CIO News
In an effort to protect the Amazon, the world’s largest rain forest, Brazil will provide Internet signal by satellite to 150 Amazon communities, reports CNN.com. Environment and communications ministers and the Forest People’s Network signed an agreement on Thursday. The provision of Internet access to native Indian tribes will allow them to report illegal logging and ranching, ask for help, and fortify rain forest preservation efforts. Many of these communites are only reachable by riverboat.
City and State goverments must first install telecenters with computers in selected areas, then the federal government will provide satellite connection.
The Forest People’s Network is a digital web for monitoring, protection and education.
Rainforest Facts:
Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences for both developing and industrial countries.
Rainforests are being destroyed because the value of rainforest land is perceived as only the value of its timber by short-sighted governments, multi-national logging companies, and land owners.
Most rainforests are cleared by chainsaws, bulldozers and fires for its timber value and then are followed by farming and ranching operations, even by world giants like Mitsubishi Corporation, Georgia Pacific, Texaco and Unocal.
The Amazon Rainforest has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet" because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen.
At least 3000 fruits are found in the rainforests; of these only 200 are now in use in the Western World.
Currently, 121 prescription drugs currently sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. And while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
Vincristine, extracted from the rainforest plant, periwinkle, is one of the world's most powerful anticancer drugs. It has dramatically increased the survival rate for acute childhood leukemia since its discovery.
Experts agree that by leaving the rainforests intact and harvesting it's many nuts, fruits, oil-producing plants, and medicinal plants, the rainforest has more economic value than if they were cut down to make grazing land for cattle or for timber.
The latest statistics show that rainforest land converted to cattle operations yields the land owner $60 per acre and if timber is harvested, the land is worth $400 per acre. However, if these renewable and sustainable resources are harvested, the land will yield the land owner $2,400 per acre.
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