FRANCE 🇫🇷 DESTROYING THE RAINFOREST IN FRENCH GUIANA 🇬🇫
When the Amazon rainforest is in danger, we all are. The world’s largest intact forest, the Amazon plays a key role in regulating the global climate. It is home to Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities whose land stewardship practices can lead us all toward a more sustainable future. It is perhaps the world’s most biodiverse region yet also a place where there are likely still many species unknown to science. The Amazon is, simply put, amazing. And, yet, it is being destroyed.
Where is the Amazon rainforest? The world’s largest intact forest, the Amazon rainforest covers 2.6 million square miles across nine countries in South America: Brazil 🇧🇷 , Bolivia 🇧🇴, Peru 🇵🇪 , Colombia 🇨🇴, Ecuador 🇪🇨, Venezuela 🇻🇪, Guyana 🇬🇾, Suriname 🇸🇷, and French Guiana 🇬🇫 . Approximately 60 percent of the Amazon Basin is in Brazil. What causes fires in the Amazon rainforest? Around the world, we have watched in horror over the last few years as images of smoke and fire have emerged from the under-threat forest in Brazil, but it is important to remember that fires in the Amazon are generally NOT a naturally occurring phenomenon. Healthy, moist rainforests normally do not burn without intervention from humans. The fires in the Amazon are often started intentionally by people, many of whom are illegal land grabbers emboldened by the anti-environment policies of Bolsonaro’s government who are attempting to clear forested land for other uses. This process of destroying trees to clear forested land is known as deforestation.
As it is often done intentionally, the burning in the Amazon is different from the wildfires experienced in places like California or the Mediterranean that can be naturally occurring or ignited by accident...
