the land of cinnamon and gold...
Commodity crops like soy (currently under a moratorium) and palm oil lead to forest destruction and weakening of the hydrological cycle. Hydro-electric projects ignore sedimentary flows and fish migrations and deforestation as well. In January 2018 new estimates became available of the amount of carbon in the atmosphere from destroyed and degraded ecosystems: much larger then previously understood and equal to the carbon remaining in extant ecosystems. The imperative of stopping climate change at no more than 1.5 degrees became insistent and puts a premium on ecosystem restoration and sharply ratcheting down ecosystem destruction (most prominently tropical deforestation). That cannot be achieved without an intact Amazon system (although many additional things need to happen). The 50% of the amazon that is protected by conservation areas and indigenous reserves is reassuring progress. But it is insufficient to protect the Amazon, its biota and its importance for the global climate as well as rainfall in agricultural areas south of the Amazon. What is needed is a new vision for the Amazon, one that is forest based and biologically based. One that has sustainable infrastructure for transportation (that does not lead to deforestation/colonization), and for energy (respecting sediment flows and fish migrations). It is one that must include sustainable cities in which the economic base is not dependent on deforestation. Under old global models the Amazon has been transformative in ways far beyond the impact of rubber or the medicinal value of curare. The design of the Crystal Palace of the London Exposition of 1851 derives directly from Joseph Paxton’s use of the structural patterns on the underside of the giant waterlily. That was the origin of modern metal-beam architecture: so most buildings of the industrial world derive from the underside of the Victoria amazonica. The angiotensinconverting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitors that hundreds of millions take to manage their hypertension actually are based on Butantan studies of venom of the ferde-lance viper that revealed the previously unknown angiotensin system for regulation of blood pressure. Those are powerful examples, but as Carlos Nobre has been highlighting, they are nothing compared to what can be learned from the incredible biota of the
| 31