Brazil will increase military presence in the Amazon to protect natural resources
Brazil will boost its military presence in the Amazon region to protect its huge natural resources from any external threat, Defence Minister Celso Amorim told the Senate on Thursday.
“The commitment to the defence of the Amazon is fundamental. Navy, Air Force, all services will boost their presence in the Amazon in the next few years,” he said without giving further details.
Amorim said Brazil did not feel threatened by any neighbouring country but added: “We cannot rule out that some power from outside the region” may covet the natural resources of the Amazon, the planet's largest rainforest and its main source of fresh water.
”We are working on a plan to deploy (security) forces and the Amazon plays a very important role. It's the most vulnerable part of our country,“ Amorim said.
”We have a wealth of resources which can make us the target of adventures,“ he added.
Amorim said the country's strategic planners were planning to boost ”transparent cooperation“ with other Amazon countries, referring to plans to set up a security commission with Peru and Colombia.
”We do not feel threatened by any South American countries and we do not want anyone to feel threatened by us. We always want full transparency to avoid suspicions,” the minister said.
Brazil, Latin America's largest country and the world's sixth largest economy, shares the sprawling Amazon with Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.
Brasilia is also boosting its naval power in the South Atlantic with a ambitious submarine program to protect its huge deep-water oil reserves and project its growing influence.
Under the National Defense Strategy unveiled in 2008, the navy was tasked with developing a blue-water force to protect Brazil's huge sub-salt oil reserves, the Amazon river basin and its 7,491 km coastline.
The sub-salt oil fields, located off the country's southeast Atlantic coast beneath kilometres of ocean, bedrock and hot sat-beds, could contain more than 100 billion barrels of high-quality recoverable oil, according to official estimates.
The centrepiece of the naval build-up is the ProSub program under which France is to supply four Scorpone-class diesel-electric submarines and help develop the non-nuclear components of Brazil's first nuclear-powered fast attack submarine.
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26 comments Feed
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Following the British turnips “Self-Determination” logic used so frequently in these pages to justify the squatting of the Malvinas Islands………….:
There would be no reason why the 11,000 Mennonites of Brazil couldn’t claim “Self-Determination” over half of the Amazonas Basin and make a nice and cozy Defense and Commerce agreement with Germany…………
Or what about……:
The 1,500,000 nipo-brasileiro Japanese claiming “Self-Determination” for a nice chunk of the São Paulo state and ”Freely Associating” with Japan?
Nah, they are too Brazilian and that 1,500.000 of nipo-brasileiros is a number of nipo-paulistanos in the city of Sao Paulo ( area Liberdade ). Imagine how many more their are only in the state of Sao Paulo.
“There would be no reason why the 11,000 Mennonites of Brazil couldn’t claim “Self-Determination” over half of the Amazonas Basin and make a nice and cozy Defense and Commerce agreement with Germany…………”
11.000? You would shocked how many there are in the states of Amazonas, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul.
Anyway Think, most ugly brits are brain dead and prefer pay attention to what's happening outside that dump called the UK (which is bankrupt..keep printing boys, keep spending reckless, keep bailing out the broken banks, more austerity measures and keep believing that there is no inflation) by watching BBC and Sky news. You can't blame them for not knowing a continent they never visited and never will visit.
Not like so many others in here, Mr. Fido Dido.......
None mentioned; none forgotten....
Japanese Brasilians are 1.593.012........!
Whats the matter?
Has it finally dawned on you that Argentina is sinking fast & you'll never get your grubby, thieving hands on the Falklands? lol.
As for you, Fido, ungrateful Dutchie,
l shall regard your ridiculous remarks with the utter contempt that they so thoroughly deserve.
It deals with Captain Pantoja's astonishing efficiency campaign to provide prostitution services for quelling the sexual desires of the Peruvian army soldiers stationed in what is portrayed as an incredibly aphrodisiacal Amazon jungle.
It worked so well for the Peruvians in Amazonia (initially ;-)
..... Brasilian Defence Minister Celso Amorim might adopt the same approach to quell the excesses, both internal and external, in Brasilian Amazonia.
A great read - enjoy!
Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, and French Guiana -
where porous borders make for an undefensible nation, and drugs and contraband move without control.
Equally, the inability of Federal Brasil to control the excesses of the Brasilian 'logging industry' and the ranching/agro-industry enterprises that are hacking away thousands of square miles of carbon-sink rainforest, presents a real risk of world opprobrium in these days of carbon-economies.
Perhaps Amorim is also afraid that, if the Brasilian government can't control its own people's excesses, then the likes of the USA will attempt to do it for them - all in the better interest of the whole world's survival.
I would say to Brazil, build nukes and build rockets and get some serious intelligence to sneak in suitcase nukes. If the USA or Europe land even one boot in your amazon, I'd say vaporize them. I've had enough of USA/European hypocrisy on the environment, they live in continents completely ravaged by depredation, deforestation, and pollution.
Thank you for that comment.
You saved me a lot of typing
10 felicitado
You and your ignorant friends should know that the most dangerous item is not CO2.....for the World's nature.
.... expecting Think, of course,
but never expected Tobi #10.
Tobi's first part is uncontroversial, it's called population increase, food production, urbanisation, industrialisation (Consensus: “Could do better”)
but his rider paragraph reminds me of a certain British poster...
It's a good job people can't do these things with the just power of thought; blog posters would have devastated the world many times over in the first few minutes of postings on virtually any topic!
Then why all the moaning about the Amazon? The worst that happens is a cut in oxygen production for the atmosphere. Not too bad.
@13
So why is it so controversial (population increase, food production, urbanization, industrialization), when it is India, Russia, China, Brazil, Mexico and Africa that are doing it?
As we know the trees produce oxygen during daytime ,produce Co2 during nighttime.
I wish Brazil and United States could work together like they did on WWII and Haiti but like I said Brazil wouldn't risk its sovereignty.
It's good to see that there is a plan of cooperation with Peru and Colombia, help is always welcome.
there is SO much to say about your posting at #10,
but this is not the site or the topic.
[You will find my postings on climate change sites, especially BBC environment archive over the last five years.]
Methane sourcing- clathrates and livestock;
CO2 fluxes - 'natural' and anthropogenic;
O2:CO2 fluxes - rainforest, urban, etc.;
carbon sinks and turnover;
acid rain sources and deposition geographies,
..... and all of these and more related to
population increase,
food production,
de/afforestations,
urbanisation,
industrialisation,
and national/supranational economics, politics, legislations, policies and practices.
... Hard to know where to start! ... Don't think I'll go there.
Interesting thought in that article, independent Amazon country with a majority Indian population.
Might not be the Brazilians fighting the Americans in the Jungle, but the Brazilians fighting the Indians in their jungle, supplied by the US.
@10 tobias
When they began direct measurements of CO2 in the Atmosphere in the early seventies, the level was 317ppm. Currently it is shooting through 400ppm.
If this continues there will be serious consequences for everybody.
If the developing world continues to develop using the Victorian technology the west did, this will continue.
You are right about the environmental damage as a result of industrialisation in the west, however some serious efforts are now being made to correct this, where possible.
It is not compulsory for developing countries to make all the same mistakes the west did, all over again. They have the opportunity to do things differently, a better way for them and their environments.
Throwing Nukes about is not going to help anybodies environment, just ask the Japanese. A Conqueror moment there.
Both articles are - as you well know - spoofs via 'John Deal' at www.brazilbrazil.com
I don't think your comments add much to the sum total of human knowledge and attitudes ..... quite the reverse, in fact.
l believe the Congo in Africa is one of the “lungs of the world” too.
Could that be why theres little western developement there?
The jungle is reclaiming the roads according to one book l read.
The west wants to keep the Congo as undeveloped as possible & tough for the population?
Politics is a dirty business.
re. #21, I am a bit 'Ides of March' today ..... “Doom, Doom” (to quote the maniacal Scotsman):
The heart of darkness is not protected for Machiavellian self-serving 'Western' reasons,
and the politics and power-dynamics of the The Democratic Republic of the Congo militate against this.
Population increases and the inheritance problems of land ownership will 'do for ' the DRC just as it has for Ruanda, etc.
Size, isolation and the relative starting populations means it will just take a little longer in the DRC.
China will build the DRC roads, railways and ports for raw materials; the country will be opened up, and all the rest will follow within - say - 100 years.... the blink of an ecological eye, but unbelievably long for presidents and politicians.
With the loss of the rainforest, the soil fertility will be low, erosions high, agriculture will decline and, with raw materials stripped out - there will be no money to buy food on the world markets .... population drops through starvations and health problems;
blighted low-productive landscapes, like Haiti.
A century hence, the inhabitants will look back on today as the 'good times'.
Sad.
Brazil's “gringo” problem: its borders:
www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/13/us-brazil-borders-idUSBRE83C0KB20120413
Essential reading for most people interested in trying to make sense of border issues in South America.
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