Amazon Rainforest Tours and Travel | The Conundrum of Conserving the Amazon
Though set in mythical place and time, Richard Wagner's famous operatic tale of greed versus love, The Ring of the Nibelung, tells the story of the Amazon in a nutshell: Peace will be maintained as long as the coveted gold ring is appreciated only for its beauty and remains in the river. Remove it and the fight that ensues over its power will result in the destruction of the world. It is a struggle played out every day in the Amazon and without the backdrop of Wagner's glorious melodies. Nowhere in the world is the issue of environmental degradation more problematic or the stakes as high as in the Amazon. While estimates vary, it is believed that between 10% and 12% of the original Amazon has been deforested. Environmental organizations estimate that 25% will be gone by 2020.
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Thus far, much of this habitat destruction has occurred in the rainforest floodplain areas where vast tracts of land have been converted to agricultural use. To some, it is a simple matter of economics, how to obtain the highest use of the land for the greatest return, regardless of what the world's environmentalists may desire. To environmentalists who see the region as critical to all living species, the Amazon amounts to sacred ground that must be protected at any cost.
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Of the nine countries that contain part of the Amazon Rainforest, some are among Latin America's poorest. Finding ways to increase employment and generate more revenue is a constant struggle for these governments. The long-standing dispute over the Ecuador Amazon holdings of the indigenous Huaorani illustrates the conundrum. For almost three decades the Huaorani have fought the government and multinational oil companies to prevent disturbance of their ancestral lands that overlay one of Ecuador's largest oil deposits. While the tribe holds claim to the surface land, the government retains the mineral rights to what lies beneath. Ecuador president Rafael Correa has proposed a win-win, albeit unrealistic, solution to the problem by offering to leave the resource in the ground in return for compensation equaling half of the revenue that would have been generated by the industry, approximately $350 million a year. Members of the Huaorani tribe serve as guides on Southern Explorations' Sacha Lodge Amazon tours and host the Amazon Kayaking Adventure trip.
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Pipelines to move oil and gas to market pose another threat to the Amazon. A series of pipelines has received approval from the Brazilian government, the first of which will span a distance of 400 miles from Urucu to Manacaparu Lake near the major Brazil Amazon port city of Manaus. The second will point southwest to Porto Velho, 600 miles from La Paz, Bolivia, crossing rivers and indigenous lands.
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Brazil is not the only country with pipeline dreams. Venezuela President Hugo Chavez has proposed a gas pipeline that would run 5,000 miles from his country's capital, Caracas, through the Amazon to Buenos Aires. So far, an agreement has been signed between Venezuela and Brazil to build the pipeline as far as Manaus.
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Pipeline construction in the Amazon means migration of workers seeking better paying jobs, swelling the populations of existing villages and resulting in temporary settlements without adequate infrastructure. To mitigate these secondary environmental impacts, some companies hire most of their workforce from local sources, and house the remainder of its workers in floating dormitories that travel with the job-site.
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The tug of war over the Amazon remains one of the world's most complex ecological problems for which so far every solution seems inadequate.
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