Rubatex Information

Rubatex Msds Many Brazilians have regarded the Amazon jungle as a barrier to progress that should be replaced as quickly as possible with ranches and farms. But in this remote corner of Brazil's most isolated state, people increasingly see the rain forest as a solution to the region's chronic poverty.

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Rubatex Neoprene In one sign of that change, peasants are again being encouraged to cultivate rubber and Brazil nut trees, the twin pillars of the economy here before major deforestation began in the 1970's.

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Rubatex Pipe Seeking to capitalize on the growing market in Brazil and abroad for environmentally friendly products, forest dwellers have also formed cooperatives that have begun to produce high-end furniture, medicines derived from local plants, and even condoms.

South America has a wide variety of climates. They range from the dry desert conditions of northern Chile to the heavy rains along the windswept southwestern coast of the continent. Steamy heat characterizes the tropical rain forest of the Amazon basin, while icy cold air surrounds the lofty, capped Andean peaks. In general, however, most of the continent has warm weather the year around. Only in the high Andes is it always cold.

Rubatex Pipe Insulation "We're going back to the future," said Carlos Vicente, secretary of forestry and extractive activities for the government of Brazil's most isolated state, Acre. "We recognize that the forest can be a source of wealth if used wisely but that the success of economic activities based on the forest is directly linked to the viability of the forest itself."

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Rubatex 180 That is exactly the attitude that organizers of the recent United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development would like to see elsewhere in the Amazon, home of the world's largest tropical rain forest, and they are betting heavily on the experiment here.

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Rubatex 180 Fs Acre's pilot program has the support of the state government, which signed a $108 million loan agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank in June, and of international organizations like Environmental Defense and the World Wildlife Fund. The program has its critics, though, who contend that it makes no long-term economic sense.

Rubatex 1800 The focal point of the effort is a 3,900-square-mile area called an "extractive reserve" near the borders with Peru and Bolivia. It is named for Chico Mendes, the environmental leader assassinated in 1988, who was born and raised in this area.

Rubatex 320 Logging within the reserve is tightly controlled in terms of volume as well as species to meet certification standards set by the Forest Stewardship Council, a private environmental monitoring group, which in turn guarantees a higher price when the wood is marketed.

Rubatex 373 The raw tree trunks, along with other products of the jungle, are taken to a "forest industry" complex here, which includes a plant that processes 3.5 tons of rubber a day.

Rubatex Rubber The Italian tire company Pirelli recently agreed to buy the project's entire rubber output and has begun manufacturing a truck tire called the Xapuri (SHAH-poor-he) at one of its Brazilian plants.

Rubatex Tape But while extractive reserves like this one "are excellent buffers from the accelerated rate of change" occurring around them, "the challenge coming up is to give more value to forest products," said Foster Brown, who represents the Woods Hole Research Center in Acre.

Rubatex Closing In particular, he said, environmentalists must provide forest dwellers with alternatives to raising cattle, which are widely seen as "mobile savings accounts" that "offer more of a return than rubber."

Rubatex Closed Cell Gasketing With the advice of a group of Italian furniture designers and manufacturers, one plant here is already producing furniture for sophisticated consumers in So Paulo, 2,000 miles south of here.

Felpro Gaskets A second plant processes, packages and exports Brazil nuts to Europe and the United States, while another is being built to process natural oils from the jungle like andiroba, used as a mosquito repellent, and copaiba, an anti-inflammatory agent.

Poly Products Supplies In addition, the complex has been working on condom production. Brazil's Health Ministry estimates that only about a third of the 300 million condoms sold in Brazil each year are produced in this country.

Poly Hunting Feeders The managers of the plant here believe that they can make up that gap once they determine the right blend of rubber to make the strongest possible condom and attract enough financial support from outside investors.

Shoreline 13171 17 Neoprene An initial batch of 400,000 has already been made available, encased in green plastic wrappers proclaiming that the contents are a "natural product of the native rubber groves of Acre."

Neoprene Pads Mr. Vicente said that as a result of the reserve program, more than 3,000 families who had migrated to cities have already returned to the jungle. Their income has doubled, dependence on middlemen for supplies and credit has dropped, tax collections have jumped, and their nutrition and health have improved.

Neoprene Seat Covers The traditional form of processing rubber in the Amazon requires workers to stir a smoking caldron for hours, until the liquid latex has congealed around a stick, a method that carried health risks for the workers. "But we now use a metal press here to squeeze the liquid out, so we no longer run the risk of blindness or respiratory diseases," said Severino Ramos dos Santos, 56, a plant worker who is a former rubber tapper.

Rubber Manufacturer The project and a highway that was paved to support it have also brought economic benefits to the residents of this town of 8,000. Since the complex opened nearly five years ago, the number of food markets has jumped from 1 to 10 and the fleet of taxis has increased from 5 to 33, said Mayor Jlio Barbosa, himself a former rubber tapper.

Industrial Insulated Foam "For every 10 families involved in actually managing the forest you create 30 jobs here in town, so that we expect to have generated at least 400 jobs by 2004," he said. "But what's even more impressive to me is the way that commerce has grown, the multiplier effect that comes when subsistence farmers suddenly have a regular income and are transformed into consumers."

Wholesale Rubber But critics maintain that the results are artificial because the program is based on subsidies, or what the state government prefers to call "environmental investments." Rubber tappers have received up to 70 percent over the market price for their product, government officials calculate, to encourage them to work in the reserves and to join cooperatives.

Foam Insulation "Rubber production may be profitable in Malaysia, but that is no longer the case here," said Flaviano Melo, a former governor who is now the leader of the political opposition here, "and I don't believe we should be wasting our money on something that is not economically viable.

Rubber Industry "We need to invest in crops that can be profitable on their own and support those who want to plant them."

Industrial Petroleum Products Government officials say they expect the subsidies to diminish and even disappear as other activities take root and flourish. But backers of the program also point to intangibles that they say are hard to measure.

Petroleum Refiner "Markets have got to learn to recognize that value added is not the only way to determine economic benefits and that other factors need to be recognized too," said Gisela Brugnara, the coordinator of the industrial complex here. "Conservation has a value, either directly or indirectly, for everyone, and these people here need to be compensated for holding the fort for the rest of us."

By Larry Rohter
New York Times - 9/10/2002

Topic: Forests & Trees