The Web and Amazonian Rain Forests

Via CNN.com, via AP

Brazil to offer free Internet access to Amazon tribes
March 30, 2007

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) — Brazil’s government said it will provide free Internet access to native Indian tribes in the Amazon in an effort to help protect the world’s biggest rain forest.

The environment and communications ministers signed an agreement Thursday with the Forest People’s Network to provide an Internet signal by satellite to 150 communities, including many reachable only by riverboat, allowing them to report illegal logging and ranching, request help and coordinate efforts to preserve the forest.

The goal is to "encourage those peoples to join the public powers in the environmental management of the country," Francisco Costa of the Environment Ministry said in a statement. "The government intends to strengthen the Forest People’s Network, a digital web for monitoring, protection and education."

The ministry said city and state governments must first install telecenters with computers in selected areas, including indigenous lands. The federal government then will provide the satellite connection.

The areas in 13 states, including the Pantanal wetlands and the poor northeast, were chosen by the Environment Ministry, the National Indian Foundation, or Funai, and the government environmental protection agency Ibama, the ministry said.

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