Latin America Leads the Battle for the Amazon

As climate talks in Peru continue to divide the United Nations, the Latin American world has been dragged in to the spotlight, and not for their role as generous host of the summit.

The Amazon basin has been the subject of environmental discussion in most organisations, governments and office water coolers for decades, but it has yet again been the focus of scruitiny during the 2014 Climate Change Summit with research revealing that the protected indigenous lands of the area, particularly around Peru, account for 55% of the carbon stores captured and held by the Amazonian basin.

The same report revealed that nearly 20% of the Amazon forest is at risk of logging activities to make room for mining, agriculture or infrastructure projects, with many of these activities being illegal.

The increased and direct threat to the rainforest which forms an integral part of the ecosystems of the surrounding countries, as well as being the lungs of the globe and the predicted site of the greatest saturation of undiscovered species in the world, comes predominantly as a result of regional governments failing to recognise or adequately implement ecological protection laws which protect indigenous lands. Indigenous locals living in the rainforest, including 333,000 people currently residing in the Peruvian rainforest, have become increasingly vocal in defense of the home, condemning illegal mining and deforestation activities.

This campaign cut close to the core this past September when four Ashinanka tribal leaders were killed during protest activities. Discussions regarding the Amazon rainforest have drawn focus on Latin American governments to improve the enforcement of their own laws, but it has also garnered some unwanted and unwelcome attention for the Western World. Around 80% of the deforestation occurring in the Amazon is in order to produce soya plantations, which in turn go to feed cattle raised for consumption predominantly in the West.

The U.S, for example, consumed between 120kg and 130kg of meat per person in the year 2007, and over 70% of this was fed using grains grown in the Amazon rainforest and other places just like it. It remains clear that although Latin America may be on the front lines of defense for this historic landscape, the solution needs to be a global one, or else the consequences will be.

By Erin Lawson