Will Noah's Ark depart from the Amazon River floodplains?

Abstract

The Amazon rainforest constitutes the widest green spot on Earth. However, man's desire to exploit the incredible ground and underground natural resources is provoking destruction as deforestation pathways widen, rivers fall short on water and climate changes. Research undertaken in Brazil was aimed at the collection of local food, knowledge and practises, a quest intended to recover ancestral ecological experiences on a virtual Noah's Ark before the announced death of this Garden of Eden. This paper contrasts traditional agro-pastoral and extractive practises gathered among Caboclos along the Amazon River banks and floodplains with modern and capital-intensive agribusinesses settled alongside the BR-163 motorway. This contribution argues that ancestral environmentally friendly farming practises should be protected, both because they preserve the remainder of the woodland and its immense biogenetic richness and the Amazon Basin Rivers and their bounteous potential for life. Successful and long sustained cultivation on fertile riverbank alluvial soils, rebuilt by floods year after year, possesses a favourable demonstrative effect, valuable for other tropical sites, constituting a good array of best practises towards sustainable development. © 2009 WIT Press.