Brazil Leads Destruction

You may not have noticed news of the murder of Joao Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espirito Santo, near the city of Maraba in Brazil (title link). Even if you did, you might not regard the crime as having much importance amid all the fighting and killing going on around the world. But Joao Claudio Ribeiro da Silva was a leading Brazilian conservationist. It is surely no coincidence that his murder took place shortly before Brazil's Chamber of Deputies voted to overhaul the Forest Code, easing restrictions on the amount of land farmers must preserve as forest and opening the way to more logging (CLICK). The above photo by Alberto Cesar for Greenpeace shows a small part of the damage already done to the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. Recent satellite images show deforestation is getting worse (CLICK). Being green in Brazil is dangerous. Chico Mendes was murdered by ranchers in 1988, and nun Dorothy Stang from the USA was shot dead in 2005. The Cerrado savannah in Brazil is also being destroyed, so that soya can be grown in huge quantities. Feeling powerless? The WWF has organised an e-mail you can send to the major UK supermarkets asking them to buy only responsibly sourced soya (CLICK). It's worth trying.