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  3. Smallholder farmers resettled to rainforests by the Brazilian government have played an unrecognised role in deforestation there

Smallholder farmers resettled to rainforests by the Brazilian government have played an unrecognised role in deforestation there

admin2016-01-29  25
问题     Smallholder farmers resettled to rainforests by the Brazilian government have played an unrecognised role in deforestation there—something researchers worry is continuing unabated.
    Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff boasted last month that her government had reduced annual forest loss by two-thirds in the past decade, and would end it altogether by 2030. Yet while overall deforestation has fallen, Brazilian researchers reveal that the country’s officials are still organising the large-scale migration of poor farmers who have been wrecking the rainforest. While the government has clamped down on illegal forest clearance by big landowners running cattle ranches and soya farms, its social resettlement schemes to allocate land to the rural poor are doing more damage than previously estimated.
    The researchers looked at four decades of satellite images of forest cover around the homes of more than a million migrants in some 1900 Amazon settlements established by the government’s National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform(INCRA)since 1970. They found "irrefutable evidence of rapid deforestation" after the settlers arrived. Within the settlement areas, which cover roughly the size of the UK, half the trees have been lost, says a Brazilian researcher.
    The resettlement areas cover 5. 3 percent of the Brazilian Amazon, but have been responsible for 13.5 percent of deforestation since 1970. "Agrarian settlements have been widely hailed as a socially responsible strategy to allocate land to the rural poor," says Schneider. "But INCRA’s policy of giving settlers just a few hectares forces them to convert every inch of land to agriculture. Our research shows that the result is severe deforestation at the taxpayer’s expense. "
    INCRA officials, who were unavailable for comment ahead of the paper’s publication, have often argued that deforestation occurs before settlers arrive. But Schneider says the findings refute this. Charles Clement of Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus, says: " INCRA abandons the settlers as soon as they arrive. They seldom get guidance about how to manage Amazonian forests , so they try to practise the farming methods they grew up with. But they soon discover that the soils cannot sustain these methods, which leads them to carry out more deforestation. "
    Overall, Amazon deforestation is much reduced from a decade ago, says Schneider. But he worries that the deforestation from resettled smallholder farmers will go on unabated. Even though INCRA launched a green settlement programme aimed at curbing illegal deforestation by settlers in 2012, its effectiveness is yet to be assessed, Schneider says. To really address the problem, he adds, the government should stop moving people into forested areas. One solution would be to switch settlement schemes from existing forests to former forests that are now degraded pastures.
According to Paragraph 4, Schneider’s statement implies that______.
选项 A、deforestation of Brazil mainly occurs in the resettlement areas
B、the strategy to allocate land to the rural poor should be halted as well
C、the INCRA’s policy directly forced settlers to destroy forest around their homes
D、it is the taxpayer who pays the price for the deforestation
答案D
解析 语义理解题。根据题干定位到第四段。由第四段最后一句Our research shows that theresult is severe deforestation at the taxpayer’s expense“我们的研究表明最后要由纳税人为严重的森林退化来买单”可知[D]选项含义与原文一致，故正确。[A]选项表述为“巴西的滥伐森林现象主要出现在安置区内”，由第四段第一句可知安置区内砍伐的森林只占巴西森林砍伐量的13．5％，所以该选项错误，且与题干无关，可排除。[B]选项中halt的意思为“叫停”，易与原文中的hail混淆，该项内容与原文和题干不符，可排除。[C]选项表述为“INCRA的政策直接迫使移居者毁坏森林”，与原文内容不符，故可排除。
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