Smoke over Amazonia

The Poor struggle for survival and leave global footprints.

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Along the many tributaries of the Brazilian rivers of Amazonia live over 13 Million people. 300 years of colonial settlement from Europe and the governmental resettlement programs of the poor from the south of Brazil last century, left racial traces among the Indian tribes.

Today, they are known as –Caboclos! Most of them are poor illiterate, self sufficient small farmers. They live alone or in small communities, in remote areas, a long way by boat from the big cities.

 

They practice slash and burn to clear their small farming area and are responsible for a good part of the Co2 emission.

 

If we want to reduce the CO2 output, the warming of the climate, we have to correct the agricultural behaviour of the Caboclos .

 

Through sharing of technological advances and financial assistance we have to train them, so they are able to achieve a better way of life on their own. Then they can abandon the traditional slash and burn and improve the already degraded forest, use it in an environmentally friendly manner.

 

The Swiss Hanspeter Aeberhard has lived and worked for more than 20 years in Brazil. Many years ago he abandoned an international career in finances and settled in Manaus. He is familiar with the local problems and its mechanisms.

 

He managed in the past several sustainable forestry programs and started certification for legal tropical wood extraction.

 

Today, by joining  small foreign business ventures in Europe and local working power, he creates jobs for the Caboclos, to grant and pay them their fair part, so they can abandon the traditional slash and burn  for survival.

 

To ensure the sustainable environmental impact of his ideas, he often asks advice from scientists at the tropical Institute INPA in Manaus, like Prof. Niro Higushi, an internationally renowned  expert on Co2 .

 

Hanspeter follows also a multi species agro forestry method from the scientific NGO POEMA , from the University in Belêm further down the Amazon river and the ideas of Prof. Mitschein; to draw on money for the Caboclos from the CO2 fund, the certificates can be used  by the first world to buy off their overproduction and finance programs in the third world.

 

In his opinion Caboclos are something like a “CO2 worker“;

If they cease to slash and burn and instead reforest already damaged areas, therefore preparing the Amazon area to absorb more CO2, they are no longer guilty of abusing the co2 output.

In Love with Science

A Swiss Amazon in Amazonia
 
Along with the story and personal views of the Swiss Biologist Dr. Ilse Walker, we learn a lot about the environmental health of the Amazonian Jungle.
 
In the fifties, as it was impossible for a woman to have an academic career in Switzerland, she was pushed into scientific exile. She studied in England, the US, and taught and researched at University level in Tanzania and Brazil.
 
Doutora Ilse, as everybody lovingly calls her at the tropical Institute in Manaus Brazil, has for the last thirty years been doing research on a tributary of the Rio Negro in the Amazonian jungle.
 
In her 30 year studies, she has proved that the present day Neo Darwinism theory is wrong for the Amazon area. There, not only the strongest survives in Nature, as plenty of food, water and pleasant temperatures whole year round are available.

Despite having to fight hard for her ideas internationally and her old age, well past seventy, she still thinks of scientific ecological research as a great adventure:
 
Scientific borders are more open and flexible in Brazil. So a few years ago Dra. Ilse Walker was rewarded with the highest Brazilian scientific honour.