Report of the Week: Eating up the Amazon

Shortly after the release of "Up in Smoke: Latin America and the Carribean" by the woring group on climate change and development, Greenpeace releases its report on deforestation and its drivers in Brazil.

This report "Eating up the Amazon" explains the links between Mc Donalds and deforestation, via Soya farming and the agribusiness giant Cargill.

‘A smoky haze blurs the frontier between the world’s mightiest forest and
its biggest threat: the humble soya bean. The four-month burning season in the
Amazon is when the giant trees felled to make space for crops are reduced to
ashes. Even after being slashed and burned, the trunks of the tauari and
maçaranduba are so huge that their embers glow for more than two years… Brazil’s boom crop and [the world’s] growing appetite are clearing more forest than logging, cattle farming and mining… Brazil is rapidly becoming the takeaway for the workforce of the world.’

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