McVictory for NGO's

“By 2006, an estimated 17 percent of Brazil's original Amazon rainforest cover had been destroyed, an area larger than France” ⁶

Due to sudden increase in the practice of agriculture in Brazil, the Amazon rainforest has been decreasing drastically in the past 40 years. In the website of the Earth Observatory of NASA it is possible to examine the increase of deforestation in Amazon since 2000 and 2009¹. This issue has been highlighted for many years but since Brazil is a large-scale exporter of agricultural products it has been ignored. However, in the past decade the interest in climate change grew among Brazilian NGO’s and they established a plan to fight this environmental issue².

NGOs had to establish a strategy to end multinational corporations’ activities in Amazon which were negative for environment and raise awareness of the situation and consequently obtain a governmental response. In the beginning of the millennium many Brazilian NGOs established a network to influence climate change policies. The creation of the Climate Observatory alerted the national and international community for the dreadful future of Amazon. Consequently, the government increased its efforts in decreasing deforestation. In addition, the international community established a fund to aid the Amazon rainforest, more specifically in 2008 Norway pledged $1 billion to a Amazon’s protection fund³.

Plus, in orders to fight the problem is necessary to find its root. Therefore, it was necessary to indicate the people responsible for the deforestation and also the multinational corporations that are financing them. For instance, in 2006 Greenpeace linked McDonalds to illegal deforestation⁴. Thus, the bad marketing caused by these allegations raised many protests by activists who dressed as chickens. Consequently, McDonalds stopped selling chicken fed on soy grown in newly deforested areas of the Amazon rainforest, and the big food retailer started to cooperate with Greenpeace to protect Amazon⁵.

Despite of the struggle to alert people for the environmental problem occurring in the Amazon, now NGOs are finally noticing the improvements made in the last decade. It was revealed “6,450 sq km of (2,490 sq miles) of rainforest were cleared between August 2009 and July 2010, a drop of 14% compared with the previous 12 months”⁷.Consequently, Brazilian NGOs recently announced prospects of completely abolishing deforestation of the Amazon.

Concluding, NGOs have a significant role in environmental diplomacy. Their influence is of greater importance to alert government which are usually lobbied by corporations. In this way, they are the main agents who can initiate action by the governments.

Sources:

1

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/deforestation.php

2

http://www.cicero.uio.no/fulltext/index_e.aspx?id=1953

3 http://www.norway.org/ARCHIVE/policy/environment/regnskogen_i_brasil_en/

4

http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0406-greenpeace.html

5

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/news/mcvictory/

6

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007413.html

7

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11888875