From Eric Worrall
William Laurance’s article “Roads to ruin” verged on being inhumane (29 August, p 24).
In many cases, the people exploiting the rainforest work in appalling conditions – heat, humidity, tropical disease, unsafe work practices – because they want to create a better life for their children. They use their high-risk, above-average incomes to buy for their children all the things they never had – education, medical care and good food.
If the price of such people lifting themselves out of grinding, hopeless poverty is the destruction of every rainforest on Earth, so be it. We should not stand in their way, unless we can offer them a realistic way of improving their lives.
The forests of Brazil, Indonesia and Congo belong to the inhabitants of those countries, not to us.
Advertisement
Southampton, UK
