New York Times: How to save the Amazon from fires?

Roberto Mangabira Unger, a former Brazilian minister of strategic affairs and now a professor at Harvard University, wrote an article in the New York Times on his vision to save the Amazon rainforest from the devastation of the recent fires.

Onger warned that the fires currently burning in the Amazon forest will lead to the deterioration of its environment, which portends a decrease in the amounts of oxygen and rainfall, and high temperatures.

He blamed human behavior on the fires, describing the Amazon as the world's largest reservoir of freshwater and biodiversity.

The Amazon forest is known as the "lung of the earth", with an area of ​​about 5.5 million square kilometers, and is one of the most important areas to combat global warming.

Standard fires
The writer adds that these forests have been exposed since the beginning of this year to more than 75 thousand fires, a record increase of 84% over the fires that broke out in these forests last year.

He said that the beginning of the problem in the Amazon lies in the acquisition of land in the state located in the northwest corner of Brazil, noting that less than 10% of the land held by the private sector has title deeds.

No one knows whether the land is owned by anyone, which makes looting and seizing it more profitable than preserving or rebuilding it.

To overcome the chaos, it is necessary to distinguish between those who have been indiscriminately residing in the Amazon for a long time, and livestock keepers and looters. Unger proposes to give the informal population full ownership rights to the land.

He points out that the Brazilian state of Amazonas is a large tree habitat, where about 30 million people live and work. Based on this information, the former Brazilian Minister stresses that these trees should remain upright and should not be cut down.

Wrong policies
To that end, the Amazonians must be provided with the means to exploit and preserve their environment.

The disaster in the Amazon is, in Unger's view, the result of a wrong policy of orientation. Brazil did not invest much in the population of that state, but continued to rely more on the production and export of crops and goods.

The former Brazilian official stressed that the only way to save these people and forests lies in the knowledge economy.

Innovative technical means, entrepreneurial methods and legal formulas to reach definitive solutions to the problem of land tenure in the Amazon can provide a sustainable harvest of tropical rainforests with their varying properties and the use of their crops as sources of new drugs and other types of alternative energy resources.

To this end, it is necessary to provide technical environmental services in the state of Amazon, which is larger than Western Europe in terms of area.

The author advises the international community not to ask Brazil to turn 61% of its territory into a global park, and not to expect the Brazilian people to be grateful for the lessons that European countries have been teaching him, which has already managed to maintain about 80% of the trees in the special section Tags from Amazon.

Universal duty
Unger goes on to say, in a defiant and defiant tone, that saving the Amazon is a project that Brazil has a duty to formulate and implement, and the world - starting with the G7, which has just pledged $ 20 million in emergency aid - must support it.

He adds that the international community should help Brazil without contempt for its sovereignty. “Instead of helping to extinguish fires, our eyes are on discoveries and inventions for a better future.”

Unger concludes by stressing that Brazilians - along with the rest of the world - need more immediate alternatives than need for consolation.