Gold

On Friday, an interesting and thought-provoking article was released. It was a story about of a farmer in Peru that brought his sheep down to the river, and within a few minutes after they drank, they all died a violent death. This is because this stream was filled with poisonous nitrate from blasting into mountains in order to scrape out what little gold they could find. The American company, Newport Mining Company, is being funded by the World Bank and IFC to blast away at mountains and use toxic chemicals in to get out the gold ore. The gold mine in this instance is called Yanacocha and is the one of the leading gold mines in production today. When the mine is blasted, they mix cyanide type residue that pulls out the gold ore. This residue is easily washed away with rainwater and is not taken care of beforehand, which ends up in the water streams. Though this mining process is said to bring in many new jobs, over 50% of the population in the Cajamarca province where Yanacocha lies live beneath the poverty line and do not see any benefits from this environmental destruction.

World Bank and IFC has been caught with going over their own policies before and there is no reason for it to stop here.  The problem with this situation is the fact that the World Bank has been more inclined in recent years to fund situations that could be hazardous to the countries they are trying to develop, simply to exploit them for their resources. This sort of greed is what we have been seeing in Brazil as well, only the World Bank is not hurting themselves directly, so the consequences are not as visible.

This story follows Ethiopia as well and shows how the World Bank is creating hazardous situations there. As these chemicals increase in contamination, the question comes up of how bad will the people have to suffer before World Bank stops the environmental destruction?

http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/worldbank-evicted-abandoned/how-worldbank-finances-environmental-destruction-peru

Brazil's water crisis

As Brazil continues to deliberately destroy their forest, and therefore their ecosystem, the water supply is lowering dangerously. Two thirds of the Brazil’s electricity comes from dammed rivers, and the entirety of their power is quickly depleting. Two major reservoir networks, Cantareira and the Alto Tiete, provide Sao Paulo’s water supply. At this moment, the Alto Tiete is at 15% capacity and Cantareira is at 5%, which science advisors say is the worst drought in 80 years. As a city that runs mainly on hydroelectricity, this will be devastating if they trend continues. Also, the people of Sao Paulo are being restricted to only two days of water use per week.

As this concern becomes much more prevalent, officials are trying to figure out ways to finally deal with the problem, including planting trees near river beds in order to keep them more susceptible to capturing water. Although the biggest reservoir of water is forests and without them, capturing more water will be hard, as we have seen before. The problem here is that deforestation is a double hitter to the water supply in an ecosystem. By this, I mean that rain clouds would form from the thick amazon jungle and as it rains, the trees would capture a lot of the rain and release it over more time. With the trees gone, you see not as many rain clouds, and less water from them when they do. Climate researcher, Antonio Donate Nobre, says that 20% of the forest is being clear-cut and another 7% has been burned due to the parts of the forest that were once surrounded by forest-proof woodland now being gone.

Brazil is in over there heads in this situation. They are destroying so much of the Amazon and not caring about what that will look like tomorrow. Now it has caught up to them and they have a disaster on their hands, all for money.

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/5269-deforestation-in-the-amazon-aggravates-brazils-energy-crisis

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2015/02/12/Brazil-faces-water-disaster-scientists-warned-it-was-coming/8121423766388/

Blog #8- Rio water pollution

As if the rural deforestation of Brazil’s Amazon forests is not bad enough, there have been cases streaming to the surface about Rio’s pollution getting worse.  As the 2016 World Olympics was promised to Rio de Janeiro in 2009, the government promised to get most of the pollution cleaned up in time. Now they are saying it will not be done on time and that the mess is only getting worse. As the letters between Senators and representatives and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Congressional Caucus come to attention, the question of the Olympic sailors’ health come to mind.  It is said in the letters that the 7 million Brazilians’ sewage waste ends up right into Guanabara Bay, which is directly where the water portion of the Olympics will be taking place. A test done in December of 2014 has come back showing that the “super bacteria”, KPC enzyme found in the water causes several different bodily infections and diseases such as E-coli, dysentery, hepatitis A & B and is only treatable by antibiotics.  There have been meetings to discuss where the sailing portion should be moved to, but no public information has been released.  It is also showing that it is killing many of the fish species there as well and aerial shots of the bay shows household trash filling up throughout the bay, including where is to be the sailing lanes for the Olympics. As for the living conditions of the area, it is unacceptable. The sewage water for cities need should not be flushing their sewage into the bay directly next to them. As we can see it carries diseases that can severely harm the population and the ecosystem contained near it. The trash in the bay should not be there, as it should be put away in a landfill somewhere outside the city. Trash in the water around the city only provides more hazards. Regardless of all this trouble in the water, Carlos Nuzman, the head of the Brazilian Olympic Committee, inform the public that the water will be ready on time for 2016 somehow.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/water-rubbish-rio-art-exhibit-uses-trash-stress-pollution-problem-ahead-olympics/

http://www.sail-world.com/Pollution_in_Rio_is_a_major_issue_and_it_could_get_bigger/132963

Brazil Deforestation

As I covered Brazil’s story of deforestation recently, I did not see until this story that a majority of the harvesting of the lumber is in fact through illegal means. Brazil for a long time was credited for its environmental sustainability, as it contained the amazon forest, but kept deforestation rates very low. Recently they have sky rocketed though, more than doubling within the past year. Between 2005 and 2010, Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions sunk 39 percent primarily from burning mainly the basin of the forest. It is said that this clearing is mostly to make way for pastures for cattle. In a report done by Greenpeace, they blame the weak and corrupt government set in the country. Also they said that about 78 percent of the logging done in the Para state was illegal, which was made done by giving clean documentation to illegally harvested timber. Although there have been some clear stopping of illegal deforestation in Para as seen through the arresting of Ezequiel Antonio Castanha. He is allegedly responsible for up to 10 percent of the illegal deforestation of Brazil’s Amazon. The farmers are also people who really want the forests clear, as it would make more room for them to grow their crops. Dilma Rousseff, who was elected president, originally stated a no tolerance for deforestation, but later partnered with a coalition of wealthy farmers and agribusinesses and persuaded her to rewrite the country’s land-use laws.

Fearnside, a scientist trying to aid the Amazon along with others, blame the major cutting on the Forest Act of 2012 which took away major protection for the Amazon and gave amnesty to people who have broken the law before 2008.

Rita Mesquita, a senior researcher of Brazil’s National Institute for Research in the Amazon, stated that if the rate of deforestation keeps going like this, then even the mightiness of the Amazon would be gone in 30 or 40 years. This could not be anymore true, as forests are cut down way quicker than they come up. Carbon dioxide levels will skyrocket as well. Overall, if the government does not crack down more on this deforestation problem, their ecosystem will change in ways that most people there do not see.

http://www.newsweek.com/brazils-deforestation-rates-are-rise-again-315648

Brazil's deforestation

Brazil is experiencing a massive drought right now with only half the rainfall as last year, leaving some of the largest rivers at about 10% of what the once were. As a country that’s wealth and resources are massively divided, it is known for its abundance of fresh water resources, which make about 12% of the world’s fresh water. This has lead to several big dilemmas for the people including a major shortage a drinking water, an all time low for agriculture and food production, and cutting down transportation as a lot of the population commutes by boat. Power outages are raving throughout the highly populated city as well because of the shortage in hydroelectricity. The country is responding to this by increasing fossil fuel burning which emits more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Authorities have announced that reservoirs are at all time lows and in the first weeks January (the country’s highest rainfall season) has only seen about a quarter of the average rainfall it usually has. So why is there this drought? Perhaps it could be from the deforestation that has raised 195% since last year’s rates. Because the people of Brazil have been ravishing the Amazon and Atlantic forests, it causes humid air mass to cease flowing, resulting in no new rain clouds forming in any of the regions. On top of all this, Brazil’s government has not done anything to slow this rate at all. As Brazil is currently still a developing country, it is focusing more on economic growth through wealth from their resources. They are simply ignoring the fact they are destroying their own ecosystem and the people still remain unaware of what is going and what those consequences will be. Although this is the exact opposite of Malwai’s deforestation that resulted in flooding, we can clearly see that taking away forests severely tampers with the ecosystem. Awareness needs to happen in this country so the people can exactly what will happen to them if the government keeps taking away the natural resources of the forest.    

https://www.the-newshub.com/international/brazil-a-democratic-climate-change 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/23/brazil-worst-drought-history