What does Massachusetts have to do with the Amazon? Well, take a look this following figure from The Economist and see if it helps.
Still not sure? Look at those numbers again...
In the year from August 2003 to August 2004 a little more than 26,000 square kilometers (just over 10,000 square miles) of Amazonian rainforest was lost. According to 50states.com that's about the same as the area of Massachusetts (10,555 square miles; 7838 land, 2717 water). In the fifteen years since 1989 an area about fifteen times the size of Massachusetts, or about the size of Montana, has been lost.
The Amazonian rainforest has plenty of legal protection. “Brazil, whose territory includes about two-thirds of the forest, has impressively tough laws that, on paper, set most of it aside as a nature reserve and impose stiff penalties for illegal logging.” What it lacks is a government able to protect it. “the institutions that are supposed to protect Brazil’s forest—the federal and state environmental agencies, national and local police forces and the judicial system—are weak, poorly co-ordinated and prone to corruption and influence-peddling by illegal loggers and the farming lobby. The murder earlier this year by hired gunmen of Dorothy Stang, an American nun who challenged the loggers and land grabbers, shows how ruthless the forest’s enemies can be.”
I wish I knew how to make the Brazilian government stronger, but that's a challenge well beyond me.
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