A brief introduction to...
The Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon River Basin is home to the largest rainforest on Earth. The basin - roughly the size of the 48 contiguous United States - covers some 40 percent of the South American continent and includes parts of nine South American countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam and French Guiana.
Reflecting environmental conditions as well as past human influence, the Amazon is made up of a mosaic of ecosystems and vegetation types including rainforests, seasonal forests, deciduous forests, flooded forests and savannahs. The Amazon is home to more species of plants and animals than any other terrestrial ecosystem on the planet; perhaps 30 percent of the world's species are found here. Besides their intrinsic value as living organisms, these species have a great potential value to humans in the form of medicine, food and other products.
The basin is drained by the Amazon River, the world's largest river in terms of discharge, and the second longest river in the world after the Nile. The total area of the Amazon River Basin is about 6,9 million square kilometres / 2,7 million square miles, whereby 800 000 square kilometres / 309 000 square miles are found in Peru.
The Amazon has a long history of human settlement, but in recent decades the pace of change has accelerated due to an increase in human population, the introduction of mechanized agriculture and integration of the Amazon Region into the global economy. Vast quantities of commodities are unsustainably produced and harvested in the Amazon; cattle beef and leather, timber, soya, gold, oil and gas, palm oil and minerals to name a few, are exported today to China, Europe, the U.S. and other countries. This shift has had substantial impacts on the Amazon. The transition from a remote backwater to a cog in the global economy has resulted in large-scale deforestation and forest degradation in the Amazon. More than 1,4 million hectares of forest have been cleared since the 1970s. An even larger area has been affected by clear cut logging and forest fires.
Deforestation in the Amazon is also having a major negative effect on the overall global climate change. As forests are disappearing, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere causing global temperatures to rise, which leads to drought and increases the susceptibility of the rainforest to fire releasing even more carbon dioxide in an ever increasing malicious circle. The 390 billion trees across the Amazon rainforest still standing stock massive amounts of carbon in their leaves, branches and trunks. A 2017 study published in Global Change Biology estimated the forest stores some 86 billion tons of carbon or more than a third of all carbon stored by tropical forests world-wide.
The Amazon has a long history of human settlement. Contrary to popular belief, sizable and sedentary societies of great complexity existed in the Amazon Rainforest long before Pizarro and his conquistadores first came to Peru in the early 16th century. Within two hundred years the Spanish had reduced the Amerindian population in the large Inca Empire by more than 90 percent, through introduced diseases and organized incredibly cruel bondage. Deadly slavery, which continued even after the Peruvian Independence in 1821, with the rubber boom at the end of the 19th century, when tens of thousands of Amazonian natives died while harvesting and carrying wild rubber under appalling conditions in the Amazon jungle for European and local rubber barons.
The ancient indigenous societies produced pottery, cleared sections of rainforest for agriculture and managed forests to optimize the distribution of useful plant and animal species. Unlike those using current cultivation techniques, the Amazonian Amerindians were attuned to the ecological realities of their environment from five millennia of experimentation and they understood how to sustainably manage the rainforest to suit their needs.
Here it could be interesting to google the formation of the unique “Terra Preta” soil. Today virtually no forest dwelling Amazon tribes live in their fully traditional ways, although there are still several dozen groups living in voluntary isolation. The "Uncontacted Tribes", as they are popularly known, mostly live in Brazil and Peru.
While indigenous populations have at times been seen as being at odds with conservation, today policymakers realize the importance of incorporating indigenous people in conservation efforts. In fact there is evidence in parts of the Amazon that indigenous territories have lower deforestation rates and incidence of encroachment than conventional protected areas. Indigenous Amerindian tribes are presently at the forefront of conservation efforts, even embracing technology and new policy mechanisms to safeguard their forests and traditions.
No one knows exactly how many species live in the world's tropical rainforests; estimates range from 3 to 50 million species. Rainforests are the undisputed champions of biodiversity among the world's ecosystems, containing far higher numbers of species on a per-area basis relative to sub-tropical, temperate and boreal ecosystems. The Amazon Rainforest e.g. may have more than 480 tree species in a single hectare (2,5 acres).
Plants have broader uses than as just food and a genetic reservoir. Increasingly, rainforest plants and to a lesser extent rainforest animals, are the source of compounds useful for medicinal purposes. The rainforest has been called the ultimate chemical laboratory with each rainforest species experimenting with various chemical defenses to ensure survival in the harsh world of natural selection. They have been synthesizing these compounds for millions of years to protect against predators, infection, pests and disease. This makes rainforest species an excellent reservoir of medicines and chemical templates with which researchers can create new drugs and consumed in its 100 percent natural form.
Indigenous uses of plants can also offer hints of potentially useful plants. For thousands of years, indigenous groups have extensively used rainforest plants for their health needs. They have experimented with a wide range of plants. Amazonian forest dwellers used at least 1,300 species for medicinal purposes.
As an example of the health promoting qualities of Amazon Superfoods it can be mentioned that 70 percent of the plants, identified as having anti-cancer characteristics by the National Cancer Institute in the United States, are found in tropical rainforests and 25 percent of the drugs used by Western medicine are derived from rainforest plants. And yet, despite all their promise, fewer than five percent of tropical forest plant species have been examined for their chemical compounds and medicinal value. This leaves great potential for even more discovery, but also the potential for great loss as rainforests are felled around the globe and unstudied species are lost to extinction.
Sustainable harvesting practices and marketing of non-wood forest products (NWFP), such as medicinal plants/superfoods, nuts, honey, fruits, oils, mushrooms, fibers, resins, pods, fodder, spices, natural sweeteners, seeds, fragrances etc., are substantially contributing to the protection of the rainforest from deforestation while at the same time improving the well-being and livelihoods of indigenous populations living in the tropical regions of the world.
A comprehensive study by Peters, Gentry & Mendelsohn (IIAP-1989), carried out in the Allpahuayo-Mishana National Reserve outside Iquitos, in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, concluded that local communities, living within the reserve borders, can generate an average of 6,820 dollars per hectare by sustainably harvesting and marketing the abundant and diverse non-wood products found within their community premises – instead of the common practice to slash and burn the rainforest cover to cultivate unsustainable monocrops of much less value that depletes soil fertility and lead to irrevocable deforestation; thereby destroying their own habitats for all generations to come. It is a dead-end instead of the win-win situation of combining harvesting of profitable non-wood natural products while at the same time protecting the forest cover, which is essential for the ultimate survival of all life forms on Earth.
Hans Järlind, co-owner of the Amazon Superfoods & Consultancy Company, spent a few years working for the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute (IIAP) in the above mentioned reserve to establish management plans, in collaborations with the indigenous communities, for sustainable harvesting of their many forest and non-wood forest products.
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Now, 15 years later the vision is to again cooperate with the same communities, in a benefit-sharing program, whereby the communities cultivate and process the 100 percent natural & organic Superfood plant products while the company assists in providing the production implements and machinery, marketing of the products on international markets and participates in the socio-economic development of the communities regarding e.g. health and education. By doing this both parties cooperate to help save and protect the rainforest in the communities´ own ancient jungle environment. For the time being the company buys the 100 percent natural & organic medicinal plant products from other community cooperatives, in the Iquitos surroundings, that are already established and well-functioning.
The Amazon Pink River Dolphin is facing extinction through destruction of river habitats and wanton killing although it is considered a mythic creature in many indigenous tribes.
