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Workers flocking from other parts of Brazil for employment on infrastructure projects have led to an increase in violence in some areas, and a strain on resources in towns.The governor of the Brazilian state of Pará, Hélder Barbalho, has announced a full lockdown in ten cities, including the capital, Belém, due to the impact caused by the high number of COVID-19-related-cases in the state’s hospitals. The delicate codependence some Indigenous groups have with the forest has been disrupted, and clashes break out as land is forcibly seized.
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In addition to environmental threats, such as soil erosion following deforestation and pollution from gold mining, exploitation of the Amazon has a number of social impacts, particularly on Indigenous communities. An area of extraordinary biodiversity, with some three million species of plants and animals, including endemic and endangered flora and fauna, the Amazon is also home to more than 350 different Indigenous groups, more than 60 of which still remain largely isolated. Currently, land conversion and deforestation in the Amazon release up to a billion metric tons of carbon per year, not including emissions from forest fires, according to a study reported in The Guardian. The rainforest serves several key environmental functions both regionally and globally – helping regulate the local weather and global climate. Environmentalists say that this is encouraging deforestation and creating a climate of impunity. Bolsonaro frequently speaks out against environmental protection measures, and makes comments undermining Brazilian courts’ attempts to punish offenders. In addition, large infrastructure schemes have been built. The president encourages farming and mining in protected areas, arguing this will combat poverty. Conservation regulation and enforcement have been eroded under Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s administration. In recent years, fires – often set during land clearance – have led to wildfires, exacerbated by sustained drought conditions brought on by global heating. Since 2019, devastation of the Brazilian Amazon has been running at its fastest pace in a decade, according to data from the research institute Imazon. According to the independent Council for Foreign Relations, Brazil lost around a fifth of its forest cover in the fifty years before 2019. Exploitation of the Amazon’s resources – such as minerals and metals including gold, as well as timber – alongside infrastructural development, such as clearance of land for large-scale farming, hydro-electric schemes and the construction of roads, has led to massive destruction of the natural environment. The Amazon rainforest, 60 percent of which lies in Brazil, is under great threat, as deforestation, mining, and exploitation of other resources gains momentum under environmentally regressive policies. Despite pressure from indigenous people, environmentalists and non-governmental organizations, the Belo Monte project was built and completed in 2019. The Munduruku community inhabit the banks of another tributary of the Amazon, the Tapajos River, several hundred kilometers away, where the government has plans to build further hydroelectric projects. After protesting at the site of the construction of the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River, they traveled to the national capital Brasilia to present their demands to the government. Members of the Munduruku community line up to board a plane at Altamira Airport, in Pará, Brazil.