A decade after the “Save the Rainforest” movement forced changes that slowed deforestation, activity is roaring back in some of the biggest expanses of forests in the world; this resurgence is rising the specter of a backward slide in efforts to preserve biodiversity and fight climate change. In 2015, for the first time in a decade, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon and across the border in Bolivia, where there are fewer restrictions on land clearance, rose. According to the organization Mighty Earth, in the Brazilian savanna areas called the Cerrado, operates Cargill, an American agricultural giant, that is responsible for 321,000 acres of deforestation between 2011 and 2015; moreover, some months ago the company traveled to Bolivia’s lowlands in the reaches of the Amazon River basin with the offer to buy soybeans from the Mennonite residents, peasants who have been carving settlements for 40 years, so as to increase its purchases of local soy and enhance the bonds with local producers. Although a supply-chain mapping is not available in Bolivia, reporters and environmentalists have been witnesses of the severe deforestation which is taking place; the reports come despite the New York Declaration on Forests signed in 2014 by Cargill that aims at eliminating deforestation from the production of agricultural commodities like soy by 2020. The company stated that if reports were accurate, it would intervene honoring the obligations and punishing the guilty employees; notwithstanding, it added that it could not solve the issue of deforestation alone, especially if Bunge, the American competitor of Cargill, does not have any commitment at ending deforestation. The world is everybody’s bond and everybody should contribute to safeguard it. The gLAWcal Team POREEN project Thursday, 2 March 2017 (source: The NewYork Times)