The Amazon
The Amazon has been viewed for ages as a vast quilt of rain forest interspersed with remote river outposts. But the surging population growth of cities in the jungle is turning that rural vision on its head, ___ 31 ___ an array of new industrial projects transforms the Amazon into Brazil’s fastestgrowing region.
The torrid expansion of rain forest cities is visible in places like Parauapebas, which has changed in a generation from an obscure frontier settlement to a sprawling urban area. Scientists are studying such developments and focusing on the demands on the ___ 32 ___ of the Amazon, the world’s largest remaining area of tropical forest. Though Brazilian officials have historically viewed the colonization of the Amazon as a matter of national security, deforestation in the region already ranks among the largest contributors to global greenhouse-gas emissions.
Brazil has shifted away from colonization, but policies that regularize land claims by squatters still lure migrants to the Amazon. And while the country has recently made progress in curbing deforestation, mainly by ___ 33 ___ logging laws and carving out protected forest areas, biologists and other climate researchers fear that the sharp increase in migration to cities in the Amazon could erode those gains.
Various factors are fueling this population growth, among them larger family sizes and the Amazon’s high levels of poverty. ___ 34 ___ Brazil’s birthrate has fallen to 1.86 children per woman, one of the lowest in Latin America, the Amazon has Brazil’s highest, at 2.42.
Some researchers have argued that in addition to allowing migrants to raise their living standards, migration to cities in tropical countries might actually reduce forest loss by depopulating certain rural areas, allowing tropical forests to regrow. Others contend that the migration may ___ 35 ___ deforestation by permitting cattle ranchers to acquire lands now held by small cultivators.
Simon Romero, International Herald Tribune