It is the industrialized countries that have done the most damage to the Amazon rainforests. ‘Brazil’s president says “gringos” should pay Amazon nations to prevent deforestation, insisting rich Western nations have caused much more past environmental destruction than the loggers and farmers who cut and burn trees in the world’s largest tropical rain forest.’

“I don’t want any gringo asking us to let an Amazon resident die of hunger under a tree. We want to preserve, but they will have to pay the price for this preservation because we never destroyed our forest like they mowed theirs down a century ago,” said Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president. “Gringo” is a term that generally refers to anyone from the northern hemisphere, not just American.

According to Marco Aurelio Garcia, Silva’s top foreign policy adviser, “In Europe everyone has opinions about the Amazon, and there are people who think the Amazon is a zoo where you have to pay to enter. They don’t know there are 30 million who work there.”

Brazil’s government stresses the fact that the ‘Amazon is home to 30 million people, most of whom depend on the forest’s natural riches to eke out a living. About 25 million live in Brazil’s portion, which has about 60 percent of the Amazon, an area larger than Western Europe.’

‘The Brazilian Amazon is arguably the world’s biggest natural defense against global warming, acting as an absorber of carbon dioxide. But it is also a big contributor to warming because about 75 percent of Brazil’s emissions come from rainforest clearing, as vegetation burns and felled trees rot.’

Brazil, however, ‘has managed to reduce Amazon destruction to about 7,000 square kilometers (2,702 square miles) a year, the lowest level in decades. But that is still larger than the U.S. state of Delaware.’

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Via Newser