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The Amazon is not what it seems. As Hugh Raffles shows us in this captivating and innovative book, the world's last great wilderness has been transformed again and again by human activity. In Amazonia brings to life an Amazon whose allure and reality lie as much, or more, in what people have made of it as in what nature has wrought. It casts new light on centuries of encounter while describing the dramatic remaking of a sweeping landscape by residents of one small community in the Brazilian Amazon. Combining richly textured ethnographic research and lively historical analysis, Raffles weaves a fascinating story that changes our understanding of this region and challenges us to rethink what w...
Sustainable development is among the foremost ideas that guide societal aspirations around the world. This text interrogates the concept through a critical lens, examining both its history and the trajectory of its manifestations in the Brazilian Amazon.
Annotation This report adds to the discussion of land use in the Brazilian Amazon. It analyzes the harmful effects of increasing levels of rainfall on agricultural settlement and productivity.
Experts from different disciplines discuss the nature, origin and possible solutions to the problem of landscape degradation and diminishing global biodiversity.
-- Thomas Lovejoy, The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment.
Green growth has proven to be politically popular, but economically elusive. Can Green Sustain Growth? asks how we can move from theoretical support to implementation, and argues that this leap will require radical experimentation. But systemic change is costly, and a sweeping shift cannot be accomplished without political support, not to mention large-scale cooperation between business and government. Insightful and timely, this book brings together eight original, international case studies to consider what we can learn from the implementation of green growth strategies to date. This analysis reveals that coalitions for green experimentation emerge and survive when they link climate solutions to specific problems with near-term benefits that appeal to both environmental and industrial interests. Based on these findings, the volume delivers concrete policy recommendations for the next steps in the necessary shift toward sustainable prosperity.
In this book Siu Lang Carrillo Yap compares the land and forest rights of Amazonian indigenous peoples from Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, and analyses these rights in the context of international law, property law theory, and forest and soil sciences. Within this scope and against the historical background, the recent interrelations between the Amazonian indigenous peoples’ land, forest and community forest management rights and their importance for the self-determination of indigenous peoples in the Amazonian region are examined. Through bringing together international law with national law, natural resources law with property law and law with natural sciences, the author sheds new light on the complex topic of indigenous peoples’ rights closely entwined with the conservation of the Amazonian rainforest.
Nearly 90 percent of agricultural land in the Brazilian Amazon is used for pasture, or has been cleared and left unused. Pasture on average is used with very low productivity. Analysis based on census tract data shows that agricultural conversion of forested areas in the wetter western Amazon would be even less productive, using current technologies.
The cognitive science of religion has made a persuasive case for the view that a number of different psychological systems are involved in the construction and transmission of notions of extranatural agency such as deities and spirits. Until now this work has been based largely on findings in experimental psychology, illustrated mainly with hypothetical or anecdotal examples. In The Mind Possessed, Emma Cohen considers how the psychological systems undergirding spirit concepts are activated in real-world settings. Spirit possession practices have long had a magnetizing effect on academic researchers but there have been few, if any, satisfactory theoretical treatments of spirit possession tha...
Scope of the study; Organization of the report; The forests and forest sector in Brazil; How much forest is there?; The Amazon; The Atlantic forest; Changes in forest cover; The economic importance of Brazil's forests; Size of the forest sector; International trade; Pressures on the forests; Deforestation and government policies; Forest regulation; Weak institutional environment and enforcement; Logging; Agricultural expansion; Smallholder agriculture in the western Amazon; Agriculture expansion in Parana; Development; Forest fires; Agricultural credit; Protecting Brazil's forests: the role of parks and plantations; Protected areas; Plantation forestry; Important issues in the forest sector;...