest backed bonds that will acquire value over time for investors.

Profits will be shared with up to 80 per cent of any upside going to the Iwokrama community.

London law firm Stevenson Harwood drew up the pioneering deal, defining the 'ecosystem services' of the reserve as the proven ability of rainforests to generate rainfall, cool the atmosphere, store carbon, moderate weather conditions and sustain biodiversity.

If it works, the project could create a new paradigm for maintaining life on earth by paying for it - and not just for bugs - but for all of us.

Guyana is no stranger to innovative action on rainforests. In1995 under the Iwokrama Act, its government gave 370,000 hectares in the heart of its pristine rainforests to the Commonwealth to pioneer new ways of sustainable forest management and to combat global warming.

In 2007 Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo, offered the rest to Britain, a country of about the same size, to help the world community mitigate climate change.

In return the president asked for economic help to develop new options to bring prosperity to his people without resorting to forest conversion. Testing such a model in Iwokrama could be a giant step on the way to making his idea come true.

Idealistic or visionary, Canopy Capital's move could change the way business values the environment by investing in the services nature provides to us for free today, but which the world may be forced to pay for tomorrow.

It strikes at the heart of a truism that the businesses community will grudgingly have to come to terms with in coming decades, that the global economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.

For generations our business forbears have sold us the idea that nature's resources can be plundered willy nilly for wealth creation.

In the future investors may have to reckon, are they creating wealth that's worth having?

The other day I asked one: if you have made your first billion, what's the point of the next? Mistily, he replied: 'It's to give my grand children the future I never had'. If, as a result, only the concrete jungle survives, smiles from siblings may be in short supply.

Because the coming clash between energy security, food security and environmental security seems increasingly just round the corner, investors like those behind Canopy Capital, are betting that increasingly scarce nature will no longer be priceless, but will eventually attract a real value in markets.

With sharply rising commodity prices and the growing drive for biofuels, pressure on land will intensify leading agribusiness to roll back the rainforests, the source of much cheap land.

The potentially disastrous resulting emissions, 18 per cent of the global total currently and more than the entire transport sector, are a price that the world cannot afford if it expects to win the fight against climate change.

Worse, deforestation will compromise the profitability of farmers in tropical forest nations hoping to expand their businesses and energy ministers hoping to increase their dependency on hydropower or biofuels, rather than oil.

Why? Because these industries all need rain. Rainforests produce it in vast quantities over huge intercontinental distances that science is only now beginning to quantify.

According to Dr Antonio Nobre, of Brazil's Institute for Research in the Amazon, the Amazon tree canopy releases 20bn tonnes of moisture each day into the atmosphere, seeds the sky with chemicals stimulating rain, and cools the land surface.

Build a utility to just evaporate the water and you would need energy equivalent to 50,000 of the world's largest hydro dams working on full power 24 hours - and forests do it for free!

If Google's services are worth $130bn, how come those of forests are nil?

Without a value standing up, rainforests are worth more dead than alive - so they fall. As Hylton Murray Philipson, one of Canopy Capital's director's says: "If we don't start paying the bill for these natural utilities, then its only a matter of time before we get cut off."

Meanwhile back at the conference, fledgling funds for nature with names like Verde Ventures and EKO Asset Management spoke with pride of forest farmers producing shade coffee for Starbucks or community eco-tourism potential for remote communities.

With what returns? Well, transformed lives, but to investors in one $10m fund, break even at best. But hey, don't knock it. This is hard!

Biodiversity businesses face a steep learning curve among communities who too often have experienced commerce as a con, are mystified by shares and face access to capital by canoe rather than computer.

Figuring out who should get paid and how is a major barrier in developing countries where good governance may be opaque at best and land titles have never been written down.

The conference revealed innovative ways to pay communities to maintain their land and protect biodiversity from auctioning hedgerows in Holland, to paying families a 'Bolsa Floresta' (forest conservation grant) in Amazonas State to maintain the ecosystem services their forests provide in return for signing a pledge to "make no smoke".

When Deutche Bank opened it's carbon desk buying credits at 0.3 cents a tonne, it sold them years later at $27. Valuing natural capital for the ecosystem services it provides may emerge as a similarly profitable opportunity for first movers.

This is not about paying countries to reduce their emissions from destroying their rainforests, but rather paying a fair return to those countries and their forest owning peoples who have chosen not to do so, for maintaining them.

And what should government's encourage markets to do? Pay to store a ton of 'dead carbon' underground captured from a power plant using coal, or pay to conserve a ton of 'living carbon' stored in a rainforest with all its co-benefits?

Well, we've got to do both because the problem to be solved is so big that there'll be room for everyone to get on board.

The difficulty of getting biodiversity onto the balance sheet is unlikely to see markets flooded anytime soon. But investing in rainforests for what they do for us? Well, I call that creating wealth that's worth having.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/31/eacanopy131.xml

Rainforest: Five reasons to get excited about football in Brazil

While England were losing to France in Paris last night, the Brazilian national team were treating the Emirates Arsenal stadium to a preview of what football fans can expect at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil with a 1-0 win over old rivals Sweden. Preparation for the World Cup is already well under way.

Maracanã, the stadium HQ of top Rio de Janeiro clubs Flamengo, Vasco, Fluminense and Botafogo is being completely refurbished in time for 2014, but its Football Museum remains open, housing mementoes from legendary matches, such as the ball and net from Pelé’s 1,000th goal, and the boots worn by Garrincha (the “little bird”), considered to be the best dribbler in footballing history.

The beach city of Natal is already going football crazy – David Beckham is building his World of Sport Academy here to provide future football stars with top-flight facilities, as well as a luxury hotel resort for guests to enjoy .

As well as footballing prowess, Brazil prides itself on fantastic hospitality. Thirsty football fans will especially enjoy a cold beer in Belo Horizonte after watching games at the renovated 74,000-seater Minerão stadium, as the city is said to boast over 12,000 bars, more per capita than anywhere else in the country. In fact, the motto of Brazil’s third largest city and the capital of beautiful, landlocked Minas Gerais state, is “nao tem mares, tem bares”, which loosely translates as “There are no seas, there are bars.”

The Brazilians have proposed a record 18 different cities to host matches, from all corners of its 8 million square km territory, making 2014 likely to be the most geographically diverse World Cup ever. It will even take football fans from all over the world deep into the heart of the Amazon rainforest to the cities of Manaus and Rio Branco.

Brazilians take the World Cup more seriously than any other nation, having won the cup a total of five times on foreign soil. However, the last time the country hosted the tournament, back in 1950, the national side lost to neighbours Uruguay in a humiliating defeat that is said to have provided the inspiration for subsequent Brazilian teams, who began their winning streak in 1958.

http://www.easier.com/view/Travel/Travel_Guides/article-170619.html

Peru tribe battles oil giant over pollution

It is a familiar story. Big business moves into a pristine wilderness and starts destroying the environment and by turn the livelihoods of the indigenous people who live there.

But in a reversal of plot, there are now cases of people living traditional lifestyles who are now invading the territory of the big companies and taking them on at their own game.

The story of the Achuar tribe living in the Amazon rainforest of north-eastern Peru is one of them.

Last year, they filed a class action lawsuit against oil giant Occidental Petroleum, in Los Angeles.

Now they are awaiting a judge's decision on whether the case can proceed in the US or will be sent back to Peru, where it stands little chance of coming to court.

'No credible data

The Achuar people, who have lived for thousands of years in the rainforest, allege that the company contaminated their territory during more than 30 years of oil drilling, making their people sick, even causing some to die, and damaging their land and livelihoods beyond repair.

Occidental Petroleum, which pulled out of Peru eight years ago, denies liability in the case.

It has responded, saying: "We are aware of no credible data of negative community health impacts resulting from Occidental's operations in Peru."

The oil bonanza began in Peru almost 40 years ago when many foreign companies were given an open invitation by successive governments to test and drill in the Amazon.

What they did not consider was the devastating impact it would have on the native people, principally the Achuar - their land, their livelihood and their health.

The Achuar's spiritual leader, Tomas Maynas, wears a bright red headdress made of toucan feathers, and has red war paint streaked on his face. He is the plaintiff in the suit against the company.

He remembers how everything changed when the oil companies arrived. He says the animals ran away, the fish died and their crops started to wilt.

"The Peruvian state just wants to extract as much oil as they can from our land. They've made millions of dollars but we haven't seen it here.

"We know there's wealth here and there'll be more drilling so the state will keep on killing us. But sometimes, when there is pressure, the state gives in."

The lawsuit alleges Occidental Petroleum ignored industry standards and employed out-of-date practices, dumping around 9bn barrels of toxic waste water into streams and rivers over 30 years.

After Occidental left, its operations were taken over by Pluspetrol.

Pluspetrol agreed to change practices in late 2006 when the Achuar, after repeated attempts to negotiate, took direct action.

Shotguns and spears

Many of the older Achuar men once fought in tribal wars with their neighbours, now they finally had the chance to hit their elusive new enemies where it hurt - in their pockets.

Peacefully, yet armed with shotguns and spears, they occupied and held the Amazon oil wells in October 2006.

The ecosystem is the genetic bank of the Amazon...that is our capital, the genetic bank that we have to preserve for humanity, and for the world

Ivan Vasquez

Loreto regional president

The government and the company, losing millions of dollars a day, were forced to come to the negotiating table.

The Achuar came away with a commitment from Pluspetrol to reduce contamination and to pay millions of dollars to clean up and establish a 10-year health plan.

It was thanks to help from outside but also a new generation of indigenous leaders who are learning how to protect their rights in the modern world.

"A whole generation had their health damaged. How can we keep quiet as our parents did?" asks 29-year-old Petronila Chumpi.

"We can't allow this, we're a new generation, we know how to read and write and we have to help our people because they didn't have the knowledge to defend themselves against the oil companies. But now we do."

Improvement

Even on a fast motorboat, Trompeteros is a long day's journey up three rain-swollen rivers from Loreto's regional capital, Iquitos. A hamlet of some 3,000 people, it is situated right opposite Block Eight, one of the main oil wells.

Local people say there is still contamination and oil spills, but now the Achuar have GPS transceivers to log the problems where they find them.

Little by little there are signs of improvement.

But there is frustration on the part of Pluspetrol, which has pledged to pay millions of dollars, that the government is not playing a bigger role.

"This oil industry should be of benefit for everybody - maybe today it's not of benefit to indigenous people and the government should find the best way to solve that problem," says Roberto Ramallo, general manager of Pluspetrol Norte.

But the problem is that the Achuar and other tribes live on top of potentially enormous reserves of crude oil.

Thanks to an intense drive to auction it off, almost three-quarters of the Peruvian Amazon is leased for oil exploration and extraction.

High global demand and the price of oil is also making companies look at the Peruvian Amazon as an attractive prospect, but is it sustainable?

"All of this petroleum exploration in the Amazon is a grand experiment," says Bill Powers of E-Tech, a not-for-profit engineering firm.

"It's just coming into the jungle, developing the resource, getting the economic benefit and historically it's been whatever happens to whoever was there before, happens.

"There's no plan, there's no effort made to ensure that they maintain their cultural integrity or that they have something to do once the rivers and the forest don't provide what they used to provide."

Future plans

Carbon trading schemes have yet to reach this part of the Amazon and the oil boom is not the only threat.

President Alan Garcia has proposed privatising large areas of the rainforest, but local officials say the government in Lima does not understand the impact this would have.

The regional president of Loreto, Ivan Vasquez, says the Amazon needs to preserve its diversity at all costs.

"The ecosystem is the genetic bank of the Amazon, as it brings together genetic matrices which don't exist anywhere else - thousands of interconnected genetic bases.

"That is our capital, the genetic bank that we have to preserve for humanity, and for the world."

The Achuar have so far rejected new oil exploration on their territory.

Their story is an emblematic case of resistance for indigenous Amazonians and is unprecedented in Peru.

But the Peruvian rainforest, the biggest stretch of Amazon outside Brazil, is still the focus of the relentless global hunt to find new sources of fossil fuels.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7306639.stm

Biofuels: a solution that became part of the problem

· Alarm expressed by top government expert

· UK food prices rose three times faster than inflation

Using plant-based materials for fuel in cars and trucks was until recently heralded as the answer to the need to reduce carbon emissions from petrol and diesel fuels.

But the alarm expressed yesterday by Professor Robert Watson, the government's highest-ranking environment scientist, that the headlong pursuit of biofuels could accelerate climate change, is the latest in a series of comments from senior figures that have shaken Whitehall.

Both Watson and the former chief scientific officer, Sir David King, have joined the chorus of those calling for a key "sustainability" clause to be introduced to ensure biofuels do not compound the problem by competing for land with staple food crops and speeding up deforestation.

Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, Watson said: "It would obviously be insane if we had a policy to try and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the use of biofuels that's actually leading to an increase in the greenhouse gases from biofuels."

The comments are controversial because the government has committed the UK from April 1 to ensuring that at least 2.5% of all petrol and diesel for vehicles comes from biofuels, with that figure moving up to 5% by 2010. Meanwhile, the EU is aiming for 10% of power for transport being provided by crops from 2020.

King said a distinction should be drawn between different kinds of biofuels, some of which are more carbon-friendly than others. For example, biofuels from sugar cane in Brazil have 10% of the carbon footprint of traditional fuel, while maize-based fuels in America would have 80% or 90% of the footprint. He also has worries about the displacement of food crops by biofuel crops.

"There is enough evidence now that the White House having introduced to favour biofuels in the US has created quite a massive diversion of food crop products into biofuel production and hence pushed up prices of food, particularly in developing countries," he said.

The price of food in Britain rose three times faster than the level of inflation last year and major increases in the cost of wheat and other basic commodities have been partly attributed to biofuels. Meanwhile, vital rainforest in places such as Brazil and Indonesia is being cleared more quickly than ever to make way for new plant-based fuel production.

The views from the two British scientists came as a coalition of environmental and development groups wrote a joint letter to ministers warning their biofuels policy risked doing more harm than good. In a letter to the transport secretary, Ruth Kelly, groups including Oxfam, the RSPB and Greenpeace called for her to put an end to the biofuels policy being introduced through a Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) until more was known about the impact of different forms of plant-based oil.

The government agreed last month that it would undertake a review of the biofuels sector to ensure "the full economic and environmental impacts of biofuels production are taken into account in the formation of UK policy beyond 2010". The study will be undertaken by the new Renewable Fuels Agency, which will report in the early summer, but Kelly made clear that, in the meantime, the RTFO would apply from the start of next month.

The review follows expressions of concern from Stavros Dimas, the EU's environment commissioner, the Royal Society and a parliamentary environmental audit committee. The last concluded that the possible risks outweighed the benefits and said both the UK and EU should scrap their targets until the green advantages of biofuels could be guaranteed.

Ministers have also been influenced by two studies highlighted recently in the US journal Science. In one, researchers calculated that converting natural ecosystems to grow corn or sugar cane to produce ethanol, or palms or soybeans for biodiesel, could release between 17 and 420 times more carbon than the annual savings from replacing fossil fuels. Stephen Polasky from the University of Minnesota, one of the authors of the report, said: "Landowners are rewarded for producing palm oil and other products but not rewarded for carbon management. This creates incentives for excessive land-clearing and can result in large increases in carbon emissions."

Any retrenchment by government over biofuels will cause resentment within big business, which was opposed to the concept but has started to invest heavily.

The value of renewable power companies has soared over recent years. BP recently announced it might sell off part of its "green" energy business, while Shell has put up for sale its Infineum joint venture with ExxonMobil, which produces biofuels. But new British businesses such as D1 Oils, which produce "second-generation" biofuels, have been laying off staff, saying the increasing opposition to these fuels is undermining the business.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/25/biofuels.energy/print

Amazon Energy

Start with Acai, the amazing purple berry harvested from the amazon basin in Brazil. Add the Vitamin C superfruit acerola, along with rainforest botanicals like guarana and yerba mate, and you've got one potent, all-natural energy drink that heightens awareness while boosting your energy and immune system.

Since it is made with the finest organic ingredients, and not a drop of anything artificial, you can say goodbye to jitters and crashes. It's pure amazon energy through and through.

So, "get with the purple berry" and discover the natural evolution of the energy drink. To find out more about efforts to help protect the Amazon Rainforest – try the pure positive energy drink "Amazon Energy".

Super Healthy, Super Tasty Superfood

Transfer Factor with Acai – Super Fruit Anti-oxidant

It´s official—the Acai fruit is officially an energy fruit. A particular celebrity show host has said so. Don´t worry if you haven´t heard of acai fruit before, most people are still discovering the little berry. This little berry, though, is soon going to be world famous and in high demand. This fruit is actually a berry that comes from an Amazonian palm tree that is harvested in the Brazilian rainforest.

The acai fruit is a drupe that measures about an inch in diameter and looks sort of like a grape but does not have as much pulp. It grows in panicles of seven hundred to nine hundred and two crops of these fruits are produced each year. The fruit has a seed that is less than ten millimeters in diameter. The fruit is harvested as a food and is considered to be one of the most important species of three different Caboclo tribes in Brazil. The juices from the fruit are often blended into sodas, smoothies and other drinks and are traditionally served in a gourd alongside tapioca and sugar. In Brazil it is popularly served in a bowl where it is mixed with granola. This concoction is often thought of as an energy meal. The fruit has also been made into ice cream.

It is a very nutritious fruit. One hundred grams of this powder contains almost five hundred and forty calories, fifty two grams of carbohydrates, eight grams of protein and thirty two grams of fat. It has forty four grams of fiber, which makes it incredibly valuable as a macronutrient. It is also rich in fatty acids like oleic acid, palmitic acid and linoleic acid. It is thought to reduce blood cholesterol. It contains nineteen amino acids and is very high in aspartic acid and glutamic acid content.

The most important part of this fruit, though, is its anti-oxidant content. Anti-oxidants can slow down the aging process by keeping our cells healthy. Many authorities find that acai fruit is one of the most powerful anti-aging foods in existence. This small fruit contains more antioxidants than blueberries. Not only is the berry rich in antioxidants (with anthocyanins 10-30 times more powerful than the antioxidants in red grapes), but it also boasts a balanced complex of essential fatty acids (including those hard-to-get omega 9s and omega 6s),

This fruit also has the potential to help people´s digestion (thanks to its high fiber content), keep their cardiovascular system healthy, and helps with muscle regeneration and contraction.

Acai-rich foods are hard to find, as the fruit is rare. You probably will not find anything with acai as an ingredient in your local grocery store, but you might be able to find it in a health food store or a gourmet store. Because the fruit is becoming more popular, largely thanks to a popular magazine, it will slowly start becoming easier to find and people might find ways to grow the "super fruit" somewhere outside of Brazil.

The acai fruit is probably one of the healthiest fruits on the planet. It may help your muscles, your heart, your digestion, your energy levels and even can prevent early aging and slow down the rest of the aging process.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/56180

Amazon Energy

San Clemente–based Sambazon, the global leader in the Amazon superfood açaí, this month launched Amazon Energy, a new organic energy drink made with the açaí berry and other antioxidant-rich Amazon rainforest superfruits and botanicals.

“We’ve been working on this product for over three years and are very excited to finally bring consumers something they have been asking for: an organic, great-tasting energy drink made from high-quality superfood ingredients,” says Jeremy Black, vice president of marketing for Sambazon and San Clemente resident.

The product is available at sambazon.com, Tutor and Spunky’s Deli in Dana Point and soon nationwide at Whole Foods.

http://www.sanclementetimes.com/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,print,0&cntnt01articleid=949&cntnt01showtemplate=false&cntnt01returnid=99

Family adventures in the Amazon

An adventure holiday in the Brazilian Amazon turned out to be full of surprises for all the family, writes Christopher Middleton.

There are 18 of us altogether; 11 children and seven grown-ups, lost and sweating in the heat of the Amazon jungle, with only Paolo our native guide between us and the poisonous spiders, not to mention the dehydration, disorientation and eventual starvation - speaking of which, Paolo is showing us how to set an animal trap.

“First, spread white sand on the path the animals use,” he tells us. “Their prints will show you the size of animal and the direction they travel in. That way, you know what height to set the arrow.”

Arrow? Yes, our wily guide has set up a hidden crossbow-type device, triggered by a tripwire. With any luck, we’ll soon be tucking into anteater. And it won’t have to be raw, either; as well as being on top of all the ancient jungle survival techniques, Paolo has a few modern tricks up his sleeve, too.

“In a plane-crash situation like this, you want to find some batteries in the wreckage, plus a bit of wire wool, the kind the air stewards use for washing dishes,” he tells us. “Strike the two batteries together at the positive end to cause a short circuit, and you’ll make a spark that will set fire to the wool.”

A few minutes later, two burning torches stand guard outside the makeshift, plaited palm-frond shelter that Paolo has constructed. “The flames will keep away the insects and frighten off the jaguars,” he says. “We should be able to keep going now until we are rescued.”

Not that anyone’s actually out looking for us because this is just a pretend survival scenario. That said, precious few of our party (ages five to 52) would have the faintest clue how to find the way back to our Ecolodge, half a mile of impenetrable undergrowth away.

We’re all here in Brazil on a 14-day Amazon family adventure, run by the long-established adventure holiday company Explore. While this is the leafy, rainforest section of the trip, there’s also an urban part (Rio de Janeiro), a waterfalls part (at Iguaçu, on the Argentinian border) and a beach part (Praia do Forte, near the north-eastern city of Salvador).

All this is interspersed with lots of flights, what with Brazil being the size it is, and some of our destinations being more than 1,000 miles apart. Our plane from the Amazonian capital Manaus to Salvador, for example, makes six stops en route, though mercifully that has been reduced to three for the 2008 tour.

There is no question that the schedule is demanding (some mornings start at 4am, others at 5am), but at the same time there are plenty of treats in between. All of our hotels have swimming pools and, in terms of activities, there aren’t many holidays where you get the chance to eat termites (they have a woody taste) in the world’s densest jungle and to sip chilled passion fruit juice on the world’s most famous beach (Copacabana).

As with any holiday, there are experiences that are good and experiences that are bad, but on this trip there are far more that are just plain surprising.

In the “E for every bit as enjoyable as expected” column, you can put the spectacular views over Rio, from both Sugar Loaf Mountain and from the colossal Christ The Redeemer statue on Mount Corcovado. Add to these the thunderous beauty of the Iguaçu Falls, spanning two borders, a canyon nearly two miles wide that looks at first sight like a gargantuan steaming disaster zone – or the world’s biggest bath overflowing down countless craggy walls, sometimes in lumps of leaden meringue, sometimes in symmetrically fizzy soda streams.

Under “D for disappointing”, you can file a couple of lacklustre outings: one to an Amazonian Indian village, full of locals who gave the impression they were going through the motions, and one to see whales off the north-east coast (the odd distant spouting).

Then there is the rather large number of excursions (£20-£45 per head) that are billed as “optional” but aren’t really; at least not unless you’re prepared to make your family sit grimly at the hotel all day while everyone else goes off to the Argentinian side of the waterfalls, or whizzes down the Amazon on a speedboat, taking in anacondas, giant fish and wild cayman crocodiles close up.

Far outweighing these little pluses or minuses, though, is the sheer volume of undreamed-of discoveries that this tour presents on an almost hourly basis - the ferocity of the waves on Copacabana Beach, for example, compared with the elegant, green-glass coolness of the subterranean shower rooms under the sand; the extraordinary Brazilian penchant for serve-yourself buffet restaurants, where you pay according to the weight of the food you pile on your plate; and the gentle, unobtrusive attitude of everyone from souvenir-sellers to car drivers (several actually stop for us to cross the road), compared with the acquisitiveness of the coatimundi. These badger-sized beasts seem sweet and cuddly until they start swarming over your café table in pursuit of Coke and crisps.

The cities are surprisingly unlovely, too; most are a tropical hodge-podge of buildings ranging from the weary-looking to the positively distressed (witness the bare brick slums that cling to the hills). Notable exceptions are the old, colonial part of Manaus (with its extravagant, pink opera house topped by a shiny dome in the colours of the Brazilian flag), plus the cobbled Pelourinho quarter of Salvador, full of old churches founded by the city’s once-vast African slave population.

As for the food: the serve-yourself system allows you to try small amounts of the local specialities without commitment - spicy piranha soup, sawdust-like manioc flour, cayman fritters with coriander, plus as much cooked beetroot as you can handle.

When it comes to freshly squeezed fruit juices, you can start at abacaxi (pineapple) and work your way down the list, via maracuja (passion fruit) to uvas (grapes). Mind you, most Brits seem to stop at “c” for caipirinha, the tropical cyclone-in-a-glass, featuring piles of chopped limes powered by a gorgeous sugar-cane rum called cachaça.

Fortified by a couple of these, I fall victim to the one incident of street crime that we encounter all holiday (though God knows, the guide books give out stern enough warnings). Walking along Rio’s sunlit, seafront Avenida Atlantica, I look down to see some oily, grey lumps of engine sludge all over my sandals, at which point a shoeshine man rushes up to undo the damage his unseen colleague has done.

It’s clearly a trick, and though tempted to stop and defoul my footwear, I instruct the family to take no notice and keep walking. We might be in Brazil, but, dammit, we’re still British.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/familyholidays/810678/Family-adventures-in-the-Amazon.html

‘Civilising’ Brazil’s native Indians

While doing research for an article on the ecological state of the Amazon biome (or global ecosystem) in Brazil, I sought to get in contact with as many Brazilians as possible, especially those residing in the favelas or slum regions of Brazil; cumulatively, in Rio and the capital of Brasilia alone, the favelas house about 24% of the total population, many of these second- and third-generation “indigenous forest peoples” who are now, according to researchers, living in their sixth century of deliberately enacted genocide.

This is primarily due to the stained, distorted pair of special sunglasses through which certain aspects and realities of our world can be made visible or invisible, superior or inferior, perpetuating misconceptions and facts in favour of a narrow world-view superimposed on “indigenous” peoples, perceived as culturally and scientifically backwards. The mentalities associated with those who have chosen to remain outside the monolithic door of civilisation is often described using racist undertones, a justification perhaps of the many different legal and illegal methods of abuse, torture, land expropriation, expulsion and exploitation of the Indians.

For years, environmentalists have been documenting the effects of ecocide through the unsustainable and forced industrialisation of cash-cropped monocultures on the native populations inhabiting the Amazon, Cerrado or Savannah regions and the transitional land; as it turns out, there is no way to quantify environmental destruction without simultaneously documenting the genocide of the forest peoples …

The environmental degradation is the resulting (and irreversible) effect of deliberate government policies coupled with those powerful lobbies that control the cattle, soy, sugar and coffee industries — which has propelled Brazil to rise to the status of “the world’s leading agricultural powerhouse”, as Colin Powell called it, not a random consequence of “progress”.

Brazil has the sixth-largest economy on Earth, with a purchasing parity of $2-trillion; it is also the globe’s leading exporter of beef, soy, chicken and sugar cane.

Mass deforestation accompanies the slash-and-burn techniques that procure land for the foreign soy multinationals such as Cargill, Bunge and ADM, who own more than 60% of the soy and other monoculture markets, the majority of which is exported to Europe in the form of chickens commercially or intensively reared in Brazil by the same multinationals.

Brazil has also achieved the dubious status of being the world’s fourth-largest carbon emitter; 78% of this is attributed to the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, 60% of which lies in Brazil. Already, 21% of the Amazon biome has been deforested.

With the deforestation comes mass acceleration of global warming due to the influx of potent carbon trapped beneath the rainforest’s surface, environmental pollution and fragmentation, loss of wildlife endemic to the region, illegal timber and wildlife trafficking, the displacement, internal trafficking and enslavement of native peoples, and the creation of slums.

Father Ricardo Rezende claims that the statistics concerning the enslavement of indigenous peoples are just the tip of the iceberg. The real figure he states, “is 250 000 or more” — the bulk perhaps comprising women and children working on plantations.

Brazil currently has 215 remaining tribes and 53 uncontacted or isolated tribes, yet the indigenous, according to Brazilian law, have no rights over their land, no formal titling and no legal recourse.

Although the rights of the indigenous are acknowledged by international law, the government has promptly marginalised the issue by appellating inhabited land as “common” or “empty land”.

In 1981, the government additionally decreed a law yet to be voided that natives were those defined by their “Indianness”; that is, their clothing, manner of speech, whether they used modern utensils and contraptions, how “Indian” they looked and what language they spoke. Those who spoke languages such as Spanish or Portuguese, who used forks and knives, who wore jeans and ate chocolate, were subsequently “emancipated” from the state of being “Indian” and lost the right to live on Indian land.

Daniel Cabixi, a Pareci Indian, declares that this “emancipation” was a lethal weapon that would simply take from Indians every chance and weapon they had to protest against the infringement of their rights.

In order to understand better the underlying situations and the methods used by multinationals to obtain land, I interviewed several first-, second- and third-generation slum dwellers, through a local priest and an NGO worker as well as an official of Survival International, described by Miriam Ross as “an organisation supporting tribal peoples worldwide … It stands for their right to decide their own future, and helps them protect their lives, lands and human rights.”

I asked her how many tribes or indigenous peoples lived in Brazil, specifically the Cerrado and Amazon regions, and whether they were imbued with the same human rights as the non-indigenous peoples (descendants of colonisers).

“In Brazil, indigenous people are legally considered ‘minors’ and cannot own their land — they just live on and use areas of government-owned land which have been recognised as ‘indigenous territories’ or ‘parks’. This is despite the fact that international law on indigenous and tribal peoples, which Brazil has signed up to, recognises those peoples’ rights to ownership of their land.

“The situation in Brazil is problematic because any land recognised as indigenous, usually by presidential decree, can be and often is reduced in size or annulled by subsequent presidential decisions.”

Maria, a second-generation Indian slum dweller, described to me the process through which Indian land is made “available”.

“The grileiros are land thieves. Sometimes they come smiling with money and alcohol or food; sometimes they just force you to get off the land by threats and physical harassment. They force us to sell the land to them; we are not safe if we don’t. We have no protection.”

The natives, known as caboclos, are then forced into the slum areas either on land made barren by intensive soy monocultures or trafficked through to the urban favelas.

The land is then legally sold to multinational purchasers.

Says Miriam: “There is a wide spectrum of opinion within Brazil [concerning perceptions of Indian land]; however, the Indians have to constantly defend their land from those who want it and the natural resources on or under it — loggers, ranchers, mining companies, government, soy companies et cetera.

“There is a common perception that the Indians have ‘too much land’ yet since the 1500s, Indian tribes have been reduced from 1000 to 215.”

What knowledge is lost when indigenous land is expropriated?

“Entire cultures, ways of life, and ways of understanding the world; languages; incredibly detailed and intimate knowledge of the particular tribe’s particular environment. The Yanomami, for example, use 500 different species of plant for food medicine, artefacts and house building.”

How complicit is the government in the forced removal and displacement of the native tribes?

“Sometimes they are wholly responsible. There is a draft law that will, if approved, allow mining on indigenous territories. In other instances, the problem is the government’s failure to protect the tribes and their land from, for example, illegal gold miners.”

It would appear that diseased premise of modern agricultural philosophies have executed, in the name of “science”, the continued genocide of the indigenous ecology perceived as having no worth save that attached to it as nothing more than unfinished resources.

Thy name is civilisation, of course.

http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/khadijasharife/2008/03/20/civilising-brazils-native-indians/

Making the Guitar Sing: Vinicius Cantuária Returns to the Dakota

“Very nice things happen when you make the guitar sing. With it I make music that is a reflection of my soul.”—Vinicius Cantuária

Brazilian singer, songwriter, guitarist, and percussionist Vinicius Cantuária was unknown to most Twin Cities’ jazz fans when he performed at the Dakota three years ago, and now his second return is an eagerly anticipated event. His blend of Brazilian themes, electronica and modern jazz has enthralled international audiences, while his compositions have helped fuel the careers of such popular artists as Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, and Gilberto Gil .

Born in Manaus in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, Vinicius Cantuária was only seven when his family moved to Rio, yet he notes that his early surroundings “influenced my whole soundworld. It really influenced my concepts of rhythm and atmosphere.” His real attraction to music came with the rise of the Beatles. “I was twelve years old and this music changed my world. I remember that each time after school I went home running so I could listen to them on the radio. That's the first music I paid any attention to…After that, I began listening to Sinatra, Jobim, Miles, and many others.”

Cantuária became fluent on both guitar and percussion. He formed a rock band in 1970 (O Terco) and played in the backing band for Tropicalia legend Caetano Veloso for ten years. He’s also played percussion for Bill Frisell’s The Intercontinentals. However, he notes that the acoustic guitar is the central element of his music. Although the final arrangement might call for electric instruments, every composition begins on acoustic guitar. “I try reminding people of Miles Davis and Chet Baker – the music and harmonies are so sweet. This is my Fab Four: Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Tom Jobim and Chet Baker.”

Cantuária’s career covers more than two decades as well as two continents. While living in Rio, he performed with Brazil’s pop elite, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, and Caetano Veloso, for whom he wrote his first million-selling hit, “Lua e Estrella.” Moving to New York to pursue a solo career in the mid 90s, Cantuária has been much-sought as both percussionist and guitarist by stars of rock, jazz, world music, and performance art, including Arto Lindsay, Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Bill Frisell, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and many others. Before moving to New York, Cantuária made several solo albums; shortly after arriving in the U.S., he released his international breakthrough recording, Sol Na Cara (1996). His most recent release is Cymbals (Naïve/Koch, 2007).

Today, Cantuária’s band has been described as ‘post-electronica acoustic’ (or in other words, it defies classification). His usual compatriots include jazz bassist Paul Socolow, young Steely Dan trumpeter Michael Leonhart, legendary Brazilian drummer Paulo Braga, and a rotating crew of brass and percussion specialists. Their repertoire covers Jobim and Gil as well as Cantuária’s own lyrical compositions—many of which are best-selling hits in Brazil.

http://www.jazzpolice.com/content/view/7623/115/

Brazil's BioBrasil Wishes to Become World Reference in Organics

Bio Brasil Products from Brazil Cereal and organic bar maker Renk's Industrial, headquartered in São Paulo, in the Southeast of Brazil is after importers all over the world. After winning the United States, Mexico and several countries in the European continent, the Brazilian company would like to also sell in the Arab market.

"Our main contacts are in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. We are still researching the organic product market there, but we know that there is a great potential for our products in the region," added Leandro Farkuh, commercial director at the company.

The products made by the firm are under the umbrella brand BioBrasilProducts and there are also others: BioSanck, composed of fruit snacks and Brazilian nuts, eBar Organic, Brazilian fruit bars, BioPalm, an açaí bar and BiO2, a cereal bar with Brazilian fruit.

"Brand BioBrasilProducts was created to be a reference in organic food in Brazil and worldwide," stated Farkuh.

Exports already represent 50% of Renk's revenues. The company is certified by Ecocert. Cereal bar eBar Organic is the main product sold by the company and the main destination markets are the United States, England, France, Germany and Mexico.

The products in line eBar are packed using only ecologically correct material. "The line is a pioneer in the use of biodegradable film in food packages and all the boxes are made out of recycled paper," explained the director.

Another product that promises to make success on the foreign market is line eNergy, based on the high level of energy extracted from the fruit. This organic line is based on açaí, cupuassu, Barbados cherry and guaraná in all flavors. These flavors mixed with a fruit of dominant taste create the differentiated bars.

According to Farkuh, the Brazilian origin of the products is evident in the use of exotic fruit and nuts with low concentrations of calories. "The bars are natural or organic and receive no chemicals or sugar," pointed out the director.

There is also line eLements, inspired on the four elements that are essential to life: fire, water, earth and air. "This line includes the first organic bar of Brazil, the one we baptized Earth," stated Farkuh.

To guarantee the contact with new markets and to strengthen relations with the current importers, the company usually participates in trade missions and fairs like the Biofach, the largest organic sector trade fair in the world, which took place between February 21 and 24 this year, in Nuremberg, Germany.

"The fair was great. Each year we participate with a greater stand and return with further business negotiated," explained Farkuh.

http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/9186/1/

Young Vic explores the rainforests

Their last international collaboration took them to South Africa - and now London's Young Vic theatre is looking to the Brazilian rainforest for inspiration.

The theatre has just started work on a year-long season of shows exploring the popular culture of Brazil's Amazon region, and the life and legacy of the environmental activist Chico Mendes.

The season, which includes shows both in Brazil and at the Young Vic, will culminate in a Christmas production co-written by Brazilian comedian and TV star Pedro Cardoso.

"This is a way to work with people in other countries and traditions who do something very different," says the theatre's artistic director, David Lan.

"There's an element of gamble, but you just have to jump off the cliff. We're trying to see just how adventurous we can be."

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/news/story/0,,2266436,00.html

The truth about super-juices

KATE MOSS has a new passion - for mangosteen juice.

With reputed weight-loss and anti-ageing benefits, this miracle juice from the Maldives is packed with powerful antioxidants and vitmain C.

But it's not the only juice which claims to be body-boosting.

Açai, pomegranate and goji berry drinks have also made the health headlines recently.

But do these expensive drinks live up to their reputation or will drinking them be fruitless?

Here, Fit Squad nutrition expert Amanda Ursell gives you the truth about juice.

Mangosteen

With its exotic taste and fragrant aroma, you can see why Kate Moss fell in love with mangosteen juice.

AMANDA SAYS: This tropical juice is often marketed as a superfood packed with antioxidants and vitamin C.

It is great for your skin because it contains carotine, which helps prevent sun damage.

But it doesn't contain as many antioxidants as other juices, and you can get similar amounts of vitamin C in less expensive juices such as pineapple and apple juice.

Like pineapple juice, it is medium GI, so it is best to stick to a 250ml serving which will cost you around 100 calories.

Just because Kate Moss drinks it, doesn't mean you can gulp down the whole carton.

Pomegranate

Pomegranate juice is said to have almost three times as many antioxidants as red wine, green tea, cranberry or orange juice.

AMANDA SAYS: The antioxidants in pomegranate juice help protect the body from free radicals - the 'bad' chemicals in the blood.

And the juice also contains peroxanase enzymes which help to break down fatty deposits on your artery wall.

Goji berries

Advertisement

Goji berries were brought to our attention by the queen of fad dieting, Victoria Beckham.

AMANDA SAYS: Goji berry drinks are rich in vitamin C when fresh, but as with all juices, the fruit is gently heated in production, which means it will lose its strength.

It is also quite an expensive choice, and you can get just as much vitamin C from orange juice, apple juice and grapefruit juice.

Açai

Açai is an all-natural energy fruit from the Amazon rainforests, which tastes like a blend of berries and chocolate.

AMANDA SAYS: Açai berries are rich in B vitamins, minerals, fibre, protein and omega-3 fatty acids.

The antioxidants are great to help combat premature aging, with 10-30 times the purple colored antioxidants of red wine.

Cranberry juice

You either love it or hate it, but the bitter sweet juice of cranberries does wonders for your health.

AMANDA SAYS: Cranberry juice contains the nutrient proanthocyanidins (PACS) which helps reduce the symptoms of urine infections.

Test tube studies also suggest that they may be useful in reducing the activity of the bacteria that trigger stomach ulcers.

This juice contains sweeteners and glucose-fructose syrup, but totally unsweetened cranberry juice is undrinkable and at least this has less sugar than the original versions.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/health/fit_squad/article928599.ece

First coca find in Brazil Amazon

Coca is usually grown in countries neighbouring Brazil

Coca plantations and a fully-equipped laboratory for making cocaine have been found for the first time in a Brazilian part of the Amazon rainforest.

A senior army officer said the find might mean drug traffickers were trying to find new locations to grow coca.

The authorities would need to stay on alert, he said.

The leaf, a key ingredient of cocaine, is normally grown in mountainous regions in some of Brazil's neighbours such as Bolivia, Peru and Colombia.

The authorities in Brazil say it was satellite images of a large area of Amazon rainforest that had been cleared which first attracted their attention.

In total, four plantations were discovered covering an area of between 100 and 150 hectares, according to the government news agency Agencia Brasil.

The army and police used small boats and three helicopters to reach the area, which is near to the north western city of Tabatinga, close to the border with Peru and Colombia.

The coca, which was almost ready for harvest, was found along with a fully equipped laboratory prepared to manufacture cocaine.

No-one was arrested, but the coca was destroyed.

The army says it is the first time that plantations like this have been discovered in the Brazilian Amazon, where the climate was not thought to favour coca fields.

A different plant known as epadu, which can also be used to produce cocaine, is more common in the area, but is much less productive.

The army believes drug traffickers may be trying to adapt or genetically modify the coca leaf and find new locations for plantations.

A senior officer warned that if there was not an immediate crackdown, it might even become a new source of deforestation.

Walter Maierovitch, who used to lead Brazil's effort to combat drugs, has described the discovery as "worrying", and a possible indication that some Colombian drug cartels were changing their strategy.

Soldiers are remaining in the area to try to find those behind the plantations, and to check for other possible locations which might have been used by the drug traffickers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7299964.stm

Snakes invade Belem

Snakes are increasingly invading the eastern Amazon's largest city, driven from the rain forest by loggers and ranchers who are destroying the reptiles' natural habitat, the government's environmental protection agency said Tuesday.

The agency, known as Ibama, has been called out to capture 21 snakes this year in Belem, a sprawling metropolis of 1.5 million people at the mouth of the Amazon River, Ibama press officer Luciana Almeida said by telephone.

In normal years, Ibama gets no more than one or two calls a month, she said.

No poisonous snakes were reported, she said. But the captured snakes included a 10-foot (3-metre) anaconda, usually a jungle recluse.

"People are scared," she said. "Imagine finding a 3-metre snake in your plumbing."

Almeida said Ibama believes the increase in snakes is a result of rising deforestation by loggers, ranchers and developers in the Amazon jungle surrounding the Belem urban area.

"Deforestation destroys their habitat, so they come to the city," she said.

Ibama has a veterinary team that captures the snakes and takes them to a zoo or to an outlying park to release them, Almeida said.

http://www.tv3.co.nz/News/Story/tabid/209/articleID/49103/cat/41/Default.aspx

Lost in the Amazon

Project Baggage Pioneers "Community-Based Tourism" in Brazil

Wading in muck up to the rims of his black rubber boots, Manoel dos Santos proudly showed off his tall palms of acai (pronounced ah-sie-ee), the deliciously bitter Amazonian berry that American health food stores tout as a miracle fruit. “Ten years ago, we didn’t even have enough acai for ourselves to eat,” dos Santos told the first tour group to ever visit his community.

Only recently have the people of Gurupa (an Amazon riverfront municipality of 25,000, about 2,200 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro) begun to practice sustainable logging. Gurupa is a rare success story in the threatened Amazon rainforest. The town is buried so deep in the jungle that the most intrepid traveler would be hard pressed to find it. For the past five years, Brazilian non-governmental organization Projeto Bagagem (Project Baggage) has been taking people to such places. They call what they do “community-based tourism.”

Here’s how it works: Project Baggage partners with a community that has a thriving social movement in place. The organization is a pioneer in a region plagued by vastly unequal access to land, poverty and an annual deforestation rate that’s sometimes as big as the state of New Jersey.

Project Baggage brings people from all over the world to learn about the community’s triumphs and struggles. Guided by local activists, the trip is part ecology class, part social history lesson, part adventure movie. And it’s also thoroughly uplifting.

A Success Story

Sitting in wooden houses built on stilts in the Amazon River floodplain, a place where the ground is so muddy that houses are connected by elevated boardwalks, the residents of Gurupa told us their story. In the 1980s, they fought off the rubber barons, and, soon after, they unwittingly deforested their lands because timber was the only source of cash. Shocked at what happened, people formed village associations and spent years drawing up resource extraction “use plans.” But imagine, they said, if one person breaks the rules and sells wood or acai at a cheaper price? More often, though, the threat comes from logging companies that set up shop without permission.

Gurupa’s residents spoke about their lives with candidness. They offered up the longest and strongest hugs I have ever received from strangers.

This year Project Baggage was selected from nearly 1,100 organizations to win a Seed Award. The award—sponsored by the Switzerland-based World Conservation Union, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) —honors social entrepreneurs that are “translating the ideals of sustainable development into action on the ground.” The organization runs four trips throughout Brazil, two in the Amazon and two in the dry, poverty-stricken Northeast. One third of every trip’s costs go to the villagers and another third to the hosting non-profit.

Luxury is not included in the $800 price tag, nor is airfare. We slept on hammocks hanging from a little boat or in residents’ houses. Our food—fish caught fresh from the milk chocolate-colored Amazon River and acai from the tree—was prepared by 4-foot, 11-inch Seu Curio, one of the locals who slept side by side with us on the boat.

All the participants walked away with an intimate sense of how the most urgent environmental and social struggles in the Amazon region get played out, told by those who have put themselves on the front lines.

“We have always lived off this forest,” said dos Santos, echoing the sentiments I heard in villages throughout Gurupa. “It has to be there for our children’s children. Who is going to save it if not us?”

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?4112

Soya, soya complex

With soyabean production booming in the Amazon basin of Brazil, extensive areas of rainforest have been converted into industrial soyabean farms. This fast rise in deforestation is making environmentalists see red.

Erai Maggi does not look like a villain who is destroying the planet; nor does he look like a hero who is saving the world's poor. Wearing jeans and work boots, he can be found on a typical day driving a battered Fiat car on one of his farms south of the Amazon rainforest.

For someone who excites extreme views he seems miscast, neither Darth Vader nor Indiana Jones. But the 48-year-old Brazilian farmer is protagonist in a drama about climate change, globalisation, poverty and hunger.

Maggi owns more than 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of soyabean plantations in Mato Grosso state. It is reckoned to be the biggest such holding in the world, making him the king of soya.

"What really makes me feel happy is seeing the beans in the fields," Maggi said recently, shading his eyes from a tropical sun while gazing over yellowing fields ready for harvest.

According to environmentalists, Maggi also knows how to accelerate deforestation of the Amazon, at least indirectly. By buying up the savannah for soya cultivation, he forces cattle ranchers north into the rainforest where they slash and burn, releasing millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, said Paulo Adario, the Amazon director of Greenpeace in Brazil. "It is an indirect but fundamental impact."

There is another version of Maggi: a pioneer who helped turn a sea of barren scrub fit only for some cattle into highly productive farmland - and in the process turned Brazil into an agricultural superpower which is expected to overtake the US as the world's leading food exporter while the global population surges towards 9 billion people.

Brazilian government scientists discovered that the acidic soils of the savannah could be made fertile with phosphorus and lime, a momentous technological breakthrough that Maggi and other migrants from the south exploited when they moved to Mato Grosso in the 1970s and 1980s.

Not so long ago, Maggi's story would have been cast in terms of development versus ecology. Now a new dimension has complicated the picture. An upward surge in commodity prices has created, what the United Nations last week called, a "new face of hunger".

Annual global food price increases of up to 40% are hitting the poor and raising the spectre of urban malnutrition. Food riots have broken out in Morocco, Yemen, Mexico, Guinea, Senegal and Uzbekistan. Emergency price controls have been declared.

Surging demand for meat and other foodstuffs from a new middle class in China and India is the main cause, followed in part by the transfer of land and grains to the production of biofuel and the hikes in energy costs. Volatile weather linked to climate change is a small but growing factor, said the International Food Policy Research Institute.

For Maggi, this prompts a dramatic conclusion: Brazil's soya producers, without subsidies, are helping to save humanity. "We are a vital part of the food chain," he said. "We are producing the cheapest and healthiest protein there is."

Soya, a legume native to East Asia, has been called a "miracle bean" owing to its high protein content. Popular with vegetarians, it is now valued as a cheap and safe animal feed.

Maggi started out with a small plot and bought up neighbours, building an empire requiring a two-prop plane to keep tabs on its outer reaches.

His firm, Bom Futuro, uses 300 combine harvesters and 500 tractors to produce more than 600,000 tonnes of soya a year, most of it to feed livestock which will end up as meat in China and Europe. He denies any responsibility for deforestation. Soya farmers kept 35% of the savannah untouched, as mandated by law, and did not operate in the rainforest, said Maggi.

Erai Maggi has put his name forward for Brazil's senate because he wants to accelerate Mato Grosso's development by paving roads and harnessing rivers. "That will mean cheaper food for China, for India, for everyone," he said.

For critics, this is the self-serving claptrap of a deluded or cynical tycoon. That producers are striving to keep prices low is implausible as they squealed in unison when prices plunged three years ago before recovering in 2007.

Nor is there much doubt about the link with deforestation. Soya producers buy up land already cleared by cattle ranchers who then acquire cheaper land deeper in the Amazon jungle, replacing virgin forest with pastures.

The rocketing of soya prices has been widely blamed for the accelerating clearances. Soya is also directly penetrating the Amazon, accounting for up to 10% of national production according to most estimates.

There are also concerns about labour conditions. This year Brazilian officials extracted 41 workers from what were described as "slave-like" conditions on one of Maggi's farms.

Regardless of whether Maggi is a hero or villain there is no doubting Brazil's importance in the global food chain. Across the savannah new towns built on soya have fancy hotels with clocks showing the time in Chicago, home to the world commodities market.

Prices fluctuate according to the unpredictable zig-zag of weather, investment and production data. Brazil's soya farmers like to point out that when the bell sounds at the end of a trading day there is one number which always, without fail, shows a relentless, remorseless rise: that of mouths to feed.

http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Mar112008/environmet2008031056600.asp

Beetle Tactics

The unique properties of the Hercules Beetle could help scientists to create 'intelligent materials', research suggests today.

As well as being famous for its remarkable strength - the beetle can carry up to 850 times its own weight - the creature also has a protective outgrowth on its shell which changes from green to black as its surroundings become more humid.

Researchers from the University of Namur in Belgium have studied this shell using the latest imaging techniques.

Their study, published today in the New Journal of Physics, determined the structure responsible for the colour change and how light interacts with it.

They argue the finding could help in the future development of intelligent materials.

Scans by an electronic microscope showed that light interferes with the shell's structure to produce its green colour.

When water penetrates through the open porous layers this interference leads to a black colouration.

Researcher Marie Rassart said: "The sort of structural behaviour displayed by the Hercules Beetle could be an important property for 'intelligent materials'.

"Such materials could be put to work as humidity sensors. This could be useful for example in food processing plants to monitor the moisture level."

The Hercules Beetle lives in the rainforests of Columbia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil.

Why the shell changes colour has not yet been determined, but scientists propose it may be because it becomes more humid at night in rainforests and being black is a good cover for protection.

http://www.inthenews.co.uk/infocus/features/in-focus/beetle-tactics-$1211138.htm