Illegal logging is dramatically wiping the world’s largest tropical rain forest away. So, in its latest effort to crack down on it, Brazil will offer free satellite Internet connections to the indigenous tribes of the Amazon.
Brazil has struggled throughout in efforts to protect its vast Amazon rain forest from illegal miners, loggers and ranchers, even being a relatively poor country – of the size of the continental United States.
After signing an accord putting the Internet plan in place, Environment Minister Marina Silva said,
It’s a way to open communications between indigenous communities, former slave villages, coconut crackers, river fishermen and the rest of society.
These communities are the true protectors of their areas.
This wireless Internet plan’s key aim is land protection. It will definitely bring Internet to 150 small Amazon communities and other remote areas, which includes Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands and its arid Northeast.
It is good for many villages living in areas cut off from outsiders as they lack basic infrastructure like roads. While the Brazilian government will provide the Internet access, the state and local governments need to come up with a way to help provide computers to enable the dwellers there to use the Internet.
Benhi Piyanko, a member of an Ashaninka indigenous village thrived by some 500 people in the Amazon state of Acre, said, Internet helped us bring in the police (when we had illegal logging in our area). We managed to spread the message widely. We even reached the president.