News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on BHP to destroy at least 40 Aboriginal sites, up to 15K years old, to expand mine. Parent comment

Re:BHP to destroy at least 40 Aboriginal sites, up to 15K ye... by reubenmorais on Thursday June 11, 2020 @07:56AM (#23487846)
To say so fatalistically this is a no-win scenario and there's no practical solution to preserve them is a bit much, I'd say. Countries and states preserve gigantic bits of land all the time.

In Brazil for example there is a mixed model at the federal level with national parks and environment protection areas (APAs). National parks are geared for maximum preservation, the entire area is government property. APAs are delimited areas with special biologic/historic/cultural value where people can still own property, live there, and even farm, but activities in the area are supervised with preservation in mind. It's not a perfect system, but it's better than nothing, and it can always be worked on.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:BHP to destroy at least 40 Aboriginal sites, up to 15K ye... by hhw on Thursday June 11, 2020 @09:36AM (#23488691)
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but isn't Brazil currently losing huge tracts of protected rainforest in those areas, just because of Bolsonaro's politics? How is he managing to undermine these protections so totally?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/world/americas/brazil-def...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:BHP to destroy at least 40 Aboriginal sites, up to 15K ye... by reubenmorais on Thursday June 11, 2020 @09:49AM (#23488829)
We're all learning in the past few years how quickly institutions can fail when you have bad faith actors at the highest levels. In this case he can do a great deal of damage simply by openly being against environmental causes, because it sends a message that the laws will not be enforced, even before he started actually dismantling the laws.
[ Parent | on HN ]