Environment, 3rd prize
Amazon: Paradise Threatened
Daniel Beltra
18 February, 2017
Residencial Salvação, a public housing project for 15,000 people, built on land cleared from the rainforest on the edge of the city of Santarém, Pará. Santarém, the financial and economic center of the western part of the state, has undergone sharp population growth since 2000.
After declining from major peaks in 1995 and 2004, the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased sharply in 2016, under pressure from logging, mining, agriculture and hydropower developments. The Amazon forest is one of Earth’s great ‘carbon sinks’, absorbing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide each year and acting as a climate regulator. Without it, the world’s ability to lock up carbon would be reduced, compounding the effects of global warming.
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