Tri Initiative - Human Health and Effective Utilization of Tropical Forests

The past 35 years have witnessed a large-scale human migration from the densely settled areas of northeastern and southern Brazil to the Amazon basin. Desiring to escape the problems of population pressure, poverty and skewed land distribution in their home regions, settlers have moved to the Amazon hoping to carve a prosperous existence out of an unfamiliar environment. The result, however, has been extensive deforestation, land degradation, epidemics of vector-borne diseases, agricultural failures and economically non-viable mineral extraction.