The home of the Surui tribe in the western Brazilian state of Rondônia was once the centre of an enormous lush rainforest. Today, the 600,000-acre reserve is a small green island standing alone amidst a barren wasteland. In time, if nothing is done to prevent it, the Surui tribe, and it's culture will pass into memory. Chief Almir, of the Surui people, has formed a novel partnership with Google to help prevent this from happening.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that roughly 30% of the world's tropical forests are found in Brazil. These forests absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide and supply the Earth with 20% of the oxygen needed for life to survive. In order to exploit undeveloped regions, the Brazilian government constructed the Cuiaba-Port Velho highway through the province of Rondônia. Throughout the 1970's the area remained largely pristine. However, by 1989, the familiar fishbone pattern of deforestation had appeared and by 2001 had expanded dramatically.
In early 2007 Chief Almir travelled to meet the Google Earth team in Mountain View California. "It's time to put down the bow and arrow, and pick up the laptop," he told them. His suggestion was that Google should cooperate with the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) to annotate Google Earth with information about the Surui tribe's culture as well as the locations of illegal mining and logging operations. Rebecca Moore, who manages the Google Earth Outreach initiative, said "We're excited to help ... when completed, we hope that it will have a positive impact ...."
Well, the project is now well under way. Surui volunteers track through the rainforest daily, using GPS to catalogue sacred and cultural sites as well as locations where they've discovered illegal mining and logging. Other Surui visually scan high resolution satellite images of their land, provided specifically for the project on Google Earth, for signs of invasion by loggers and miners.
Chief Almir hopes that the Google Earth Amazon project will help to raise global awareness about the man-made disaster befalling the rainforests. However, the project also has a more urgent purpose for his tribe. Using Google Earth, his people can more easily spot effects of illegal activity on their land, such as toxic mercury flowing from mines into pristine rivers, virgin forest being slashed and burned by illegal farming, and deforestation from prohibited logging. The forests and waters of this area are crucial for the survival of the Surui tribe.
What's left of the Amazonian forests still play a crucial role in managing the Earth's climate by absorbing CO2 and releasing oxygen. A report issued last year by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warned that "60% of the region's forests could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030, as a result of climate change and deforestation ..." The report also warned that this in turn would release between 55.5bn-96.9bn tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the Amazon's forests and speed up global warming. So we're seeing global warming actively destroying one of nature's mechanisms for controlling climate. Is it already too late to stop this process? Or has the destruction of the Amazon rainforest become not only a man-made phenomenon, but a self sustaining mechanism?
Research published in July 2006 by the journal Science argues that global warming contributes to forest fires and indicates that the fires themselves could in turn feed global warming. As wildfires rage in California and Greece are we seeing a glimpse of what's in store for the Amazon? Perhaps the free exchange of information that is the cornerstone of the Internet can help stop that happening, for all our sakes.
Wow, I knew Google had some amount of power and influence, but this just takes the pickle! All I can say is thank God they are putting the technology to good use. This is slightly of topic, but can we all be sure that Google's intentions are pure? I don't want a second Microsoft coming out of nowhere. Monopolies suck!
All that said, this side of Google Earth is useful, and will hopefully have a great impact for the Surui people. Yes they have a lot of land, but it is theirs and nobody else has the right to take from it.
Besides, taking from their land in the form of logging is only having a detrimental effect on the rest of the planet with CO2 emissions. So it seems to be you'd want to be pretty stupid to continue logging.
I wonder if we could start a campaign to get everybody to go out and plant a single tree each (or per home, whatever) and see what type of an effect this could have around the World. An other couple of billion trees must do some good? Once we don't cut them done again, that just releases all the CO2 they have absorbed.
Great article John, keep them coming.
Written in August