Letters

Too late for

the Amazon?

The global talking shop on the environment will soon be upon us - the 2002 Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development in August. Remember Rio? That was 10 years ago. And from my reading of UN preparatory meetings (and a few OECD articles), the message will

I'm particularly concerned about the Amazon, which accounts for 40% of the world's rainforest and is the largest remaining wilderness. Over a year ago, a team of Brazilian and American scientists predicted that only about 5% of primary forest in the Amazon will remain standing by 2020 and the process that will wipe this wilderness out could become irreversible within a decade. If it's taken a decade (since Rio) for the international community to begin sorting itself out on environmental issues such as climate change and deforestation, isn't it already too late for the Amazon?