TAE 1 – ACTIVIDAD 3

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que se explica a continuación:

Encargo de traducción: la organización no gubernamental, Greenpeace, solicita

la traducción del texto adjunto, cuya finalidad es concientizar e informar sobre las
prácticas agrícolas y su explotación del medio ambiente. La traducción debe
ajustarse a las convenciones actuales de gramática al español y mantener el registro
del texto fuente.

Fires in the Amazon:

What’s Agriculture Got to Do with It?
The latest climate crisis has turned the collective environmentalist gaze
toward the Amazon, where thousands of fires continue to burn, blackening
the skies in Sao Paulo a thousand miles away. In this case, climate change is
not the culprit—most of the fires have been set intentionally to clear land for
agriculture—but by releasing the large amounts of carbon stored in the
rainforest, the fires are a climate crisis of a different sort.

Much fuss has been made about climate activists exaggerating the scope of
the fires (a number of celebrities have shared horrific photos that it turns out
were taken in other countries), and it is true that the prevalence of this year’s
fires is only slightly above average. But the outcry stems more from the fact
that Brazil’s newly elected far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro, has pledged to
scale back environmental regulations in an effort to open more of the
Amazon to development. And there is some evidence that locals have taken
that as a sign that they can set illegal fires this year without fear of
retribution.

In a sense, the fires have simply made a momentary media spectacle out of
the longstanding issue of deforestation—whether by fire or chainsaw—and
that has everything to do with agriculture. More specifically, it has to do with
the global appetite for beef.
 TAE 1 – ACTIVIDAD 3

What Do People Grow in the Amazon?

While there are some sustainable agricultural endeavors in the Amazon, such
as tapping rubber trees and harvesting native foods (such as acai, hearts of
palm and brazil nuts), cattle ranching and soybean production (largely
grown to feed cattle) are by far the biggest forms of agricultural land use.

How Does this Contribute to Fires and Deforestation?

Soy fields and cow pastures require the removal of trees, of course, and fire is
often the easiest method. Farmers also use fire to keep trees and shrubs from
returning to their fields. But experts point out that the bigger issue is that
this form of agriculture is incompatible with the Amazonian environment.
The soil is thin and quickly depleted by farming and grazing practices
imported from temperate climes. Yields quickly diminish after a few years,
leading poor farmers to clear more land simply to survive.

Who Are the Grileiros?

Grileiro, roughly translated, means “land grabber” in Portuguese. These are

folks who go into virgin forest and clear it for the purposes of claiming
ownership — if you can show that you’ve been using the land, it’s possible to
gain ownership through a form of squatter’s rights — often selling the land to
farmers once they have done so. This would never fly in more developed
countries, but because the Amazon is such a vast and largely unpoliced
frontier, and because the land registry is notoriously
corrupt, grilagem (“land grabbing”) is a common and profitable form of
organized crime.

What Can You Do?

Buy local beef. And pressure the international agribusiness community to

create more transparent supply chains to ensure their beef products are not
sourced in a way that contributes to deforestation.