Brazilian here. I'm 100% for combating and arresting illegal miners, loggers and farmers, but I also know how big the rainforest is, how long the borders are, and how little personnel there is to do the work. Most people don't have a sense of how vast that region is: the brazilian part of the Amazon rainforest is about half the area of the U.S. Now look up how many soldiers and federal police officers are working there. It's daunting, feels like the drug war, only fifty times worse, because there's no solution anywhere close to something like legalization.
At least with mining and logging it leaves evidence in aerial imagery, unlike a clandestine lab. Maybe one day the amazon can be automatically patrolled by drones that mark targets for these smaller squads.
> patrolled by drones that mark targets for these smaller squads.
Surely it could be scaled better with satellite imagery? Assuming it can be updated "reasonably frequently". I imagine drones would run into maintenance problems, especially in such "remote" regions.
Also a brazilian. I don't really care about it. I'd rather they used that vast amount of land for something that's more economically relevant. If you told me I could push a button to get state of the art semiconductor factories but the side effect was the destruction of the amazon... I wouldn't even think twice.
And also ensure they can continue their journey to having 1TB large game assets, as suddenly hundreds of 3D modellers need to create thousands of new foliage models each.
Creating realistic looking trees is one area that has now been almost entirely automated with tooling - there are some absolutely incredible tools for generating whatever kind of tree you want in any number of permutations. So really this would be more like 2-3 people just in charge of verifying the output and making sure it's stylistically consistent.
As someone who went through grade-school in the 90s, with all of our "Save the Rainforest" campaigns, all I can think is: a fat lot of good that "awareness" did...
But how would we know though right? I mean without having an A/B comparison.
Sure it didn't stop the destruction, but I don't think that was ever in the cards. But it might have helped by some amount even if small. 1%? 2%? 6%?
If it reduced destruction by 2%, would that have made the campaign worth it?
I think there's a chance it did do some good in that it was in enough awareness to end up somewhere on a foreign policy agenda higher than it might have otherwise been, and thus policies might have been negotiated in trade agreements, treaties, company due diligence source tracing, etc.
In my grade school we were asked to donate money to buy part of the rainforest in order to stop it from being cut down.
I thought this was a brilliant idea, and it wasn't until the first time I visited Brazil (which is, somehow, 20 years ago now) that I learned that it wasn't really helping at all. In part, it's not that easy to "buy part of the rainforest". But more importantly (as the article describes), small-scale miners and loggers don't usually respect those property claims (or designations of areas as protected parkland).
The last few Call of Duty games has featured Mexico and involves raining fire down on forested environments with an AC-130 gunship. So maybe not the best example of environmental protection.
The French do the same against illegal gold miners in French Guiana Amazon. They have approximately 1,000 soldiers compared to up to 9,000 illegal prospectors. I can't imagine how a single unit will be capable to curb anything when you look at the size of Brazil's Amazon.
Wireless sensors, synthetic aperatire radar, aerial surveillance all are things that exist. These things have existed since Vietnam and are significantly better now than they were then. The record for Lorawan sensor mad range was ~1,300 km / 830ish miles. You could partition the rainforest into grids and use these sorts of sensors if you wanted to be excessively thorough. Not easy or cheap, but very doable with today’s technology and a bit of customization.
Note: my grandfather invented some of the rf sensor technology designed to be airdropped by the US military over the forests of Vietnam for this exact thing. It worked well for what it was designed for.
The larger prospectors will be tied to hard to move assets (cyanide leach pools, crushers, screens) in semi cleared areas near rivers. The unit will have helicopeters and possible access to sat imagery.
The plan would be to gather intel, map, and move through, one group at a time with enough soldiers (50 to 100) to deal with smaller unmiliterised enclaves.
Probably true - but having a great many soldiers in an area where there are an extremely isolated people such as the "uncontacted" Yanomami also poses its own risks. If they're focusing on the most sensitive areas with highly trained personnel and making use of the impressive knowledge and expertise in Brazil's Indian affairs department, FUNAI, much could be achieved. The situation in French Guiana is quite different, with perhaps only small numbers of Wayãpi living in isolation.
Brazil is rolling back the free-for-all that was established under Bolsonaro, but if they're handling it delicately, that's likely good news.
They should have a lot more troops involved, for sure, but GEF can be very efficient by leveraging surveillance tech.
Brazil deployed SIVAM [1] about 20 years ago. At the time it was a state-of-the-art radar surveillance system. Not sure how they kept up with tech advances, but it still gives a significant edge to the GEF unit.
It seems like the largest cause of deforestation of the rainforest is farming(1). Prevention of illegal destruction is probably a good idea, but if this is to replace it by its legal counterpart...
These communities are insular and lawless, not to mention hours away from any significantly sized town. They know who belongs there and who doesn't.
The spy would have to be internal people who are turned, which is not easy either because these folks are not educated, and would have trouble hiding their new income or acting within the confines of a information providing program.
Not impossible, but unfortunately, our government doesn't have the resources.
Regarding drones, the area is impossibly large. If we had enough cash, live satellite monitoring and deployed army stations for every zone would be the ideal solution.
"live satellite monitoring" are you talking about launching a geosynchronous spy-satellite as well as the analysis, communications and command structure to make use of the satellite information? Along with stationing thousands of troops deep in the jungle with no existing supporting infrastructure? And that being cheaper than deploying some loitering and FPS suicide drones? You could probably hike out with a "solar birdhouse" of FPS drones, attach it to a tree and deploy an FPS drone as needed while running 24/7 zones of loitering drone surveillance for very cheap.
The real issue would be distinguishing between "illegal and prohibited" and "illegal but allowed" and "not illegal" activities in these communities since they rely so deeply on their environments for everything.
And you think there's phone signal on the middle of the jungle? Sometimes hundreds of miles from the nearest asphalt road?
Check google maps and see how you'd get to and from here (notice, getting up here would be the "easy" part of the journey - there's even "street view" https://maps.app.goo.gl/2XEL3J3aJWoLEGY58 )
>It can’t be hard to get a labourer on site with a cellphone or even just a tracker no?
And then do what with it? I live in an EU country where illegal timber exploitation is rife, and there's not much a lone person with a drone can do.
A lot of these areas are relatively remote and the underfunded police and rangers are usually quite far away and slow to show up, even when they're not paid by the timber mafia to look the other way. And by the time authorities do show up, the mobsters have been most likely tipped off and cleared the area.
And if you're an average joe trying to directly interfere you're putting your life in danger since you're standing in the way of a multi million euro industry and there's camera footage of volunteer forest watchers being assaulted by timer mobsters on quad bikes wearing balaklavas.
If this is happening in the EU I can't imagine what it's like in other places.
It may not be quite that simple. Moving an army is no small feat, the logistics required is complicated and could be miserable to try to manage in the Amazon.
If they did manage to get a large enough military force in to catch most of the illegal miners, how much damage would be done to the Amazon just by the army getting in there?
Readit News
Surely it could be scaled better with satellite imagery? Assuming it can be updated "reasonably frequently". I imagine drones would run into maintenance problems, especially in such "remote" regions.
Creating realistic looking trees is one area that has now been almost entirely automated with tooling - there are some absolutely incredible tools for generating whatever kind of tree you want in any number of permutations. So really this would be more like 2-3 people just in charge of verifying the output and making sure it's stylistically consistent.
Sure it didn't stop the destruction, but I don't think that was ever in the cards. But it might have helped by some amount even if small. 1%? 2%? 6%?
If it reduced destruction by 2%, would that have made the campaign worth it?
I think there's a chance it did do some good in that it was in enough awareness to end up somewhere on a foreign policy agenda higher than it might have otherwise been, and thus policies might have been negotiated in trade agreements, treaties, company due diligence source tracing, etc.
I thought this was a brilliant idea, and it wasn't until the first time I visited Brazil (which is, somehow, 20 years ago now) that I learned that it wasn't really helping at all. In part, it's not that easy to "buy part of the rainforest". But more importantly (as the article describes), small-scale miners and loggers don't usually respect those property claims (or designations of areas as protected parkland).
Note: my grandfather invented some of the rf sensor technology designed to be airdropped by the US military over the forests of Vietnam for this exact thing. It worked well for what it was designed for.
Wait until you find out about budgets, especially when allocating for things that big chunks of the population aren't even supportive of.
The plan would be to gather intel, map, and move through, one group at a time with enough soldiers (50 to 100) to deal with smaller unmiliterised enclaves.
Brazil is rolling back the free-for-all that was established under Bolsonaro, but if they're handling it delicately, that's likely good news.
Brazil deployed SIVAM [1] about 20 years ago. At the time it was a state-of-the-art radar surveillance system. Not sure how they kept up with tech advances, but it still gives a significant edge to the GEF unit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Surveillance_System
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_...
The spy would have to be internal people who are turned, which is not easy either because these folks are not educated, and would have trouble hiding their new income or acting within the confines of a information providing program.
Not impossible, but unfortunately, our government doesn't have the resources.
Regarding drones, the area is impossibly large. If we had enough cash, live satellite monitoring and deployed army stations for every zone would be the ideal solution.
The real issue would be distinguishing between "illegal and prohibited" and "illegal but allowed" and "not illegal" activities in these communities since they rely so deeply on their environments for everything.
Check google maps and see how you'd get to and from here (notice, getting up here would be the "easy" part of the journey - there's even "street view" https://maps.app.goo.gl/2XEL3J3aJWoLEGY58 )
And then do what with it? I live in an EU country where illegal timber exploitation is rife, and there's not much a lone person with a drone can do.
A lot of these areas are relatively remote and the underfunded police and rangers are usually quite far away and slow to show up, even when they're not paid by the timber mafia to look the other way. And by the time authorities do show up, the mobsters have been most likely tipped off and cleared the area.
And if you're an average joe trying to directly interfere you're putting your life in danger since you're standing in the way of a multi million euro industry and there's camera footage of volunteer forest watchers being assaulted by timer mobsters on quad bikes wearing balaklavas.
If this is happening in the EU I can't imagine what it's like in other places.
Dead Comment
What the hell, can't they be tracked down reversely by asking Starlink itself?
If they did manage to get a large enough military force in to catch most of the illegal miners, how much damage would be done to the Amazon just by the army getting in there?