The Jan. 30 front page NYT article (“New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Saving Primeval Rain Forests”) does a nice job of reporting the benefits of economic growth in Brazil and Central America.As economies grow, people leave the rural areas for jobs in or near cities.  Jungles are less competitive for most agricultural uses, compared to grasslands, for example.  New England farms had trouble raising wheat and corn as inexpensively as the midwest, once railroads lowered transportation costs.  And much of the destruction of Brazilian rainforest was heavily subsidized by the Brazilian government, and by international aid agencies.

Years ago I wrote an article for Econ Update and The Freeman that noted the similarities between Brazilian government deforestation schemes and BLM and Forest Service projects in the U.S.And now, prosperity is restoring jungles at a far faster rate than they are being cleared: “for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forests are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster.” (NYT article below.)  Environmental purists may sneer at second growth forests and jungles, but the new rain forests are fully developed and rich ecosystems.  Anyway, this development is good news, since from voluntary action we are seeing new spontaneous rainforest orders.From the 1989 Freeman article:

“Many environmentalists, possibly influenced by Malthusian arguments, believe that overpopulation and economic growth alone force settlers into the Amazon rain forests, and into other tropical rain forests around the world. But if Brazil had an open economy, with sound money, free markets, and free trade, the opposite would likely happen: people would be drawn from the countryside into the cities, to take new jobs and share better living standards.Cities can absorb an astonishing number of people, and when unshackled can transform low-cost labor into rapidly increasing prosperity. Singapore and Hong Kong are two recent examples of thriving cities creating wealth for their once-impoverished workers.The mass migration of rural workers to urban areas has continued since the Industrial Revolution. People take advantage of the better jobs in and around thriving cities, leaving behind the agrarian life in isolated villages. Most Latin American economies, however, are neither free of inflation nor thriving.Hampered by protectionism, taxes, regulations, and money-losing state-owned companies, Latin American cities have not been able to create the new jobs and prosperity needed to employ and enrich swelling urban populations. Brazilian politicians, instead of deregulating theireconomies, have dreamt up schemes to relieve urban pressure by shuttling the poor out to exploit the “hidden riches” of the Amazon.”

That was then.The NYT article reports the upbeat environmental news for now (ending the article, of course, with a negative note that recession might reverse recent environmental gains).Full NYT article is here.