tv Deutsche Welle Journal LINKTV May 17, 2012 11:00am-11:30am PDT
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nowhere are the sults more dramatic than in sao paulo, brazil, the third largest city in the world. in this anatomy of aega-city, we'll explore: the urban geography of immigration and ethnic diversity, squatter settlements anself-construction. sao paulo, brazil. with its crowded boulevards and massive skyscrapers, it seems awealthy as any city in the world. sao ulo is unique among latin american cities. in the early part of 2, when places like rio de janeiro copied traditional european styles of construction, sao paulo was following a distinctly american model of urbanism. imitating the forms of chicago and new york,
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sao paulo built upward, growing rtically very quickly. bulies a very different here, stretching for miles, is a city of self-built structures in various stages of completion. they line hillsides and rocky streets where some of sao paulo's newest immigrants struggo ild mes om brick and cen where some of sao paulo's alaide and her family came to sao paulo from northeastern brazil. ( alaide speaking portuguese ) translator: from there my father cameirst to work. came i as a maidmy motwas amstrs narrator:alaide mar, they coun't afford even the cheapestenn thcity, so they decided to bui a home
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thon unclaimed land onn the outskirts of sao paulo. they began building this house when their first daughtewas. 11 years ago, anslator: when she was eightonths old, we movedo this house. firsto help gs a bit.ms... tht we thebuilfo rooms on top, and that's where we are now. we wilcoinue build on but it'sot clearoror: migrants lalaide joséuild. will ever be part of the wealthy city that seems so far away. tokyo in east asia, along with los angeles in the u.s. and mexico city, are defined by geographers as mega-cities t couryf azil, the ga-city ofaoaumous se.
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arhas joined the ranks of these world-famousetpolises,s a population of 1million people at the startof t 21st century. sao paulo is a city of immigras, who built it neighborhood by neighborhood. the first immigrants to arrive were portuguese explorers and jesuit missionaries, who settled here in 1554 and oughwithhem brazil's language a religio bureal growth did not begin wuntil the 19th ctury.54 between 1880 and the 1950s, more than ve million italians came to sao paulo, atacted by jobs in a booming cofe industry. along with these agricultural workers came small business owners and craftsmen who established an italian enclave cled bixiga ,
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geographer fisco scarlatost nestudies immigration patter, assimilation anthe expansion of sao paulo. r him,iss t oncamic. he was an artisan anhe. myaterl grandfher came at the beginning ofhe century. assimilation anthe expansion of sao paulo. narrator e factoryi in the family day,gger an. biasaoaulo grew arou it,rished and rthe neigorhoodecameclave. an important part of the city's mainstream. but the italians did not have bixiga to themselves for long. (drmi sea after slavery was abolishedin b,
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freed slaves moved into theity. they were attractoixa by i inexpensive housing. their afro-bralian legacy is still evident toy in vai-vai, the neighborhood samba school.) anslator fothe black culture, the scols part ofe ighborod c. rresents the neighborhood, t. the neighborod is not only ita; it has blacks, africans, anvai-vai is aexession of at. ( samba-style drumming ) speaking portuguese ) translator: the city absorbed the differen, but each group had troubleinteg, because it was so divee. soach group created its own ttle world you can't say the city has one identity today;
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eachroup bui(twild cheeringt). narrator: although they bega arriving in 1908 eachroup japanese immigration to brazil acceleted llowing world war ii. the devastation suffered by japan sent a wave of immignts looking for new opportunities outside their country. sao paulo was a popular destination. thjapanese seted in a neigh. today, sao paulo boasts the largest pulation of japanese people and their descendants outside of japan. considermselves to be azilian orapanese? translator: el more brazilian than japanese. eu também. anslator: me, too. interviewer: por que? translator: because i was born here, live here. i've never been to japan.
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translator: more japanese, but also brazilian, because my children and grandchildren are all brazilian. but when japan and brazil play against each other, i cheer for the japanese-- my children, for brazil. ( speaking portuguese, laughing ) kingore ) translator: i was born in japan, but now i'veeen in bl fomanyea. i'm now brazilia rrator: by 1960, when thisave of immigration had slowed, the city, bulging at its seams, boasted 13 million residents. and then yet another group of immigrants began to pouin. ( children shouting ) this group came from brazil's. between 1955 and 1980, more than fi millionrrived,
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attracted by the promise of work and a better life. but an already crowded city could not absorb them. so they began to bui tir own homes and neighborhoods, brick by brick, on the periphery. this so-called "self-construction" caused the city to spread even farther. ( scarlato speaking portuguese ) translator: the gigantic size of sao paulo, caused the city to spread even farther. in aorizontal sense, is aesult of self-cotruction. in a chaotic, disorganized way, it spoaneousen e in all direcons. rrator: today, saoaulo swelled toncompass over 300 square miles, stretching more than 50 miles from end to en many oe new neigorhoods were bui on stee stmostere nocognized tt
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but some neighborhoods ifdid progress. jardim valkíria, or "garden of the valkyries," was fas a colctionatters mof cardboard shacks.o slowly, solid buildings appeared. stores and crches opened, streets were paved and some utilities were installed. storbus routes connected the neighborhood to the city cente wiouofficial recogtind ownershi, these peopleemain squaers. so their community leaders are negotiating with the city government for land titles and city services. (speaking portugues ) translator:itles the first things we want here are day care, a health clinic and a school. these are the three things we need most urgently. narrator: if these newest migrants receive official recognition,
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a path toward assimilationath behind and integratiofore them, anslator: i wa to stay. narrator immigratioto saoaulo s slowedgain, ( sslator:softhe98e and es, but birth ras coinue toncrease the pulation or arojectop ceg ib s ciwhicget a swi dow rinher case, has crsed.popitys sao pao willontinutoe one of t world's mega-cies. the urban geography of immigration and ethnic diversity
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ree examine sel themes,ess, inb than sincluding:opical forese; maalof sustainabelopmend anspo; e amazon rain forest-- and its diity ofife.e worldfor s the forest ecosystem iselicate e of plants and animals, soil and water. like geography, ecology is an integrative science, bringing togethema pblems into one view. ecologist daelepstad isesearch the an.fec of worsens whether he gria in the forescanopy ecologist daelepstad isor mapng ion compu a spatiall the future othe amazon, ndstan the future.tonderstan
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we reay haveo go back in time and ink abouthe first people who arrived in the amazoon, ndstan the future.tonderstan who camethe ve-- and ink abouthe first people who arrived in the amazoon, and even these psentedobsta. ndstan the future.tonderstan ifouo rth on many ofseibutars--s who anradse ve-- rrator:ch othe rives atoawhh locat in amazonia in th century eurod and built cities like belém, the rain forest was seen as a rich, but impenetrableesource. until the 1970s, belém was accessible to the rest of brazil only by water. then came a wave of road building. so farthe major investmes theasterenof bascture coenatg analong e soutwithoaouave che, then came a wave of road building. and with cheaper access, a lot of economic activities become profitable.
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narrator: two of the biggest activities are cattle ranching and farming. ( chain saw buzzing ) buthe one at clears the land everything else isogging so whole newow sprang up herlocated in pará state.nas, this is a boomtown, home to more than 80 sawmills. this is brazil's frontier, a land of opportunity chnortamica's oners dbumany othe most imporntdsu t s new roads into the intior still dirt and not paved.
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paving greatly accelerates the change. nepstad: and what we're going to do is just look a little bit into the fute, imagining th these roads, which are still dirt roads, are all paved, as is slated by the federal government of brazil. narrator: in this simulation, the growing red area represents new deforestation every two years up to the year 2020. so as these roads are paved, deforestation is basically going to march up along those roads. instead of all the deforestation being concentrated along theast and south, we've made inroads into the core of the basin. narrator: at the southern edge of that core, a new economic force is pushing t pavement north. from space, we see elds of soybeans etched in the shrinking forest. brazil is about to overtake the u.s. as the world's leading producer of soy, exporting their crop to millions of chinese consumers
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and european livestock growers. the soy farmers of mato grosso are very keen on having asphalt so that they can ship their soybeans to the santarém port and puit on oceangoing freighters and serve the world markets that way. it's much cheaper that way than to go south to the big brazilian ports down south. as that pavement goes through, the ancillary effect of paving, of course, will be to make it cheaper for everyone to do business along that corridor. but let's just imagine for a second two different trajectories for this road. here we see the portion that's not yet been paved-- santarém up here, mato grosso down here. in a business-as-usual situation, as paving goes in here, people will move in along the highways, driven largely by land speculation interests, putting cattle pastures, shifting cultivation. and we can see the deforestation frontier rapidly eanding along this road. but there is reason to think
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that another scenario is possible. narrator: the lower rates of deforestation e based onovernmen ctivrcin narrator: the lthe environmental lawsation on the books. brazil has received some help from some new technology and from other ecologists, including chris uhl. uhl is the founder of imazon, a research institute located in the city of belém. the law in pará state says that 50% of all private land must be maintained in forest. until recently, that was very hard to monitor. now, using a system of satellites casearcher carlos sousaiing s, cadoust that. okgps is realowhat it allows us to do is to pickp signals from the satellites. and through ocess of triangulation we can locate oursels verr
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and through ocess to within about ten meters. four... ey've gour sateites now. we are... probably... in this... area. mm-hmm. narrator: if the government chooses, it can use gps to locate property lines on satlite photographs of the landscape. they can then determine how much of a farmer's land has beenleared but enforcement is stty. anotg problem is thenefficient way the cleared land is being used. the most common farming and grazing method here requires the farmer to cut tousands ofirm spe,it dry.llit set by farmers during the dry season to release the nutrients from the vegetation. but the soil's productivity disappears, sometimes in one or two years. it forces settlers to abandon their land
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and cut more forest elsewhere. because this requires more land all the time, it is a form of extensive agriculture. it's called "shifting," "swidden" it's practiced inany s or "slash-and-burn" cultivatio until the forest runs out. this land waabandonedby sgs a few years earlier. the sight of new trees led chris uhl to a surprising and controversial revelation. l:whenirst started woing wn here, wasn'a ssse,t was abi woulveed thats e of lan i reallyhought that the and yet, if u look over here woulha stayed sort ofded oll yeit's clearly going backntrest. this is really a surprise for me.
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digiatort co back.alme ret wgiofand begano in oure that gyoknow, maybese systems art as as i had exctedan ifact, ae sot n really a whole no le ofeseaors se h has to devise development guidelines for ranchers, farmers and foresters. for example, if loggers would cut trees more selectively and plan their logging roads lessestively, trwould regrow more quickly areas whehey ha worked. satellite images show why that is so important. here is anrea where loggerswoy whenhey cu many suounding ees we eangled inhe same nes bulldozersamaged lgeas tryi to remo and store e ees. vines were cut fm sected trees e year before.
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narrowccess ads allowe ruer-wheeled skidders to remove just the desired trees with much less damage. uhl: now, if we look into the following year, the forest scar, the logging scar here has disappeared. up here, we can still see some of that scar. openings up here are so big that one year later, they still haven't been covered by regrowing vines and regrowing forest vegetation. here they have. narrator: the method allows the logger sustainable harvests over many decades, and it helps everyone in the amazon avoid a growingroblem. the reduced canopy from the indiscriminate harvest and allows the sun to drythe amazon e forest floor,roblem. just aing to the fire haza fire and smoke plus reduced vegetion decreasing the rainfall and further increasing fires. it's a vicious cycle that is broken by careful tree harvests.
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as chris uhl learned, e ees grow backif you give . t s scovery len even bigg: if ranchers and farmers could use their land more efficiently and for longer periods of time, perhaps both developmentalng new and environmental needs could be accommodated. it has to do with the difference between extensive and intensive agriculture. and bynsiv we anninking about as a viable alternative that a g pof ld itode,l taeaafteyear now, the reachalngin this, of course, t te apoaus.
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narrator: rnear belém, small farms shave been practicing intensive agriculture for decades. by mixing a variety of crops and by using locally produced organic and mineral fertilizers, anvae ean increase eir income thsame piece of la fomany . nepstad: these systems include trees or other perennial crops, fruit crops, black pepper, cacao-- which is chocolate. even cattle ranching can be made to be more or less sustainable. narrator: intensification means experimenting with new breeds of cattle and grasses, and it mean allowing some pastures to recover while cattle graze in others. ( speaking portuguese ) translator: because grazing was degrading my fields, the farm didn't have a means to produce new grass. ( continuing in portuguese ) so, i decided to research what i'd seen done in other places
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and i intensified my planting. of course, there was an initial cost, but the return has been good, and it's paying for itself. narrator: these practices work well on a small scale in the eastern amazon, but can they be used throughout amazonia? this remains to be seen. the first results of this research showed that we have aroun 50% to 60% of the state apopriate for logging. that we have aroun and whene put together... state narrator: imazon has determined that, overall, about 20% of pará state's land area could potentially be developed. with the use of regional maps, imazon is helping to plan a future that is acceptable to both environmentalists and developers. in doing so, they walk a thin line.
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...that are not appropriate fologging. aroacwhh certaiyharacterize asvalu tndouslywo dersityprtse at i rlizehat willontinue to be inhabited. and the goal is come up with win/winituation in tense thaconservation of the forest occurs, that bio-diversity is preserved, and also that people that live in this landscape have a high and just quality of life. narrator: this balancing act must take place in an environment that is more resilient than scientists once thought. ate pressures on the fortrese t: thgi they include further drying provoked by deforestation, by el niño, by global warming. they include extensive agriculture,
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