Reforesting Rainforests to Save Indigenous People

Reforesting Rainforests to Save Indigenous People Correspondent: On the Paraguayan side of this Atlantic rainforest triangle the local mayor is backing conservation. Gregoria Areco (Mayor of Presidente Franco, Paraguay): We are now in the spot and we intend to reconvert into a national park. Into a native forest with our reforestation plan its an area 4,000 hectares in the zone of national park which surround the Iguazu falls. We also want to make our own contributions to this. Why? Because we still have about 150 indigenous families living here and they need their forests back. We need for these people. Our exact plan is that shall be declared a protected area but the Paraguay government there is a project at parliament at the moment which we declare all this a protected area and these soy fields would disappear. Sure they are productive but you can’t ignore the ecological aspect. Correspondent: When forests are cut down the indigenous people’s will lose everything. Their source of food, their culture and their way of life, these people have always cultivated their jungle vegetable plots organically without chemical fertilizers and pesticides their understanding of ecology is part of their spiritual vision of the cosmos. These Guarani children are beginning to learn the white man’s culture at the brand new school. Can’t relearn from the indigenous people how to preserve what’s left of the forest, using the forest resources without destroying them. Edgar Duarte (Paraguayan NGO ALTER VIDA): We’re looking down here at a typical rive rine forest which in the case of the river Parana and its tributaries. There’s fundamental for the preservation of the rivers. These rivers are characteristically short turbulent and very deep so the survival of these rivers closely linked to the forest. When these are cut down when they’re felled then the rivers become silted up. Eroded soils fold into them, the river bed rises and eventually the rivers disappear. Something which has already happened to a lovely rivers here in the eastern half of the country. Apolonio De Sousa (Iguazu National Park-Brazillian Environmental Institute IBAMA): The purity of the water depends a great deal on tree cover it’s the forest which protects the rivers from pollution by toxication which affect them. Large scale agriculture and exploitation Brazil has a very damaging effect on rivers adequate soil conservation techniques are hardly ever used in agricultural areas so the agro chemicals run off into rivers. Together with eroded soil. This causes to release the silt up and is also causing a lot of the flooding we’re getting these days.