A/42/427
English
Page 68
I work with rubber trees in the Amazon. I am here to speak about the tropical forest.
We live from this forest they want to destroy. And we want to take this opportunity of having so many people here gathered with the same objective in mind to defend our habitat, the conservation of forest, of tropical forest.
In my area, we have about 14-15 native products that we extract from the forest, besides all the other activities we have. So I think this must be preserved. Because it is not only with cattle, not only with pasture lands, and not only with highways that we will be able to develop the Amazon.
When they think of falling trees, they always think building roads and the roads bring destruction under a mask called progress. Let us put this progress where the lands have already been deforested, where it is idle of labour and where we have to find people work, and where we have to make the city grow. But let us leave those who want to live in the forest, who want to keep it as it is.
We have nothing written. I don't have anything that was created in somebody's office. There is no philosophy. It is just the real truth, because this is what our life is.
Jaime Da Silva Araujo
Rubber Tapper Council
WCED Public Hearing
Sac Paulo, 28-29 Oct
61. Some of these problems can be met by increased use of renewable energy sources. But the exploitation of renewable sources such as fuelwood and hydropower also entails ecological problems. Hence sustainability requires a clear focus on conserving and efficiently using energy.
62. Industrialized countries must recognize that their energy consumption is polluting the biosphere and eating into scarce fossil fuel supplies. Recent improvements in energy efficiency and a shift towards less energy-intensive sectors have helped limit consumption. But the process must be accelerated to reduce per capita consumption and encourage a shift to non-polluting sources and technologies. The simple duplication in the developing world of industrial countries' energy use patterns is neither feasible nor desirable. Changing these patterns for the better will call for new policies in urban development, industry location, housing design, transportation systems, and the choice of agricultural and industrial technologies.
63. Non-fuel mineral resources appear to pose fewer supply problems. Studies done before 1980 that assumed an exponentially growing demand did not envisage a problem until well into the next century.[1] Since then, world consumption of most metals has remained nearly constant, which suggests that the exhaustion of non-fuel minerals is even more distant. The history of technological developments also suggests that industry can adjust to scarcity through greater efficiency in use, recycling, and substitution. More immediate needs include modifying the pattern
- ↑ See, for example, OCED, Interfutures: Facing the Future (Paris: 1979) and Council on Environmental Quality and U. S. Department of State, The Global 2000 Report to the President: Entering the Twenty-First Century, The Technical Report Vol. Two (Washington. DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1980).
