Ecology and culture at stake say environmentalists, as government plans to exploit rainforest for oil, gas and timber
Huge parts of Peru's rainforest is threatened by its government's deals with several multinationals. Photograph: Paul A Souders/Corbis
Peru's army is poised to deploy in the Amazon rainforest to lift blockades across rivers and roads by indigenous people opposed to oil, gas, logging and mining projects.
The government has authorised the military to move into remote provinces where a state of emergency has been declared in the wake of a month-long stand-off between indigenous people and police.
President Alan Garcia said the state had the right and responsibility to develop mineral and hydrocarbon wealth to benefit all Peruvians. "We have to understand that when there are resources like oil, gas and timber, they don't belong only to the people who had the fortune to be born there because that would mean more than half of Peru's territory belongs to a few thousand people."
In the past two years the centre-right government has signed deals with multinationals to open swaths of rainforest, including a £1.3bn agreement last month with the Anglo-French oil company Perenco.
Indigenous groups, backed by environmentalists and Catholic bishops, have protested that the developments will devastate the area's ecology and their culture.
About 65 tribes have mobilised 30,000 people to disrupt roads, waterways and pipelines, leading to skirmishes with police. Up to 41 vessels serving energy companies are stuck along jungle rivers, paralysed by the protests, one private sector source told Reuters.
One of the most tense areas is along the Napo river in northern Peru, said Survival International, a London-based rights advocacy group. "After local indigenous people blockaded the river with a nylon cable, a naval gunboat and three boats belonging to Perenco broke through the blockade, sinking some of the protesters' canoes in the process."
The National Organisation of the Amazon Indigenous people of Peru said last week's declaration of a state of emergency, which suspended some constitutional rights in four jungle provinces, amounted to a declaration of war by the government.
The group responded by calling for an "insurgency" but retracted the term on Saturday after being threatened with 10 years in jail for sedition. Protests will continue but within the rule of law, it said.
The Peruvian rainforest is the largest swath of Amazon outside Brazil. According to one study oil, gas and timber deals would cover an estimated 70% of the forest.
The government says such developments are needed to boost economic growth and state revenues in one of South America's poorest countries. The projects, which could turn Peru into a net oil exporter, are in line with a free trade deal with the United States.
Alberto Pizango, an indigenous leader, said the tribes – who claim the forest as ancestral land – were not seeking a blanket ban on projects. "What we want is development from our perspective."
Each side has blamed the other for breakdown in negotiations.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/18/peru-army-rainforest-blockades
rainforestpower Headline Animator
Monday, May 18, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
BRAZIL: Vigil Against Farming Offensive in Amazon
Celebrities and environmental organisations held a vigil at the Brazilian Congress in an effort to block passage of a bill that they say could cause an even greater "environmental disaster" in the Amazon jungle.
The vigil, which began Wednesday and ended Thursday morning, was held inside the Senate chamber in Brasilia, the capital. Organised by the Movimento Amazônia Para Sempre (Amazonia Forever Movement), it was led by actress Christiane Torloni and other actors like Victor Fasano and Marcos Palmeira.
According to the movement, the bloc of legislators representing agribusiness interests in Congress is promoting reforms that would "weaken environmental legislation."
One example is a provisional measure that would grant farmers title to up to 1,500 hectares of illegally occupied land in the Amazon jungle.
The original purpose of Provisional Measure 458/2009, introduced by the government, was to regularise the tenure of land occupied before 2004, in exchange for the fulfilment of a number of requirements, such as replanting deforested areas and limiting further logging.
But amendments introduced by lawmakers in the lower house of Congress, like Asdrúbal Bentes of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), allied with the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, seek to eliminate these conditions.
Environment Minister Carlos Minc, who took part in the vigil, said that if these amendments were passed they could usher in an "environmental disaster," in the form of rampant deforestation.
The government would be seen as "giving land titles away with one hand and a chainsaw with the other," the minister told the press.
If the amended law is approved, the administration fears that the Amazon Fund, launched to receive international donations for protecting the Amazon rainforest, would be threatened.
Mario Menezes, assistant director of Friends of the Earth-Brazilian Amazon, told IPS there was a "great risk" that the bill in question could benefit "grilheiros," illegal settlers who occupied public land "illicitly and often violently."
The government argument that the bill will benefit small farmers is "not true," according to Menezes. Large "grilheiros" who occupied, for instance, 15,000 hectares can easily comply with the letter of the law by registering parcels of 1,500 hectares in the name of third parties, and end up occupying even larger stretches of land.
The Brazilian Artists' Open Letter on Amazon Deforestation, which will be presented to the legislative committees discussing the amendments to the bill, calls attention to the latest statistics on the deforestation of the Amazon.
"We have just celebrated the smallest Amazon rainforest deforestation rate of the past three years: 17,000 square kilometres," equivalent to nearly half the size of the Netherlands, it says.
Sixteen percent of the total rainforest area, equivalent to three times the size of the state of Sao Paulo, has already been deforested, the letter says.
"We have absolutely no reason to celebrate. The Amazon is not the planet’s lung, but it renders services to Brazil and to the world," it continues.
This green area extending over five million square kilometres is "a thermal layer generated by nature to prevent the sunrays from reaching the ground, thus enabling the existence of the most luxuriant forest on earth, which helps to regulate the planet’s temperature," it says.
The Amazon Forever Movement also refers to the expansion of the agricultural frontier in protected areas.
"A country that possesses 165,000 square kilometres of abandoned or semi-abandoned deforested areas could double its grain production without having to fell one single tree," the open letter says.
Menezes has just published a study on livestock-raising in the Amazon, in which he concludes that 40 percent of the Brazilian cattle herd is located in the jungle.
He found that cattle ranchers, who occupy 60 million hectares in the Amazon, were responsible for 80 percent of the 73 million hectares that have already been deforested. One-third of all the beef produced in the region is exported.
According to Menezes, "above all, the study shows that the public money is going to the meat packing plants," because the National Development Bank (BNDES) is financing this sort of development.
Last year alone, he noted, the BNDES invested six billion reals (2.9 billion dollars) in cattle farming, more than its total investment in the automotive industry, for example.
In Menezes' view, livestock farming stimulates the most deforestation, thus favouring the illegal occupation of land by large farmers.
One solution to this problem, he suggested, would be for public finance to be redirected to agriculture and livestock farming in areas that have already been deforested, and to invest in technological development to increase productivity and avoid further expansion into the rainforest.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46850
The vigil, which began Wednesday and ended Thursday morning, was held inside the Senate chamber in Brasilia, the capital. Organised by the Movimento Amazônia Para Sempre (Amazonia Forever Movement), it was led by actress Christiane Torloni and other actors like Victor Fasano and Marcos Palmeira.
According to the movement, the bloc of legislators representing agribusiness interests in Congress is promoting reforms that would "weaken environmental legislation."
One example is a provisional measure that would grant farmers title to up to 1,500 hectares of illegally occupied land in the Amazon jungle.
The original purpose of Provisional Measure 458/2009, introduced by the government, was to regularise the tenure of land occupied before 2004, in exchange for the fulfilment of a number of requirements, such as replanting deforested areas and limiting further logging.
But amendments introduced by lawmakers in the lower house of Congress, like Asdrúbal Bentes of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), allied with the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, seek to eliminate these conditions.
Environment Minister Carlos Minc, who took part in the vigil, said that if these amendments were passed they could usher in an "environmental disaster," in the form of rampant deforestation.
The government would be seen as "giving land titles away with one hand and a chainsaw with the other," the minister told the press.
If the amended law is approved, the administration fears that the Amazon Fund, launched to receive international donations for protecting the Amazon rainforest, would be threatened.
Mario Menezes, assistant director of Friends of the Earth-Brazilian Amazon, told IPS there was a "great risk" that the bill in question could benefit "grilheiros," illegal settlers who occupied public land "illicitly and often violently."
The government argument that the bill will benefit small farmers is "not true," according to Menezes. Large "grilheiros" who occupied, for instance, 15,000 hectares can easily comply with the letter of the law by registering parcels of 1,500 hectares in the name of third parties, and end up occupying even larger stretches of land.
The Brazilian Artists' Open Letter on Amazon Deforestation, which will be presented to the legislative committees discussing the amendments to the bill, calls attention to the latest statistics on the deforestation of the Amazon.
"We have just celebrated the smallest Amazon rainforest deforestation rate of the past three years: 17,000 square kilometres," equivalent to nearly half the size of the Netherlands, it says.
Sixteen percent of the total rainforest area, equivalent to three times the size of the state of Sao Paulo, has already been deforested, the letter says.
"We have absolutely no reason to celebrate. The Amazon is not the planet’s lung, but it renders services to Brazil and to the world," it continues.
This green area extending over five million square kilometres is "a thermal layer generated by nature to prevent the sunrays from reaching the ground, thus enabling the existence of the most luxuriant forest on earth, which helps to regulate the planet’s temperature," it says.
The Amazon Forever Movement also refers to the expansion of the agricultural frontier in protected areas.
"A country that possesses 165,000 square kilometres of abandoned or semi-abandoned deforested areas could double its grain production without having to fell one single tree," the open letter says.
Menezes has just published a study on livestock-raising in the Amazon, in which he concludes that 40 percent of the Brazilian cattle herd is located in the jungle.
He found that cattle ranchers, who occupy 60 million hectares in the Amazon, were responsible for 80 percent of the 73 million hectares that have already been deforested. One-third of all the beef produced in the region is exported.
According to Menezes, "above all, the study shows that the public money is going to the meat packing plants," because the National Development Bank (BNDES) is financing this sort of development.
Last year alone, he noted, the BNDES invested six billion reals (2.9 billion dollars) in cattle farming, more than its total investment in the automotive industry, for example.
In Menezes' view, livestock farming stimulates the most deforestation, thus favouring the illegal occupation of land by large farmers.
One solution to this problem, he suggested, would be for public finance to be redirected to agriculture and livestock farming in areas that have already been deforested, and to invest in technological development to increase productivity and avoid further expansion into the rainforest.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46850
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
The Amazing Amazon Rainforest
In a report published in the 6 March 2009 issue of Science, Oliver L. Phillips of the UK's University of Leeds and his 65 co-authors write that "old growth forests in Amazonia ... through photosynthesis and respiration ... process 18 petagrams [18 x 1015 grams] of carbon annually," which they say is "more than twice the rate of anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions." They also state that over the past quarter-century of intensive region-wide measurements, the productivity of the Amazon rainforest -- even in its extreme old age -- has been found to be "increasing with time," in support of which statement they cite the comprehensive observational studies of Phillips et al. (1998), Nemani et al. (2003), Baker et al. (2004), Lewis et al. (2004) and Ichii et al. (2005).
Against the backdrop of this very positive phenomenon, the goal of Phillips et al.'s new analysis was to determine what negative effect a severe drought might have on South America's surprisingly-spry-for-its-age tropical mega-forest, especially a drought of the type that the world's climate alarmists predict will occur if anthropogenic CO2 emissions are not significantly abated. What the international team of scientists wanted to know, essentially, was whether such a decline in the availability of water might wipe out the super ecosystem's biomass gains of prior decades, thereby fulfilling one of the climate alarmists' worst-case catastrophic scenarios.
Focusing their attention on the Amazonian drought of 2005, which they describe as "one of the most intense droughts of the past 100 years," as well as "a possible analog of future events," the 66 researchers (who had monitored a host of forest plots across the Amazon basin over the prior quarter-century) utilized tree diameter, wood density, and allometric models to compute the basin's woody biomass at each time of measurement, both before and after the drought, deriving the results that are plotted in the figure below.
The post-1980 cumulative biomass increase of Amazon trees >= 10 cm in diameter as a function of the mid-date of each forest-plot census interval, portrayed as a 50-interval moving mean. Adapted from Phillips et al. (2009).
As may readily be seen from these real-world measurement-based results, the great Amazonian drought of 2005 resulted in only a slight hiatus in the strong upward trend of tree biomass accumulation that was exhibited over the prior two decades, which had occurred, as Phillips et al. note, through a multi-decadal period spanning both wet and dry episodes, the latter of which are not even detectable in their wood biomass data. Hence, it would appear that although extremely severe drought conditions can indeed bring a halt to biomass accumulation in old growth tropical forests -- and sometimes even lead to minor reductions in biomass due to selective tree mortality -- the vast majority of the aged trees are able to regain their photosynthetic prowess and add to their prior store of biomass once the moisture stress subsides, thanks in large measure to the enhanced growth (Lin et al., 1998) and water use efficiency (Hietz et al., 2005) that are experienced by nearly all woody plants as the air's CO2 content rises.
Additional support for this attribution is provided by the work of Lloyd and Farquhar (2008), who concluded that "the magnitude and pattern of increases in forest dynamics across Amazonia observed over the last few decades are consistent with a CO2-induced stimulation of tree growth," while still more support for the premise comes from the work of Phillips et al. (2008), who concluded that the simplest explanation for the phenomenon is that "improved resource availability has increased net primary productivity, in turn increasing growth rates," and who further note that "the only change for which there is unambiguous evidence that the driver has widely changed and that such a change should accelerate forest growth is the increase in atmospheric CO2," because of "the undisputed long-term increase in [its] concentration, the key role of CO2 in photosynthesis, and the demonstrated effects of CO2 fertilization on plant growth rates."
So if the nations of the world are truly concerned about the health of "old growth forests in Amazonia" -- as they truly should be -- they had better not be in too great a hurry to drastically curtail anthropogenic CO2 emissions. In light of the overwhelming evidence for (1) no global warming over the past decade or so, and (2) the significant biological benefits provided by atmospheric CO2 enrichment, the climate-alarmist clamor to reduce fossil fuel use now -- and by whatever means deemed necessary -- makes no sense at all, especially when there is so much evidence for much warmer periods in our planet's past (such as the Medieval, Roman and Mid-Holocene Warm Periods), when there was so much less CO2 in the air than there is today.
World governments clearly have the time to analyze this subject much more carefully than they have done to date; and until they do so, they should not act upon demands for radical actions to reduce CO2 emissions that could greatly exacerbate the world's current economic crisis, as well as lead to a greater propensity for biological crises in unique and high-biodiversity places ... like the Amazon.
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N19/EDIT.php
Against the backdrop of this very positive phenomenon, the goal of Phillips et al.'s new analysis was to determine what negative effect a severe drought might have on South America's surprisingly-spry-for-its-age tropical mega-forest, especially a drought of the type that the world's climate alarmists predict will occur if anthropogenic CO2 emissions are not significantly abated. What the international team of scientists wanted to know, essentially, was whether such a decline in the availability of water might wipe out the super ecosystem's biomass gains of prior decades, thereby fulfilling one of the climate alarmists' worst-case catastrophic scenarios.
Focusing their attention on the Amazonian drought of 2005, which they describe as "one of the most intense droughts of the past 100 years," as well as "a possible analog of future events," the 66 researchers (who had monitored a host of forest plots across the Amazon basin over the prior quarter-century) utilized tree diameter, wood density, and allometric models to compute the basin's woody biomass at each time of measurement, both before and after the drought, deriving the results that are plotted in the figure below.
The post-1980 cumulative biomass increase of Amazon trees >= 10 cm in diameter as a function of the mid-date of each forest-plot census interval, portrayed as a 50-interval moving mean. Adapted from Phillips et al. (2009).
As may readily be seen from these real-world measurement-based results, the great Amazonian drought of 2005 resulted in only a slight hiatus in the strong upward trend of tree biomass accumulation that was exhibited over the prior two decades, which had occurred, as Phillips et al. note, through a multi-decadal period spanning both wet and dry episodes, the latter of which are not even detectable in their wood biomass data. Hence, it would appear that although extremely severe drought conditions can indeed bring a halt to biomass accumulation in old growth tropical forests -- and sometimes even lead to minor reductions in biomass due to selective tree mortality -- the vast majority of the aged trees are able to regain their photosynthetic prowess and add to their prior store of biomass once the moisture stress subsides, thanks in large measure to the enhanced growth (Lin et al., 1998) and water use efficiency (Hietz et al., 2005) that are experienced by nearly all woody plants as the air's CO2 content rises.
Additional support for this attribution is provided by the work of Lloyd and Farquhar (2008), who concluded that "the magnitude and pattern of increases in forest dynamics across Amazonia observed over the last few decades are consistent with a CO2-induced stimulation of tree growth," while still more support for the premise comes from the work of Phillips et al. (2008), who concluded that the simplest explanation for the phenomenon is that "improved resource availability has increased net primary productivity, in turn increasing growth rates," and who further note that "the only change for which there is unambiguous evidence that the driver has widely changed and that such a change should accelerate forest growth is the increase in atmospheric CO2," because of "the undisputed long-term increase in [its] concentration, the key role of CO2 in photosynthesis, and the demonstrated effects of CO2 fertilization on plant growth rates."
So if the nations of the world are truly concerned about the health of "old growth forests in Amazonia" -- as they truly should be -- they had better not be in too great a hurry to drastically curtail anthropogenic CO2 emissions. In light of the overwhelming evidence for (1) no global warming over the past decade or so, and (2) the significant biological benefits provided by atmospheric CO2 enrichment, the climate-alarmist clamor to reduce fossil fuel use now -- and by whatever means deemed necessary -- makes no sense at all, especially when there is so much evidence for much warmer periods in our planet's past (such as the Medieval, Roman and Mid-Holocene Warm Periods), when there was so much less CO2 in the air than there is today.
World governments clearly have the time to analyze this subject much more carefully than they have done to date; and until they do so, they should not act upon demands for radical actions to reduce CO2 emissions that could greatly exacerbate the world's current economic crisis, as well as lead to a greater propensity for biological crises in unique and high-biodiversity places ... like the Amazon.
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N19/EDIT.php
Monday, May 11, 2009
Brazil's other big forest in dire straits
The ongoing degradation of the Amazon rainforest has obscured the plight of its smaller sibling: the Atlantic forest in Brazil, which is a biodiversity hotspot. Once covering about 1.5 million square kilometres, the rainforest has been reduced to about one-tenth of its original area in the past 500 years, a new study has shown.
The Atlantic forest supports more than 20,000 species of plants, 260 mammals, 700 birds, 200 reptiles, 280 amphibians and hundreds of unnamed species.
Unless the damage is halted, monkeys and birds unique to the region will go extinct, including iconic species such as the golden lion tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia) and the northern woolly spider monkey (Brachyteles hypoxanthus), both among the most endangered of all the world's monkeys.
"Unfortunately, the forest is in very bad shape," says Jean Paul Metzger at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. "Species extinctions will occur more rapidly and, since 30 per cent of the species are endemic to the region, they will disappear forever."
The desperate state of the forest became clear when Metzger's colleague Milton Cezar Ribeiro mapped the entire region in great detail using satellite images, combined with vegetation maps produced by the SOS Mata Atlantica Foundation, a charity campaigning to save the forest.
Ribeiro found that of the remaining forest, about 80 per cent is split into fragments of less than 0.5 square kilometres. The average distance between these fragments is 1.4 kilometres, making it difficult for animals to move from one part of the forest to another.
To make matters worse, only about 14 per cent of the remaining forest is protected. That's because 70 per cent of Brazil's population lives in what was once the Atlantic forest, including the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. "So in 500 years, and mainly in the past 100 years, we destroyed 90 per cent of the forest," says Ribeiro.
One priority is to protect the largest remaining tracts of forest, particularly the Serra do Mar, along the coastal mountains near São Paulo. Also, reconnecting the fragments to create larger areas will help the movement of otherwise marooned animals.
"If the Atlantic forest were a medical patient, it would be on life support and gasping for breath," says Bill Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Manaus, Brazil. "I see a dire need to protect the remaining fragments, and to reconnect fragments wherever possible."
Mark Cochrane of South Dakota State University in Brookings agrees: "It is imperative to create a comprehensive conservation plan as soon as possible."
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/183942-Brazil-s-other-big-forest-in-dire-straits
The Atlantic forest supports more than 20,000 species of plants, 260 mammals, 700 birds, 200 reptiles, 280 amphibians and hundreds of unnamed species.
Unless the damage is halted, monkeys and birds unique to the region will go extinct, including iconic species such as the golden lion tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia) and the northern woolly spider monkey (Brachyteles hypoxanthus), both among the most endangered of all the world's monkeys.
"Unfortunately, the forest is in very bad shape," says Jean Paul Metzger at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. "Species extinctions will occur more rapidly and, since 30 per cent of the species are endemic to the region, they will disappear forever."
The desperate state of the forest became clear when Metzger's colleague Milton Cezar Ribeiro mapped the entire region in great detail using satellite images, combined with vegetation maps produced by the SOS Mata Atlantica Foundation, a charity campaigning to save the forest.
Ribeiro found that of the remaining forest, about 80 per cent is split into fragments of less than 0.5 square kilometres. The average distance between these fragments is 1.4 kilometres, making it difficult for animals to move from one part of the forest to another.
To make matters worse, only about 14 per cent of the remaining forest is protected. That's because 70 per cent of Brazil's population lives in what was once the Atlantic forest, including the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. "So in 500 years, and mainly in the past 100 years, we destroyed 90 per cent of the forest," says Ribeiro.
One priority is to protect the largest remaining tracts of forest, particularly the Serra do Mar, along the coastal mountains near São Paulo. Also, reconnecting the fragments to create larger areas will help the movement of otherwise marooned animals.
"If the Atlantic forest were a medical patient, it would be on life support and gasping for breath," says Bill Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Manaus, Brazil. "I see a dire need to protect the remaining fragments, and to reconnect fragments wherever possible."
Mark Cochrane of South Dakota State University in Brookings agrees: "It is imperative to create a comprehensive conservation plan as soon as possible."
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/183942-Brazil-s-other-big-forest-in-dire-straits
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Acai - how the secret of the Amazon was revealed
Acai might not be such a global sensation today were it not for a pair of Southern California brothers, Ryan and Jeremy Black, who co-founded Sambazon, based in San Clemente. The company now boasts sales of $25 million a year in juices, powders and other acai products. But it all started with a surfing trip.
Ryan Black returned from a millennium-marking surfing visit to Brazil blown away by acai. In the 1990s, acai had spread from the Amazon to become a staple in surfer shacks, juice joints and weightlifting clubs along the heavily populated Brazilian coast. Now it's a common sight at major supermarkets and health food emporiums the world over. Among the retail chains selling acai products are Whole Foods Market, Vons, Albertsons, Gelson's Markets, Jamba Juice and Juice It Up.
This year, Black says, Sambazon plans to process 11,000 tons of acai from its Brazilian production base, making it the world's leading supplier.
All of it comes from individuals such as Rosa picking the fruit from wild acai palms, according to the Black brothers, who have won praise internationally as "green" business pioneers.
"The whole idea is to protect the biodiversity of the forest," Ryan Black says. "The idea is not to clear-cut everything on the land and plant acai trees."
But a growing concentration of acai plantings amid rising demand has Black worried about a "dangerous cycle": transformation of bio-diverse forests into proliferating stretches of acai palms. That means removing other tree species to make way for acai. His hope is that consumer preference for certified organic acai, picked in the wild, will help preserve the forest and support harvesting families.
"We want to look back [in] 20 years and see that acai has been a positive force in the Amazon," Black says, "not just a fruit that became domesticated and found success at the price of the local people and their environment."
http://www.sambazon.com/remoting/news_article.aspx?id=116
Ryan Black returned from a millennium-marking surfing visit to Brazil blown away by acai. In the 1990s, acai had spread from the Amazon to become a staple in surfer shacks, juice joints and weightlifting clubs along the heavily populated Brazilian coast. Now it's a common sight at major supermarkets and health food emporiums the world over. Among the retail chains selling acai products are Whole Foods Market, Vons, Albertsons, Gelson's Markets, Jamba Juice and Juice It Up.
This year, Black says, Sambazon plans to process 11,000 tons of acai from its Brazilian production base, making it the world's leading supplier.
All of it comes from individuals such as Rosa picking the fruit from wild acai palms, according to the Black brothers, who have won praise internationally as "green" business pioneers.
"The whole idea is to protect the biodiversity of the forest," Ryan Black says. "The idea is not to clear-cut everything on the land and plant acai trees."
But a growing concentration of acai plantings amid rising demand has Black worried about a "dangerous cycle": transformation of bio-diverse forests into proliferating stretches of acai palms. That means removing other tree species to make way for acai. His hope is that consumer preference for certified organic acai, picked in the wild, will help preserve the forest and support harvesting families.
"We want to look back [in] 20 years and see that acai has been a positive force in the Amazon," Black says, "not just a fruit that became domesticated and found success at the price of the local people and their environment."
http://www.sambazon.com/remoting/news_article.aspx?id=116
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