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Comment by burlesona | Hacker News Reader

I’ve never really thought about this before so maybe it’s totally infeasible, but implicit in this idea is that if the UN or US or... anyone, were to purchase the Amazon, they would then become responsible for enforcing its protection (as opposed to Brazil).

This seems to me the kind of thing that the UN could realistically enforce if “global parks” became part of its mandate. The big sticking point is who pays for it.

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There are some people with the means. Someone like Jeff Bezos could pull it off, instead of or in addition to shooting rockets into space. He could offer Brazil jobs (moving some Amazon centers there for example), he could raise the cash to "rent" the Amazon, and he also has the tools at his disposal to control that the agreement is honored, by analyzing satellite data for example. He might even be able to turn that into another profitable business, using the same technology for monitoring crops or similar. If he offers a good enough package, Bolsonaro could not refuse it.

No nation state is likely to give up or sell territory. You see very small cases where two countries that share a border swap a bit of (uninhabited) land to "clean up" the border, that's about it.

That would mean a cessation of sovereignty by Brazil, so why would they do that?

In return for an injection of cash to modernise their economy?

Just the notion that it might be for sale, in the sense of giving up sovereignty is beyond ridiculous. The brazilian constitution doesn't even allow that possibility.

And how much would be the offer anyway?

Just the internal GDP of the North region is circa 100 billion USD with tremendous potential to grow ( ecotourism, gold and diamond mining, high value exports like tonka beans, plus hydropower) , so anything less than 1 trillion USD wouldn't even be a good start.

The brazilian economy doesn't lack capital, it lacks proper institutional levers, which in the long term screw up even petrodollar volumes of investment.

And good luck holding it in place WITHOUT further deforestation .. Since it's a hotpot of illegal activity such as drug trafficking , mining, etc...

Money can't fix our problems, never could.

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