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building dams, neither of which were significant causes of deforestation compared to
ranching and agriculture.
The logging industry Virtually no deforestation can be directly attributed to logging.
The biodiversity of the Amazon means that economically useful trees are jumbled
together with valueless ones. As a result, clearcutting - removing forest tracts for
timber - is almost unknown in the Amazon. Logging is more selective, resulting in
the fragmentation of forest cover - degradation rather than deforestation. One often
hears that logging trails open up areas into which deforesters later move, but just as
often it is the loggers who head down the trails made by others.
“Big business” It is certainly true that most of the deforestation in the grim decades of
the 1970s and 1980s was driven directly by big business - specifically the tax breaks
that attracted large companies to the region, and the ignorance and arrogance that led
them to think development projects in the jungle would make money. But when the
tax breaks were withdrawn in the early 1990s, most of the large companies left. The big
companies remaining in the Amazon - mainly in mining and commercial agriculture -
work in areas degraded long ago, and are not drivers of much new deforestation.
Soy and biofuels Despite the headlines, soy is not and never has been an important
driver of Amazon deforestation. Only two percent of cleared land in the Amazon is
commercially farmed; ranching and smallholder agriculture account for the rest.
Although there are grain terminals in the Amazon, almost all the soy they ship is
grown outside the Amazon. A ban on buying soy from deforested land has been in
place since 2006 and is enforced. Biofuels are equally unimportant as a driver of
deforestation. Little sugar cane is grown in the Amazon, and although palm oil may
be an important Amazonian product in the near future, it will be grown on land
cleared decades ago in the eastern Amazon, where costs are lowest and ports are close.
A number of reasons are now put forward for the continuing destruction of the
rainforest. A complete answer would include the following three major factors:
The Brazilian economy Save for minerals and soy, the vast bulk of what the Amazon
produces is consumed within the Amazon, or goes elsewhere in Brazil. For every cubic
metre of tropical hardwood exported, for example, two cubic metres are consumed in
Brazil, largely by the furniture and construction industries. The export of Amazonian
timber is highly regulated; educated consumers in the US and EU demand proof that
Amazon timber in products they buy has been sustainably produced - non-certified
Amazon timber is barred from the EU, for example. There is no such regulation in
Brazil and, until there is, the domestic economy will be the single biggest driver of
deforestation. Within the domestic economy itself, the biggest problem is ranching,
which accounts for four out of every five units of land cleared in the Amazon.
Government policy Regional development policy is one of the most unreconstructed
areas of the federal government. Corruption, in the form of loosely monitored federal
contracts and regional development funds that operate as slush funds for politicians
of every ideological complexion, hangs like a fog over everything the government
does in the Amazon.
Amazonian state governments With a couple of exceptions - most notably Acre -
Amazonian states tend to be run by old-style oligarchs, ignorant, provincial and
deeply hostile to an environmental agenda they feel is threatening to “development”.
As far as they can - which fortunately is not very far, given their limited resources -
they tend to back policies harmful to the forest.
Possible solutions
Deforestation happens because it makes economic sense for the person cutting the tree
down; the key to preserving the forest is to ensure it makes more economic sense to
 
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