Annenberg media captioning sponsored by annenberg cpb narrator since 1980, latin america has been one of the most rapidly urbanizing regions on earth. Nowhere are the results more dramatic than in sao paulo, brazil, the Third Largest city in the world. In this anatomy of a megacity, well explore the urban geography of immigration and Ethnic Diversity, squatter settlements and selfconstruction. Sao paulo, brazil. With its crowded boulevards and massive skyscrapers, it seems as wealthy and sophisticated as any city in the world. Sao paulo is unique among latin american cities. In the early part of the 20th century, 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, sao paulo built upward, growing vertically very quickly. But in a huge ring around the central city lies a very different urban environment. Here, stretching for miles, is a city of selfbuilt structures in various stages of completion. They line hillsides and rocky streets where some of sao paulos newest immigrants struggle to build homes from brick and cement. Where some of sao paulos alaide and her family came to sao paulo from northeastern brazil. alaide speaking portuguese translator from there my father came first to work. Thene came. I rked as a maid, my mother was a seamstress. Narrator alaide married jose franquelino, a northeastern migrant like herself. They couldnt afford even the cheapest rents in the city, so they decided to build a home on unclaimed land on the outskirts of sao paulo. They began building this house 11 years ago, when their first daughter was born. alaide speaking portuguese translator when she was eight months old, we moved to this house. First we made three rooms. Then we rented them out to help things a bit. We then built four rooms on top, and thats where we are now. We will continue to build on top. Narrator they will continue to build. But its not clear if poor migrants like alaidend jose 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 megacities for their enormous size. The country of brazil, the megacity of sao paulo has joined the ranks of these worldfamous metropolises, with a population of 18 Million People at the start of the 21st century. Sao paulo is a city of immigrants, who built it neighborhood by neighborhood. The first immigrants to arrive were portuguese explorers and jesuit missionaries, who settled here in 1554 and brought with them brazils language a religion. But real growth did not begin until the 19th century. Between 1880 and the 1950s, more than five million italians came to sao paulo, attracted by jobs in a booming coffee industry. Along with these Agricultural Workers came Small Business owners and craftsmen who established an italian enclave called bixiga on the oat the time,the city. It was one of the poorest neighborhoods in sao paulo. Geographer francisco scarlato studies immigration patterns, assimilation and the expansion of sao paulo. For him, this is not only academic. Translator my paternal grandfather came at the beginning of the century. He was an artisan and he set himself up in a furture factory. Narrator the factory is still in the family today, bigger and more successful than ever. Bixiga, too, has both flourished and remained an italian enclave. As sao paulo grew around it, the neighborhood became an important part of the citys mainstream. But the italians did not have bixiga to themselves for long. drummi sambaea after slavery was abolished in brazil in 1888, freed slaves moved into the city. They were attracted to bixiga by its inexpensive housing. Their afrobrazilian legacy is still evident today in vaivai, the neighborhood samba school. speaking portuguese translator the for the black culture,ool. The school is part of the neighborhood community. It represents the neighborhood, the black community. The neighborhood is not only italian; it has blacks, africans, and vaivai is an expression of that. sambastyle drumming speaking portuguese translator the city absorbed the different waves of immigrants, but each group had trouble integrating into the city, because it was so diverse. So each group created its own little world. You cant say the city has one identity today; each group built its own identity. wild cheering narrator although they began arriving in 1908, japanese immigration to brazil accelerated following world war ii. The devastation suffered by japan sent a wave of immigrants looking for new opportunities outside their country. Sao paulo was a popular destination. The japanese settled in a neighborhood called liberdade. Today, sao paulo boasts the largest population of japanese people and their descendants outside of japan. But do people here consider themselves to be brazilian or japanese . Translator i feel more brazilian than japanese. Eu tambem. Translator me, too. Interviewer por que . Translator because i was born here, live here. Ive never been to japan. 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 spking portuguese translator i was born in japan, but now ive been in brazil for many years. Im now brazilian. Narrator by 1960, when this wave of immigration had slowed, the city, bulging at its seams, boasted 13 million residents. And then yet another group of immigrants began to pour in. children shouting this group came from brazils poor northeastern states. Between 1955 and 1980, more than five million arrived, attracted by the promise of work and a better life. But an already crowded city could not absorb them. So they began to build their own homes and neighborhoods, brick by brick, on the periphery. This socalled selfconstruction caused the city to spread even farther. scarlato speaking portuguese translator the gigantic size of sao paulo, in a horizontal sense, is a result of selfconstruction. In a chaotic, disorganized way, without planning, it spontaneously extended the horizons of the periery in all directions. Narrator today, sao paulo has swelled to encompass over 3,000 square miles, stretching more than 50 miles from end to end. Many of the new neighborhoods were built on steep, unstable land. Most were not recognized by the city and received few, if any, services. But some neighborhoods did progress. Jardim valkiria, or garden of the valkyries, was founded by squatters more than 30 years ago as a collection of cardboard shacks. Slowly, solid buildings appeared. Stores and churches opened, streets were paved and some utilities were installed. Bus routes connected the neighborhood to the city center. But without official recognition and nd ownership, these people remain squatters. So their Community Leaders are negotiating with the City Government for land titles and city services. speaking portuguese translator 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, they will be following a path behind generations before them, a path toward assimilation and integration. Translator i want to stay here, finish the house and continue. The kids will grow and study thats what i want. Narrator immigration to sao paulo has slowed again, but birth rates continue to increase the population. speaking portuguese translator so after the 1980s and especially in the 1990s, we get a slowing down of internal migration, and the growth of the city is a result of vegetative growth, that is, the natural growth of the population that inhabits the city, which, in either case, has decreased. Narrator with a projected population exceeding 20 million by 2015, sao paulo will continue to be one of the worlds megacities. The urban geography of immigration and Ethnic Diversity reveal a complex pattern of squatter settlements and selfconstruction. With luck and hard work, the newest residents will get their chance to share in the wealth and sophistication that is sao paulo. Narrator in equatorial regions around the world, large tropical rain forests are quickly vanishing. None is larger than south americas amazon. For centuries, it seemed boundless, inexhaustible no more. 16 of brazils rain forest has already vanished. In 22, over 10,000 squareiles of rain forest weesoyed thatabout 16 of brazils rain forest halfilbeone dades. A this rate atngheevelopment and w might it chang here we examine several themes, including Tropical Forest ecology; human environmental interaction; all to eherospts of sustainable development. Infrastructure and transportation costs; the for its richnessst and its diversity of life. D the forest ecosystem is a delicate balance of plants and animals, soil and water. Like geography, ecology is an integrative science, bringing together many problems into one view. Ecologist Daniel Nepstad is researching the effec of worsening droughts in the amazon. Whether hes gathering data in the forest canopy or mapping it on a computer, a spatial perspective is essential to understanding the future. To understd the future of the amazon, we really have to go back in time and think about the first people who arrived in the amazon, who came up the rivers and even these presented obstacles. If youo north on many of these tributaries orou you into waterfalls and rapids thatrevent boa from navigating. Narrator much of ths in the city of belem, which is located near. When european settlers arrived in amazonia in the 16th century and built cities like belem, the rain forest was seen as a rich, but impenetrable resource. Until the 1970s, belem was accessible to the rest of brazil only by water. Then came a wave of road building. So far, the Major Investments in infrastructure eeconcentrated along the eastern enof the basin and along the south. With roads you have cheaper access to the forest, and with cheaper access, a lot of Economic Activities become profitable. Narrator two of the biggest activities are cattle ranching and farming. chain saw buzzing but the one that clears the land for Everything Else is logging. wood splintering so whole new towns sprang up here, towns like paragominas, located in para state. This is a boomtown, home to more than 80 sawmills. This is brazils frontier, a land of opportunity munortamericas frontier of 100 yes ago. On the map, each round saw blade represents diffused mostly along the roads in the south and east. But many of the most important new roads into the interior are still dirt and not paved. Paving greatly accelerates the change. Nepstad and what were going to do is just look a little bit into the future, imagining that 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 the east and south, weve made inroads into the core of the basin. Narrator at the southern edge of that core, a new Economic Force is pushing the pavement north. From space, we see fields of soybeans etched in the shrinking forest. Brazil is about to overtake the u. S. As the worlds leading producer of soy, exporting their crop to millions of chinese consumers 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 santarem port and put it on oceangoing freighters and serve the World Markets that way. Its 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 lets just imagine for a second two different trajectories for this road. Here we see the portion thats not yet been paved santarem up here, mato grosso down here. In a businessasusual 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 expanding along this road. But there is reason to think that another scenario is possible. Narrator the lower rates of deforestation are based onheovernmen effectively rcing the environmental laws 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 belem. The law in para 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 called the global positioning, researcher carlos sousa cado just that. Man okay, gps is really powerfutool for us. What it allows us to do is to pick up signals from the satellites. And through a process of triangulation we can locate ourselves very preciselyn the ground and through a process to within about ten meters. Four. Theyve got four satellites now. We are. Probably. In this. Area. Mmhmm. Narrator if the government chooses, it can use gps to locate property lines on satellite photographs of the landscape. They can then determine how much of a farmers land has been cleared but enforcement is spotty. Rest. Another big problem is the inefficient way the cleared land is being used. The most common farming and grazing method here requires the farmer to cut the forest and let it dry. Llit capre thousands of fires from space, set by farmers during the dry season to release the nutrients from the vegetation. But the soils productivity disappears, sometimes in one or two years. It forces settlers to abandon their land and cut more forest elsewhere. Because this requires more land all the time, it is a form of extensive agriculture. Its called shifting, swidden or slashandburn cultivation. Its practiced in many developing coues until the forest runs out. This land was abandoned by shifting cultivators a few years earlier. The sight of new trees led chris uhl to a surprising and controversial revelation. Uhl when i first started working down here, i really thought that these lands were extremely fragile. And yet, if you look over here, this is a site that was used for a pasture for about ten years. It wasnt a ve sssfu sture, it was abandoned. I would have guessed that this piece of land would have stayed sort of as a degraded old field, and yet its clearly going back into forest. This is really a surprise for me. I didntginethat theort uld co. Soald me my who vw of the fragilityof s. To rnk and as i began to think, it occurd to me that gee, yoknow, maybe ese systemarnot as fragile as i had expected and, in fact, that might imply th perhaps they coul used. So it began really a whole noth line ofesearch. Rrator uhls Research Helps him and his colleagues to devise Development Guidelines for ranchers, farmers and foresters. For example, if loggers would cut trees more selectively and plan their logging roads less destructively, trees would regrow more quickly in areas wherehey have worked. Satellite images show why that is so important. Here is an area where loggers worked the oldfashioned way. When they cut, many surrounding trees were entangled in the same vines and came down as well. Bulldozers damaged large areas trying to remove and store the trees. But in this area, vines were cut from selected trees the year before. Narrow access roads allowed rubberwheeled 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 havent 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 growing problem. The reduced canopy from the indiscriminate harvest allows the sun to dry the forest floor, just adding to the fire hazard. Fire and smoke plus reduced vegetation actually change the microclimate, decreasing the rainfall and further increasing fires. Its a vicious cycle that is broken by careful tree harvests. As chris uhl learned, the trees grow back if you give them a chance. But his discovery led to an even bigger thought if ranchers and farmers could use their land more efficiently and for longer periods of time, perhaps they could avoid cutting new forest in the first place. Perhaps both developmental and Environmental Needs could be accommodated. It has to do with the difference between extensive and intensive agriculture. What were thinking about as a viable alternative is an approachwhicis m, and byintensive we mean that a given pof land wi pro and byintensive we mean itoduce, uit anl dutaear afteyear now, the real chalngin this, of course, is tma this innsive approach sustainable. Narrator already, there are some successful models. Near belem, small farms have been practicing intensive agriculture for decades. By mixing a variety of crops and by using locally produced organic and mineral fertilizers, they can continue to farm the same piece of land and by grovae ops, an increase their income 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 didnt have a means to produce new grass. continuing in portuguese so, i decided to research what id seen done in other places and i intensified my planting. Of course, there was an initial cost, but the return has been good, and its 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 around 50 to 60 of the state appropriate for logging. And when we put together. Narrator imazon has determined that, overall, about 20 of para states 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. That are not appropriate for logging. I guess id characterize my approach as a pragmatic approach, uh, appthe wondernd diversity athe fort represents. Ly prmac inhese i rlize that this landscape is inhated, will continue to be inhabited. And the goal is to come up with a win win situation in the sense that conservation of the forest occurs, that biodiversity 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. At the sti the pressurenetad he forest are mothey incdeging. Ever. They include further drying provoked by deforestation, by el nino, by global warming. They include extensive agriculture, which provides abundant sources of ignition for forests that are rendered flammable by drought or by logging. And all of those are coming together in an expanding frontier thats going to move up along the roads that are being paved into the heart of the Worlds Largest rain forest. Captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org annenberg media for information about this and other annenberg media programs call 1800learner and visit us at www. Learner. Org
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