Market forces, population pressure and infrastructure advances are continuing to pry open the Amazon rainforest.
As the pressures afflicting the region grow in intensity, it is becoming increasingly clear that the price to be paid is not only loss of biodiversity and habitat – but also of a decreasing life quality for people.
Among the threats behind environmental destruction and degradation in the Amazon are the lack of policy frameworks to support sustainable development and natural resource protection, political instability, the inability of some institutional and governmental entities to establish and enforce legislation for nature conservation, and poverty and inequality.