Brazil's Resettlement of Farmers Has Driven Amazon Deforestation

Since the 1970’s, over 1 million people have been given land to farm in the Brazilian Amazon.  The resettlement of smallholder farmers in the rainforest is playing an unrecognizable role in deforestation there, researchers suggest.  Although the overall deforestation rate has reduced by two thirds in the past decade,  the migration of poor farmers, using obsolete farming methods, is wrecking the rainforest.  After reviewing four decades of satellite images of forest coverage around resettlement areas, “irrefutable evidence of rapid deforestation” was found.  Within the settlement areas, which cover roughly the size of the United Kingdom, half the trees have been lost.  The resettlement areas cover 5.3% of the Brazilian Amazon, but account for 13.5% of deforestation since 1970.  Mauricio Schneider, a researcher at the Chamber of Deputies, says that these settlements have been considered a responsible way to give land to the rural poor, but that the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) policy of giving settlers just a few hectares of land is forcing them to use every inch for agriculture.  According to Charles Clement of Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research, “INCRA abandons settlers as soon as they arrive.”  This leaves the settlers uneducated about how to sustain Amazonian forests, using methods that the soil can’t handle.  In 2012, INCRA launched a regimen aimed at curbing illegal deforestation by settlers.  Other possible solutions could be for the Brazilian government to stop moving people into forested areas and reverting back to pre-Columbian farming methods, which left the soils more resilient and included trees, possibly allowing forest species to return rapidly to the plots.  Barriers to these solutions are ignorance and lack of enforcement.  Settlers thus far have lacked the guidance and knowledge to learn new and beneficial farming methods and no noticeable impact has been made since the Green Settlement Program has been enacted.  I believe this is a very important issue, because deforestation directly affects climate change, which is the leading cause of other environmental complications. Deforestation has begun to endanger many plant and animal species.  With the growing population of our planet, deforestation will continue to rise unless people increase their conservation and reforestation efforts.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27993-brazils-resettlement-of-farmers-has-driven-amazon-deforestation/