Strategies to manage tropical rainforests

Question 1

How much rainforest do Brazil promise to restore by 2030?

Answer 1

Committed to restoring 120,000 km2 of rainforest by 2030.

Question 2

How have indigenous people lived sustainably in rainforest for thousands of years?

Answer 2

They survived as hunter gatherers + shifting cultivators. They pursue a way of life adapted to limited resources + fragility of rainforest.

Question 3

Name 3 strategies to manage the Amazon sustainably?

Answer 3

1. Protection through legislation of large expanses of primary forest so far unaffected by commercial developments
2. Projects to reforest areas degraded or destroyed by subsistence farming, cattle ranching, logging and mining
3. Improving agricultural techniques to make permanent cultivation possible

Question 4

How much of Brazil’s Amazon is protected?

Answer 4

44% of Brazilian Amazon comprised national parks, wildlife reserves + indigenous reserves where farming is banned

Question 5

Name an example of a reforestation project

Answer 5

Parcia project in Rondônia

Question 6

What does the Parcia project aim to do?

Answer 6

Aims to develop a 1000km2 commercial timber plantation on gov-owned, deforested land.
Plan is to grow 20 million fast growing, tropical hardwood seedlings, planted on 4000 smallholdings to mature over period of 25 years

Question 7

Issues with the Parcia Project

Answer 7

it is monoculture + cannot replicate biodiversity of primary rainforest

Question 8

Benefits of Parcia project?

Answer 8

Reduces CO2 emissions from deforestation; re-establishes water + carbon cycles; reduces run off + the loss of plant nutrients + carbon from soil

Question 9

What do the indigenous Suruí people do to protect the rainforest?

Answer 9

• Participate in a scheme which protects primary forest on tribal land from illegal logging
• Native species are chosen to aid tribe eg. timber for construction, food crops
• In 2009, Suruí joined the UN’s reducing emissions from Deforestation + degradation scheme -provides payment to tribe for protecting rainforest + abandoning logging.