New Roads in the Amazon May Deliver Disease (NPR)

[eppur_se_muova]

by Joanne Silberner

Morning Edition, February 25, 2008 · Nearly one-fifth of the Amazon rainforest has disappeared since 1970, its loss spurred by construction of roads through pristine areas. The loss of the trees is a big blow to the world's carbon balance, and a real force in climate change. And, according to three researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, road construction in places like the Amazon might also be a blow to human health.

New roads promote deforestation. A recently published survey of the Peruvian Amazon by Paulo Oliveira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and several colleagues shows that 75 percent of the forest disruption that occurred between 1999 and 2005 occurred within 12 miles of a road. And deforestation promotes malaria — researchers Amy Vittor and Jonathan Patz surveyed a newly constructed road and reported in 2006 that the areas along the road that had suffered more deforestation also suffered more malaria.

The Hopkins researchers want to follow the development of a road in real time. So they're surveying an area where the government is about to put in a highway. The road will go from the frontier river village of Mazan, through the Amazon jungle, to the city of Iquitos.

The researchers are infectious-diseases experts Margaret Kosek, a physician and former ultimate Frisbee player, and her husband, Pablo Yori. Yori is a gentle Spaniard, also an infectious-diseases expert. He keeps everyone going by carrying much of the gear. And there's biostatistician Bill Pan. Biostatisticians usually spend their time in front of computers. But Pan is outfitted for the jungle in a worn T-shirt he got when he was head of the cheerleading squad at Boston College. His six-foot two-inch frame is topped by a slouchy safari hat in camouflage colors.

Right now, the only route out of Mazan is by boat. The new road will bring in cars and trucks and people. The Hopkins team wants to see what this will do.
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more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19276850

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[Peace Patriot]

1. Some of this road building in pristine areas is being okayed (given phony "green"

certification)--including areas of the Amazon--by the Forest Stewardship Council. Know who belongs to the Forest Stewardship Council (which is headquartered in the Yucatan)? The Sierra Club. Greenpeace. Natural Resources Defense Council. And many others--big environmental groups, NGOs, and many logging companies. Know who has the most influence? The logging companies. Know who some of the funding comes from? The World Bank, the Ford Foundation and many other of the usual suspects. Know who "certifies" these operations? Mostly for-profit "consultant" firms, paid by the logging companies they "certify"--with no oversight by the FSC. Know who they certify? Mostly big corporate loggers--clear-cutting, pesticide use, old growth and virgin forest logging, extirpation of endangered species--all routinely permitted by FSC certifiers. Know who's getting screwed? The consumers, who are being duped, the public which is being excluded as this PRIVATE "certification" REPLACES the public's right to review environmental projects (even in Calfornia!), and indigenous tribes and local communities, who don't have the clout of Greenpeace or the Sierra Club to be heard on destruction of their local forests.

Shuckin jive--our whole political and "non-profit" establishment--all sold out to global corporate predators.