Deforestation of The Amazon Rainforest - History

History

Prior to the 1970s, access to the forest's interior was highly restricted, and aside from partial clearing along rivers the forest remained basically intact. Deforestation accelerated greatly following the opening of highways deep into the forest, such as the Trans-Amazonian highway in 1972.

In parts of the Amazon the poor soil had made plantation-based agriculture unprofitable. The key turning point in deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon was when colonists began to establish farms within the forest during the 1960s. Their farming system was based on crop cultivation and the slash and burn method. However, the colonists were unable to successfully manage their fields and the crops due to the loss of soil fertility and weed invasion. In indigenous areas of the Peruvian Amazon, such as the Urarina's Chambira River Basin, the soils are productive for relatively short period of time, and indigenous horticulturalists like the Urarina are therefore constantly moving to new areas and clearing more and more land. Amazonian colonization was ruled by cattle raising because ranching required little labor, generated decent profits, and awarded social status in the community. Additionally, grass can grow in the poor Amazon soil. However, the results of the farming led to extensive deforestation and caused extensive environmental damage. An estimated 30% of the deforestation is due to small farmers and the intensity within the area that they inhabit is greater than the area occupied by the medium and large ranchers who possess 89% of the Legal Amazon’s private land. This emphasizes the importance of using previously cleared land for agricultural use, rather the typical easiest political path of distributing still-forested areas. In the Brazilian Amazon, the amount of small farmers versus large landholders changes frequently with economic and demographic pressures.

In 2009, Peruvian President Alan García pushed through by executive decree Law 840 (also known as "Ley de la Selva," "the Law of the Jungle" or simply the "Forest Law"), which allowed the sale of uncultivated Amazon land under state ownership to private companies, without term limits on the property rights. While the law was promoted as a "reforestation" measure, critics claimed the privatization measure would in fact encourage further deforestation of the Amazon, while surrendering the nation's rights over natural resources to foreign investors and leaving uncertain the fate of Peru's indigenous people, who do not typically hold formal title to the forestlands on which they subsist. Law 840 met widespread resistance and was eventually repealed by Peru's legislature for being unconstitutional.