The Amazon rainforest has been called the “lungs” of the world. Its conversion into feedlots for cattle to feed the “first world” for profit isn’t good for any humans, or for all life on earth.
Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism just published an important piece by Juan Manuel Crespo, an Ecuadorian sociologist who coins an important new word, and asks an essential question: Who is responsible for the Amazon's ecocide?
Follow the money! We need to look closer at this misnamed thing called "development," which bags money for a few, but destroys whole species and ecosystems we all depend upon. Our present economic system is not really about numbers—it is ideology and lying language. But here’s good advice from Juan’s piece, too, linked above:
If you want to preserve the balance of life, look to indigenous people. Far from being “savages,” indigenous people have knowledge and wisdom to share, the reason even our protected wildlife sanctuaries are poorer in species than the lands where they still live.
“The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends revisiting the native peoples for learning how to preserve critical territories. According to a study conducted by the IPCC, the areas managed or co-managed by native peoples have much higher rates of presence of birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles than any other areas (including protected areas), which indicates that this greater biodiversity is being achieved by the practices and land uses of native cultures.
Native peoples may not exceed 5% of the world’s population, but they have preserved up to nearly 80% of the highest biodiversity areas on the planet. Ironically, they are the ones who “slow down development”. It is through the native peoples of the Amazon, and borrowing knowledge from them, that we will find the key to stopping ecocide and development.”
It’s more ideology and misused language again. We have thought ourselves superior, when we were only better armed and more violent. Unless your people came from Mars, it is far past time we “civilized” humans remember how to become indigenous natives of planet Earth. An economy waged as war, and that imagines “winning,” discounts losers, namely all inferiors like bugs, microbes, birds, fungus, diversity—and oh yes, all females, including Gaia.
Read more about the Amazon’s importance here; and while you are at it, read Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry’s new book, Nurturing Our Humanity. You’ll find fascinating information about indigenous people and a wider knowledge of peaceable, life-sustaining ways if only we’d look there, instead of studying war.
