Authors

Roger Phillips

Document Type

World News

Publication Date

Summer 2003

Abstract

A group of environmental experts warned that four infrastructure projects in the Amazon have caused a rush of deforestation even before building has begun. The report on the world’s largest tropical forest, by international environmental experts charged with advising Brazil and rich countries donating to a program which has channeled $350 million to conserving the Amazon, came after data in June showed the Amazon deforestation rate jumped 40 percent last year. Profitable soy farming is seen as a special threat. Roughly 15 percent of the Amazon - an area larger than western Europe of continuous tropical forest that is home to up to 30 percent of the world’s animal and plant species - has so far been cut down.

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