According to Reuters on the 27th reported that in the last 20 years, in the Amazon rainforest, by local woodcutters and farmers burned up the forest fires and deforestation phenomenon increased significantly. These fires are changing the cloud structure over the Amazon, leading to a reduction in rainfall in the region, the gradual disappearance of the rainforest, replaced by a piece of savanna.
Diaz Silva, a scientist at the University of S?o Paulo in Brazil, recently said at a conference on the Amazon rainforest that the Amazon rainforest is being "grasslandized". Silva predicted that with the current frequency of forest fires and deforestation rate, in the next 50 to 100 years, up to 60% of the Amazon rainforest will disappear; at least, there will be 20% to 30% of the jungle into grassland.
The Amazon rainforest is home to 30% of the planet's living species, and in 2003, the rate of destruction of the Amazon rainforest reached almost the fastest level ever recorded,*** with 5.9 million acres (2.39 million hectares) of rainforest slashed and burned. Scientists have also found that the Amazon is becoming drier as a result of the forest fires, and it is impossible to predict whether the Amazon rainforest will survive and what kind of climate it will develop in the future.
The International Conference on Tropical Timber convened by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development opened in Geneva on the 26th. The conference noted that 500 million people around the world rely on tropical rainforests and their resources to live, and tropical rainforests are disappearing at a rate of 12 million hectares to 15 million hectares per year. In order to cope with the unfavorable situation of the continuous decline of tropical rainforests, the conference will adopt the newly revised International Tropical Timber Agreement (ITTA) so that the international community can strengthen the protection of tropical rainforests.
The Amazon River is the pride of the people of Latin America. It is vast, a thousand turns, winding through Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela and other countries, nourishing the 8 million square kilometers of the vast land, giving birth to the world's largest rainforest, so that the Amazon River Basin has become the world's most recognized and mysterious "Kingdom of Life.
The Amazon River is surrounded by dense forests. Abundant rain, hot and humid climate and a long period of strong sunshine, to the Amazon River Basin area of plant growth provides a unique condition, so that this region has become the world's largest tropical rainforest area, the forest area of 300 million hectares, accounting for the world's existing rainforests 1 / 3, of which 87%% in Brazil. It is rich in natural resources, many species, complex ecological environment, and well-preserved biodiversity, and is known as the "paradise of biological scientists" and the "lungs of the earth".
However, the Amazon rainforest has not been loved by humans because of its richness, and uncontrolled development has caused great damage to the local natural environment.
With Brazil's own economic development, a large number of immigrants flocked to the fringes of the Amazon rainforest. In order to ask nature for land and food, people used all kinds of means and tools to seize forests and make fields. With the extension of roads and railroads, it became easier for farmers to cut and burn their way into the pristine, dense forests. In the process of reclamation, people put heavy tractors into the forest, the trees will be cut down, and then set fire to burn.
The ecology of the forested areas is so fragile that most of the nutrients are not in the soil, but are stored in the living plants. When the forest burns down, most of the nutrients are dispersed with the wind. After a season or two of farming on cleared land, the soil either runs out of fertility or is washed away by the rain, leaving a gravelly mess where not an inch of grass grows. Multinational corporations, on the other hand, are eyeing the rich local resources of iron, copper, bauxite and other minerals, and are investing a lot of money to exploit them.
According to Brazil's National Institute of Geography and Statistics (INEGI), 23,000 square kilometers of rainforest are destroyed in the Amazon every year. In the last 30 years, one-sixth of the world's largest rainforest area has been severely damaged. Brazil's forests have been halved from what they were 400 years ago. Experts point out that the reduction of tropical rainforests means not only a decrease in forest resources, but also environmental degradation on a global scale. If the Amazon's forests are cut down to nothing, there will be 1/3 less oxygen on Earth to sustain human life.
Deforestation in the Amazon has not brought more wealth to the Brazilians. They have only filled their bellies, bringing with them eternal trauma and irreparable damage to nature. Excessive deforestation has led to soil erosion, soil sanding, and severe soil erosion. Some areas in the northeastern Brazilian states of Pará and Amapá have become the driest and poorest places in Brazil due to deforestation and ecological destruction.
The Amazon rainforest is rich in vegetation, with up to 1,200 different species of plants per square kilometer. However, as the rainforest declines, in a few years, at least 500,000 to 800,000 species of plants and animals will become extinct, and the loss of the rainforest gene pool will be one of the greatest losses to humanity.
In this regard, the Brazilian government is increasingly aware of the seriousness of the problem, and has formulated a number of environmental protection policies and taken a variety of measures to strengthen the protection and monitoring of the forest environment. Environmental protection and sustainable development have become one of the government's priorities.
The Brazilian government has enacted the National Environmental Law and the Law on Ecological Protection in the Amazon Region. In 1988, the new Constitution included a provision on the environment, stating that the Amazon region is a national heritage and that the state is responsible for finding a way to sustain the region's development. At the same time, the rules for the protection of the ecological balance were introduced, setting forth the rights and obligations of the government and citizens in the protection of the environment.
Brazil's National Forestry Development Institute also formulated relevant laws and regulations on deforestation and burning to the Amazon forest caused serious disasters to individuals or organizations, will be prosecuted for ecological crimes to be prosecuted, and give severe legal sanctions and huge fines. At the same time, the Brazilian government has increased the relevant financial investment. 1991-2002, the government for the protection of ecological and natural resources in the Amazon region, the cumulative investment of nearly 100 billion U.S. dollars.
The Amazon, the world's largest tropical rainforest, is the treasure that God has given to mankind to survive. She is beautiful, and how to preserve her moving luster is left to people's eternal thinking.
Premier Zhou Enlai said during his visit to Xishuangbanna in 1961: India's Ganges River and Egypt's Nile River, the birthplace of ancient human culture, when the land was fertile, agricultural prosperity; but irrational development, the destruction of the forest, and later became a desert. I am afraid that this is also the case in the area of Dunhuang. Human destruction of the water environment caused by the disaster, history has been staged many times. Xu Xunlei thus concluded: "green as blue is not necessarily spring water, it may be cyanobacteria; high growth GDP is not necessarily well-being, it may be the devil" [1].
People die for money, birds die for food. Economists in ancient and modern times have taken people's pursuit of private property as the basic driving force of social development. Through years of hard work of human beings, the primitive forests and grasslands into pastures, good land and villages and towns, rivers, lakes, rivers, and seas along the coast of the city, agriculture, pastoralism, and commercial exchanges of land, cattle, sheep, real estate, food, minerals, gold and silver are all turned into wealth. However, the good times did not last long, human drainage to make fields led to the drying up of rivers and land sand, the desert in western China has swallowed the town of Loulan, Lop Nor lake, China's Kyoto moved from Xi'an to Beijing, still suffered from the erosion of wind and sand. The disappearance of Loulan turned the Silk Road into a journey of death, and the billions of dollars of wealth accumulated over the past thousand years were reduced to nothing in an instant. Wealth of many years of crazy accumulation and sudden sharp decline in the demise of human wealth constitutes a cycle of strange circle, and human wars launched for the fight for wealth, more exacerbated the speed of the demise of wealth.
Water conservancy and flooding is a key link in the wealth cycle. In nature's cycle of drought and flooding, rainy periods turn continents into swampy lakes everywhere and groundwater is maximized. When the dry period arrives, plants and animals can survive on the abundance of surface and groundwater until the next rainy period. When people arrive, they compete with fresh water for survival. Drainage of land during dry periods reduces the area of land that holds water, while dikes and dams are built to protect farmland during rainy periods, allowing freshwater to flow back to the sea along the rivers for nothing. Over time, surface water is drained, groundwater is drained, and they are not replenished naturally and lose the ability to flow and purify themselves. Fertile grasslands eventually turn into deserts. Nature is flood to prepare for drought, mankind is drainage to produce drought. Violation of the laws of nature is inevitably punished by nature. Not only is this the case in the Sahara region, but the deserts of China have moved eastward with the eastward movement of the capital city, and the capital of Ethiopia has moved southward eight times with the desertification of the land and drought, all of which show that human activities have exacerbated the desertification of the land. The main reason for this is the severe destruction of large areas of tropical rainforest, surface water and groundwater, which has deprived vegetation of its basis for survival. In order to restore the balance between drought and flood in nature, it is necessary to leave enough space for fresh water, air and other living things that are essential for human survival, such as the measures currently being practiced in China to return fields to lakes and fields to forests.
China's and the world's history has records of great floods at the beginning of the world's creation, and the Great Yu's water control is a typical example of the success of changing from blockage to diversion. Diversion meant that a large amount of surface water flowed into the sea for nothing, and although he left a lot of land space for mankind, he eventually led to the loss of surface water and the gradual development of desertification. In the self-preservation consciousness of human beings, the drainage of water to protect farmland is necessary for their own survival, but the ensuing desertification is equally threatening to their survival. In this way, the success of Dayu's water control precisely shows that human beings are responsible for desertification.
Engels once made a fascinating and in-depth analysis of mankind's blind practices: "Let us not revel too much in our triumphs over nature; for every such triumph nature has revenged itself on us. In every case, the first step did achieve the result we expected, but in the second and third steps it had an entirely different and unexpected effect, often canceling out the first result again. The inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor, and everywhere else, who cut down the forests in order to obtain arable land, could not have dreamed that these places would thus become barren to-day, because they deprived them of their forests, and consequently of the centers for the accumulation and storage of moisture." This incisive analysis applies equally to man's triumph over the flood. Land desertification is nature's punishment for man's destruction of surface water resources.
Land desertification is a denial of the Western way of production and life - high-risk, high-speed, high-consumption, and the competitive principles of the law of the jungle and "profit over morality". Driven by economic interests, human beings have invaded all spaces of the earth in all directions, cutting down forests, destroying surface vegetation, drying up swamps and wetlands, and accelerating land desertification. On the contrary, the ancient Oriental culture pays more attention to the harmony and unity of nature and human beings, i.e. the natural materialism of "the unity of heaven and man" and "emphasizing the way of the world rather than profit". Long history and excellent tradition enable people to live in harmony with others and nature in the long term. Instead of military invasion and economic expansion, this ideology has gradually assimilated more and more peoples and countries, forming an oriental civilization that is ecologically balanced and mentally balanced. Sichuan, the "Land of Heaven", is the only region in the world where all ancient civilizations at the 30th parallel have not been desertified, and the great eco-agricultural projects of the Chinese ancients - Dujiangyan and the terraced rice fields in the mountains - have played a decisive role. Relying on amazing knowledge and wisdom, Dujiangyan and mountain terraces have ensured a virtuous cycle of ecological environment, which is a model of knowledge-based economy and can be awarded the title of the world's first ecological agriculture. This is the crystallization of China's ancient civilization, inheritance and development of these valuable heritage and fine traditions, slowing down the desertification of land is possible and hope.
It should be noted that the desertification caused by wind erosion and the dust and sediment transport process caused by wind and running water is an inevitable process of natural leveling, is a geological process corresponding to the balance of mountain building. Excessive reduction of soil erosion will result in disasters such as river outflow, land retreat to the sea, salinization, imbalance in the nutrient structure of coastal waters and imbalance in the average movement of the earth's crust. Human beings cannot put an end to land desertification, but can only limit it to a certain limit suitable for human survival and development. Out-of-control technology and overdevelopment will destroy the ecological balance of the Earth, which is a great leap forward in human understanding. The lessons of deforestation and drainage for flood control, which exacerbated land desertification, should be learned. Human beings should take the responsibility of protecting the ecological environment of the earth while demanding from nature [2-5].
The environmental damage caused by the production of wealth-gathering commodities has completely destroyed the fairness of free trade: a small number of producers have become rich by destroying the natural environment, leaving the majority of people in a deteriorating living environment. Who pays for the environmental costs of commodities [6]?
Xu Xunlei recently pointed out that now, the Lake Tai, Lake Chaohu, Dianchi, "three lakes" governance as a "national project", the investment will be hundreds of millions of dollars, some people are afraid to start again in their hearts: I can earn from how much ah! Run a business pollute the environment, I earned a vote; package project governance that pollution, I earned a fortune. Local officials may also be cool to a heart in the chest cavity kept spinning: do business despite the pollution of the environment, but the GDP went up; treatment of pollution into a huge investment, the same can create new GDP figures! "Pollution" is my profit, "pollution control" is my profit, the world such as "win-win" good thing to do! If the "national project" becomes a silly big head, then only the people suffer. Tens of billions of investment, can make the lake for three days, and then a wind blowing away the results of pollution control, a moment and the lake will be dyed black, a high temperature and can become green. Therefore, the "three lakes" water environment management, the most important thing is how to "national project" really become "people's project", at least ten million pairs of people's eyes can stare at it! Project [1]. It seems that the state for the environmental cost of goods to pay the bill can only aggravate the vicious circle of environmental pollution and wealth.
Nine folded arm actually became a good doctor, years of trials and tribulations let the cultural people also see through the business. Xu Xunlei's analysis is very clear, one word breaks the mystery of the developers continue to get rich. The world economy has fallen into a "wealth dilemma", where the rich are getting richer, the laborers are working in vain, resources and energy are getting depleted, the living environment is deteriorating, and the false symbols of wealth are rising. GDP and "Green GDP" reflect two very different standards of measuring and calculating the world's wealth. If resources and the environment are included in social wealth, some highly polluted regions will become poorer rather than richer. They have to sacrifice more GDP to restore the environment. Many processes in the world are irreversible, and when the ecological environment completely collapses, we can only "eat up the birds and throw them into the forest, leaving the earth white and clean".
Minister of Health Chen Zhu said China should invest more in research in the medical and health fields in the future, and do less "image projects. We need to understand that human life and quality of life are important strategic investments. China's scientific research in the field of medicine should focus on prevention, focus on improving environmental factors, so that the investment is small but obvious results, 1.3 billion people's health, can not rely solely on the solution of the doctor and medicine, strengthen prevention and protection of the environment is fundamental [7]. Environmental pollution has affected the Chinese nation's physical fitness and health. It has been said that Chinese people are exchanging their lives for money before the age of 60, and after the age of 60, they are exchanging money for life. Can money buy health? The root cause of this vicious cycle, which has led to a vicious expansion of medical costs, remains people's old ideas about wealth.
Leopold, the environmentalist, long ago said thought-provokingly, "People keep going back to the beginning in order to begin again the search for those eternal values [1]." Environmental pollution has become the root of all evil. When commodities become the starting point for wealth, the greatest fear in the pursuit of the desire for wealth is this: making polluters pay for the environmental costs of commodities!
When water and electricity suddenly disappear, modern cities become huge catacombs made of reinforced concrete; when the sea level rises by 100 meters, coastal cities will become underwater cemeteries. History has repeated this process many times, and nature has punished mankind's greed for wealth countless times. Wealth or environment? Humans must make a wise choice.
References
1. Xu Xunlei. Is Pollution at the Dangerous Tipping Point or on the Dangerous Platform. Guangming Watch Published: 2007-7-8 23:23:43 show.aspx?id=5046
2. Yang Xuexiang. Land Desertification - A Global Environmental Problem. Science News Weekly. 2000,(46):18
3. Yang, X.C.. Global warming, tectonic movement and desertification. Crustal deformation and earthquakes. 2001, 21(1):15-23
4. Hiroyuki Ishi. Earth environment report. China Environment Press. 1991, 87~89, 102~103, 55
5. Yang, X.C.. Climate fluctuation cycle, desertification and human knowledge structure. China Academic Journal Abstracts, 2000,6(8):1003~1005
6. Yang, X.X.. Questioning the fairness of free trade: Who pays for the environmental costs of commodities? 2004-12-18 Shanghai Environmental Hotline. Green Forum /forum/20044730.htm
7. Huang Fang. Health Minister Chen Zhu: 1.3 billion people's health can't just rely on seeing a doctor and taking medicines. 2007-07-03 09:16 Source: china-news.com/20070703/n250877621.shtml