Contention one is overfishing Current federal policy impedes offshore aquaculture—ensures the us is dependent on unsustainable sources
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- Aquaculture reduces deforestation
- Deforestation leads to extinction
- Solvency ext
- Aquaculture improves the lives of native in habitants by combating deforestation
- Aquaculture has decreased deforestation in Brazil
Deforestation Add-on2AC2ACDeforestation of Amazon increase by one-third every yearDamian Carrington 11/23/13, the head of environment at the Guardian. “Amazon deforestation increased by one-third in past year” http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/15/amazon-deforestation-increased-one-third Destruction of the Amazon rainforest has increased by almost one-third in the past year, reversing a decade-long trend of better protection for the world's greatest rainforest. Environmentalists blamed a controversial weakening of legal protections passed by President Dilma Rousseff for the increase in deforestation by loggers and farmers. But the environment minister, Izabella Teixeira, rejected this, saying the overall trend was "positive" and that eliminating illegal deforestation remained the government's goal. The set-back in the Amazon came as the first global, high-resolution, satellite analysis of global deforestation revealed that since 2000 an area equal to 50 football pitches has been destroyed every minute. The total loss is 10 times the area of the UK, with only a third being replaced by natural and planted reforestation, and the destruction is accelerating in the tropics. The razing of forests is a major contributor to the emissions that drive climate change. Trees provide a vital store of carbon, as well as providing livelihoods for a billion people. But deforestation has more than doubled in Indonesia, Paraguay, Malaysia and Cambodia, largely due to illegal logging. In the Amazon, the use of satellite data has helped the government slash deforestation by 80% since 2003-4 by allowing police to pinpoint illegal activity in the vast forest, which is bigger than western Europe. But the 5,800km2 in 2012-13 was a 28% increase on the record-low in the previous year. Paulo Adario, leader of Greenpeace's Amazon campaign, said the spike was scandalous: "The government can't be surprised by this increase in deforestation, given that their own action is what's pushing it. The change in the Forest Code and the resulting amnesty for those who illegally felled the forest sent the message that such crimes have no consequences." The revised Forest Code was passed in 2012 after more than a decade of efforts by Brazil's powerful agricultural lobby. The changes eased restrictions for smaller landowners, allowing them to clear land closer to riverbanks, and allowed those who had illegally felled land to not face penalties if they signed an agreement to replant trees, which many environmentalists say is unlikely to be enforced. Adario added that the push by Rousseff government's for infrastructure projects in the Amazon region was also a cause, noting that much of the recent destruction was along a government-improved highway running through Para and Mato Grosso states, which eases the transport of illegal timber. Another factor is high global food prices which drives forest clearance for cattle and soya farming. "There are various ways to spin this figure, but there's no way it's good news," said Dr Doug Boucher, an expert on tropical forests at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Certainly the amendments to the Forest Code were one reason. It's a warning that although deforestation can be reduced rapidly and dramatically by strong policies, it can also increase again when those policies are weakened." Brazil has demanded funding from rich nation's to cut deforestation and has been sensitive to criticism of its effort to develop and improve the living standards of its 200 million people. Aquaculture reduces deforestationAsche, F. (2008). is a Norwegian marine economist. Frank Asche is a professor at the University of Stavanger, president of the International Association of Aquaculture Economics and Management and associate editor for Marine Resource Economics. Farming the sea. Marine Resource Economics, 23(4), 527. There is little doubt that aquaculture production will continue to grow substantially. As shown by Delgado et al. (2003), demand for seafood will grow because of increased economic growth and increased global population. This provides a positive environment for growth, provided that aquaculture products are competitive. It is clear that lower production costs due to productivity growth are the main engine for growth in aquaculture production. Although already a success story and an important seafood source, aquaculture is still in many ways in its infancy. For many species the production cycle is not closed; i.e., there is still dependency on the harvest of wild fingerlings rather than producing them from a domesticated stock. Hence, there is substantial potential for further productivity growth and for aquaculture production to become less costly. While there has been significant technological progress in aquaculture since the 1970s, when compared to agriculture and other industries, there is clearly a long way to go. There are too few dedicated systematic scientific researchers, specialized suppliers, species where one conducts systematic breeding, and no futures markets, etc. Hence, while there has been significant progress during the previous decades, there is still a long way to go until we are truly fanning the sea. With the significant quantities of food that aquaculture is already providing, the potential for the future is tremendous. Moreover, while there are environmental challenges, increased foods production from the sea will lead to a reduction in deforestation and pressure on terrestrial land to produce more food. It is accordingly far from clear, even with the aquaculture technologies used today, that the net environmental effect is negative. Deforestation leads to extinctionWatson 6 Captain Paul Watson, Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. 9/17/06, ìThe Politics of Extinction.î http://www.eco-action.org/dt/beerswil.html The destruction of forests and the proliferation of human activity will remove more than 20 percent of all terrestrial plant species over the next fifty years. Because plants form the foundation for entire biotic communities, their demise will carry with it the extinction of an exponentially greater number of animal species -- perhaps ten times as many faunal species for each type of plant eliminated. Sixty-five million years ago, a natural cataclysmic event resulted in extinction of the dinosaurs. Even with a plant foundation intact, it took more than 100,000 years for faunal biological diversity to re-establish itself. More importantly, the resurrection of biological diversity assumes an intact zone of tropical forests to provide for new speciation after extinction. Today, the tropical rain forests are disappearing more rapidly than any other bio-region, ensuring that after the age of humans, the Earth will remain a biological, if not a literal desert for eons to come. The present course of civilization points to ecocide -- the death of nature. Like a run-a-way train, civilization is speeding along tracks of our own manufacture towards the stone wall of extinction. The human passengers sitting comfortably in their seats, laughing, partying, and choosing to not look out the window. Environmentalists are those perceptive few who have their faces pressed against the glass, watching the hurling bodies of plants and animals go screaming by. Environmental activists are those even fewer people who are trying desperately to break into the fortified engine of greed that propels this destructive specicidal juggernaut. Others are desperately throwing out anchors in an attempt to slow the monster down while all the while, the authorities, blind to their own impending destruction, are clubbing, shooting and jailing those who would save us all. SHORT MEMORIES Civilized humans have for ten thousand years been marching across the face of the Earth leaving deserts in their footprints. Because we have such short memories, we forgot the wonder and splendor of a virgin nature. We revise history and make it fit into our present perceptions. For instance, are you aware that only two thousand years ago, the coast of North Africa was a mighty forest? The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians built powerful ships from the strong timbers of the region. Rome was a major exporter of timber to Europe. The temple of Jerusalem was built with titanic cedar logs, one image of which adorns the flag of Lebanon today. Jesus Christ did not live in a desert, he was a man of the forest. The Sumerians were renowned for clearing the forests of Mesopotamia for agriculture. But the destruction of the coastal swath of the North African forest stopped the rain from advancing into the interior. Without the rain, the trees died and thus was born the mighty Sahara, sired by man and continued to grow southward at a rate of ten miles per year, advancing down the length of the continent of Africa. And so will go Brazil. The precipitation off the Atlantic strikes the coastal rain forest and is absorbed and sent skyward again by the trees, falling further into the interior. Twelve times the moisture falls and twelve times it is returned to the sky -- all the way to the Andes mountains. Destroy the coastal swath and desertify Amazonia -- it is as simple as that. Create a swath anywhere between the coast and the mountains and the rains will be stopped. We did it before while relatively primitive. We learned nothing. We forgot. So too, have we forgotten that walrus once mated and bred along the coast of Nova Scotia, that sixty million bison once roamed the North American plains. One hundred years ago, the white bear once roamed the forests of New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces. Now it is called the polar bear because that is where it now makes its last stand. EXTINCTION IS DIFFICULT TO APPRECIATE Gone forever are the European elephant, lion and tiger. The Labrador duck, giant auk, Carolina parakeet will never again grace this planet of ours. Lost for all time are the Atlantic grey whales, the Biscayan right whales and the Stellar sea cow. Our children will never look upon the California condor in the wild or watch the Palos Verde blue butterfly dart from flower to flower. Extinction is a difficult concept to fully appreciate. What has been is no more and never shall be again. It would take another creation and billions of years to recreate the passenger pigeon. It is the loss of billions of years of evolutionary programming. It is the destruction of beauty, the obliteration of truth, the removal of uniqueness, the scarring of the sacred web of life To be responsible for an extinction is to commit blasphemy against the divine. It is the greatest of all possible crimes, more evil than murder, more appalling than genocide, more monstrous than even the apparent unlimited perversities of the human mind. To be responsible for the complete and utter destruction of a unique and sacred life form is arrogance that seethes with evil, for the very opposite of evil is live. It is no accident that these two words spell out each other in reverse. And yet, a reporter in California recently told me that "all the redwoods in California are not worth the life on one human being." What incredible arrogance. The rights a species, any species, must take precedence over the life of an individual or another species. This is a basic ecological law. It is not to be tampered with by primates who have molded themselves into divine legends in their own mind. For each and every one of the thirty million plus species that grace this beautiful planet are essential for the continued well-being of which we are all a part, the planet Earth -- the divine entity which brought us forth from the fertility of her sacred womb. As a sea-captain I like to compare the structural integrity of the biosphere to that of a ship's hull. Each species is a rivet that keeps the hull intact. If I were to go into my engine room and find my engineers busily popping rivets from the hull, I would be upset and naturally I would ask them what they were doing. If they told me that they discovered that they could make a dollar each from the rivets, I could do one of three things. I could ignore them. I could ask them to cut me in for a share of the profits, or I could kick their asses out of the engine room and off my ship. If I was a responsible captain, I would do the latter. If I did not, I would soon find the ocean pouring through the holes left by the stolen rivets and very shortly after, my ship, my crew and myself would disappear beneath the waves. And that is the state of the world today. The political leaders, i.e., the captains at the helms of their nation states, are ignoring the rivet poppers or they are cutting themselves in for the profits. There are very few asses being kicked out of the engine room of spaceship Earth. With the rivet poppers in command, it will not be long until the biospheric integrity of the Earth collapses under the weight of ecological strain and tides of death come pouring in. And that will be the price of progress -- ecological collapse, the death of nature, and with it the horrendous and mind numbing specter of massive human destruction. Solvency extAquaculture decrease deforestation- empirically provenHalpern, G. (2012). Environmental Remediation Support Specialist at The Presidio Trust Intramural Coordinator at Pomona College, Research Analyst/Grant Writer at Nature and Culture International Aquculture and Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=pomona_theses The results of this study suggest that incorporating aquaculture into subsistence farmland significantly reduces the rate of agricultural deforestation. Among other things, the analysis suggests that an extra square meter of aquaculture reduces the area deforested to grow crops on approximately a one-for-one basis. Although this may appear to be an even land conversion (one square meter added to aquaculture versus one square meter taken away from traditional agriculture), this study's analysis demonstrates that substituting aquaculture for agriculture would, in fact, greatly reduce deforestation rates in the Amazon. This apparent contradiction is explained by the fact that the agricultural techniques practiced require continual deforestation of new land because they exhaust the fertility of the soil over time. Aquaculture, on the other hand, is able to use the same plot of land with virtually no temporal limitations. Due to the greater sustainability of aquaculture, simulations from the deforestation model demonstrate that aquaculture would reduce the total amount of a single family's agricultural deforestation by more than 8 hectares over an 11-year period. Aquaculture improves the lives of native in habitants by combating deforestationHalpern, G. (2012). Environmental Remediation Support Specialist at The Presidio Trust Intramural Coordinator at Pomona College, Research Analyst/Grant Writer at Nature and Culture International Aquculture and Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=pomona_theses These conclusions are important as they show how aquaculture could be used as a tool to significantly reduce deforestation rates, especially in areas where soil supports only a few years of subsistence crops. Absent immediate conservation efforts directed at reducing deforestation in the Amazon basin, the long-term outlook is bleak. As has been widely documented, this unique ecosystem is increasingly being degraded through the use of slash-and-burn agriculture. If the rainforest in the Amazon is not conserved, the very future of these people living in this area is problematic. If the findings of this study are accurate, the substitution of aquaculture can reduce the loss of rainforest in the basin and thus benefit the economic viability, as well as the health and safety of the inhabitants, through the preservation of vital rainforest.
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