November 9 2011 Assignment 4 Tree Debate GEOG 2412 Madre de Dios is home to nearly 100 000 indigenous peoples where forest conservation is a matter of life or death Tambopata Reserve Society More than half of these peoples live in subsistence communities that coexist with the surrounding diverse ecosystems Tambopata Reserve Society Capitalist agriculture and deforestation methods have exploited these indigenous societies along with fragile ecosystems that are unlike any other in the world In order to maintain ecological well being and not displace thousands of peoples the Tambopata rainforest must be preserved and autonomy must be achieved for the local tribes As the political leader of the Local Federation of Native Peoples of Madre de Dios FENAMAD I propose that the tropical rainforest of the Tambopata region be restored to the indigenous peoples of the land for sustainable use including locally managed ecotourism small scale mining production and subsistence farming and hunting From an ecocentric perspective the rainforests of Tambopata should be exceedingly valued as they provide one of the most varied ecosystems in the world Humans cannot live without these carbon sequestering regions and preserving them will benefit the globe as a whole Deforestation for soybean production or oil drilling is a capital intensive anthropocentric ideology that neglects the interconnectedness between people wildlife and bionetworks Practices of these mega corporations include the deforestation of old growth forests dislocating valuable animal species for example destruction of the forest floodplains which house 50 of the Tambopata region s bird species results in thousands of habitat less birds which endangers their welfare Alvarez and Naughton Treves p 273 Furthermore this anthropocentric view of tree and land management disregards a rights of nature approach or the acknowledgement that trees are not capable of defending themselves and therefore require legal means to defend them Robbins et al p 177 Indigenous groups similarly lack a political voice enabling large corporations to engage in capitalist agriculture a practice that displaces and dramatically burdens my people and the rainforests Robbins et al p 173 Market based approaches utilized by soybean and oil producers often endorse the Forest Transition Model as a means to justify deforestation Robbins et al p 171 This theory states that the overuse of forests now will eventually subside as the market will undoubtedly adjust leading to reforestation and recovery Robbins et al p 171 however the Forest Transition Model is not true as witnessed in the unevenness of forest regrowth from place to place Robbins et al p 174 Additionally studies have shown that secondary forests can only partly replace the ecological and economic services provided by primary forests which means newer forests are neither as biodiverse nor as rich in natural resources as original ecosystems Alvarez and Naughton Treves p 273 It also takes a lengthy amount of time for any forest to return to its climax canopy Capitalist agriculture mass industrialized agriculture chiefly produced for economic gain is unsustainable and exploits indigenous people and the environment it also enhances uneven development Robbins et al p 175 The process of mass agriculture is imposed by the Global North upon less developed nations in the Global South implying that Peru and other developing Latin American countries are inferior in the global theater With the viewpoint that developing nations are entities to be managed by wealthier countries it seems highly unlikely that developing nations will ever be addressed as equals to developed nations Therefore nongovernment organizations NGOs and corporations should leave the Tambopata region to its native peoples to manage allowing developing nations to decide their own methods of growth and development It is my duty as the leader of FENAMAD to gain political recognition for my native people and in turn maintain control over our native rainforest lands Foreign companies and NGOs do not respect the ecosystems that have existed in Peru and only uphold economic values and anthropocentric thinking If left up to the soybean growers the gold miners or the oildrillers the Tambopata region would all but disappear The indigenous people of Madre de Dios should reclaim and sustain the land they have inhabited for thousands of years preserving an essential carbon reservoir which will benefit global well being Works Cited Alvarez Nora L and Lisa Naughton Treves Linking National Agrarian Policy to Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon A Case Study of Tambopata 1986 1997 Ambio 32 4 2003 273 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences June 2003 Web 9 Nov 2011 http www ambio kva se Robbins Paul John Hintz and Sarah A Moore Trees Chapter 5 Environment and Society Hoboken John Wiley Sons 2011 168 177 Print Tambopata Reserve Society Introduction to the Area WTS Online Tambopata Reserve Society Web 09 Nov 2011 http www wtsonline co uk treesnewweb area htm