Amazonian Wilderness

In today's Guardian there is an article with the depressing assessment that the Amazon jungle could be lost in 40 years:

"The Amazonian wilderness is at risk of unprecedented damage from an ambitious plan to improve transport, communications and power generation in the region, conservationists warned yesterday." - Read full article.

This is in addition to a recent article by the Brazil-based humanitarian aid worked Conor Foley called 'Threatening the Amazon', which lays out in some further detail some of the things that are going wrong. Meaning, in other words, that not much has changed since we attended the RSA 2006 Angus Millar Lecture where Chris Clark, President of Associazione Amazonia Onlus, told a distinguished Edinburgh audience about the extreme difficulties conservation efforts in the Amazon face. Transcript here .

The issues facing rainforests like the Amazon will be in particular focus at the next World Wilderness Congress - which will be held in South America in 2009 - including follow-up on the Resolution on Tropical Protected Areas as adopted by the 8th World Wilderness Congress.

Now you can help by getting informed. We have a suggested starting point for your reading in preparation for the next for the next World Wilderness Congress. You may also find it useful to go through some related articles from the International Journal of Wilderness:

• An Overview of the World Wilderness Congress
• The 8th World Wilderness Congress
• The 7th World Wilderness Congress - Wilderness and Human Communities

Learn more about and subscribe to the International Journal of Wilderness

Last but not least, here's on from our archive about the very first congress: Findhorn and the World Wilderness Congress 1983