Amazon burning ‘hard to solve’

Press, 27 December 1989, Page 21

Amazon burning ‘hard to solve’

PA Wellington Brazilians are conscious of the problems caused by the diminishing Amazon rainforest, but there is no easy solution, a New Zealand priest who. has been working there says. The Rev. Michael Mahoney spent the last eight years in Brazil, and he will return in February. Brazil has a third of the earth’s rainforests and concern that their devastation could upset the ecology of earth’s atmosphere has prompted international protests. Father Mahoney said the Amazon was now the only place in Brazil where cheap land was readily available. This had meant poorer people drifted northwards. Many of these. were small farmers whose own land had been converted to large sugar cane estates. Alcohol produced from the cane is used to run 90 per cent of the cars in Brazil, following the country’s huge conversion programme from petrol after the oil crisis of the 19705. Father Mahoney said

Brazil had developed the best technology in the world for using alcohol as a fuel and the economy was geared to it. But the enormous demand for sugar cane led to a shortage of land for other crops. To counter this the Government encouraged cultivation of land in the Amazon by giving a farmer two hectares for every hectare cleared. That incentive was dropped when it was realised the burning off of the rainforest was getting out of hand, he said. But conservationists who focused on the rainforest problem overlooked other equally serious problems, including pollution of the North Atlantic ocean, Father Mahoney said. “According to scientists it could be dead in five years (and) thousands of fishermen will lose their jobs.” The oceans provided 80 per cent of the world’s oxygen, he said. In Brazil, Father Mahoney co-ordinates the activities of 11 Marist priests of eight different nationalities.