sed, prohibiting the landowners from logging more than 50% of their land. Deforestation went down in the Brazilian Amazon from 29,000 square kilometers in 1995 to 18,100 square kilometers in 1996. Partially responsible for the decrease was the creation of the program for prevention and control of the forest fires in last July with $25.9 million from the World Bank and the Brazilian government. Since the population kept growing extensively during the 1960s and 1970s, Brazil had to answer the needs of their people by growing economically as well. With the growth of 7% per year, industrialization, the mechanization of agriculture, and the building of highways, power plants, and cities were all taking place simultaneously in order to nourish the growing population and to supply them with jobs. In the 1980s, Brazil was producing about 12 million tons of steal a year and many of its end products, such as hardware and automobiles, were made for export and achieved a surplus in external trade, helping the national budget, but also creating environmental problems.The combination of bad policies, population growth, and poverty makes the rainforest issue a difficult problem area to solve. Poor people use mainly wood as fuel, and no one really seems to care about the government regulations that restrict logging. Politics cannot be successful in areas where people don’t care, or where there is so much bribery that it makes the government powerless. As part of the national interest, Brazilian government shrunk the Amazon forest between the 1960s and 1990s. Brazil was trying to solve problems of overpopulation, landlessness, and poverty in the country’s crowded coastal region by moving people in their border regions. By doing this, they also created the so-called safety valves, populated buffer zones taking off the pressure on their vulnerable borders. The Brazilian government saw the thinly inhabited Amazon as an invitation fo...
