A Solution to Deforestation- Saving the Amazon Rainforest by Producing a Useful Product

Over the past 40 years more than 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been cut down- more than in all the previous 450 years since European colonization began. In 2008 the government of Brazil began a new program to sustain the forest by the traditional tapping of the native rubber trees to make condoms given free to the populace.

The Amazon rainforest provides more than 20% of the world’s oxygen (the “world’s lungs” as some call it), has unparalleled biodiversity, and supports numerous indigenous cultures. The indigenous tribes of the forest live off and with the land as their ancestors have. Cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, along with soybean cultivation, subsistence farming, logging, and mining.

The Natex company established a condom manufacturing facility which can produce 100 million condoms a year from local rubber in western Brazil. “This product will allow people to make love with security and to better plan their futures,” said Raimundo Barros, vice president of the local agricultural association. And it can provide income for 700 rubber tappers and 150 factory employees and their families. Apart from earnings for the collected rubber, the tappers receive a payment for “environmental services” to acknowledge their important role in maintaining the forest.

Sebastiao Mendes, a third generation rubber tapper, explained that “the forest has been a source of income for my people for a very long time. In recent times there have been threats to our way of life, but these have been overcome. The condom factory has enabled us to improve our standard of living without destroying our surroundings which we are happy about.” Marina Silva, Brazil’s Environment Minister at the time, said the Natex condom would help create “a new pattern of production and a new process of inclusion that would value the forest being left standing.”

The Xapuri people who have knowledge of traditional rubber tapping live on the Chico Mendes reserve. Chico Mendes saw the rubber tappers as natural custodians of the forest as an “extractive reserve.” He took up a position of leadership within their community and was killed by ranchers in 1988. He is quoted as saying, “At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees. Then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”

A movie ‘The Burning Season’ and book of the same title written by Andrew Revkin were done about Mendes, as well as a documentary called ‘Rubber Jungle.’ Paul McCartney dedicated the song ‘How Many People?’ from his 1989 album ‘Flowers in the Dirt’ to the memory of Mendes.Rubber trees are one of the main forms of vegetation in tropical rain forests. Harvesting natural rubber can be as profitable and more beneficial in the long run than raising cattle on deforested land. And rubber is used in everything from tires to flooring to handbags!

Other products like Brazil nuts, acai berries, bananas, coffee, cocoa, mangos, avocados, babassu oil, bananas, herbal tea, and zmedicinal herbs are native to the rainforest and can be sustainably harvested and sold as well. This market-driven conservation benefits everyone involved because communities can profit from the forest without annihilating it, and provide excellent products to consumers at the same time.

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