Circa 1980: Japan buys the Amazon Rainforest

Back in the 1980s as Japan's economic prowess grew there occurred in the United States a Japanese based xenophobia which created in the American mind all kinds of frightening scenarios, each culminating with Japan replacing America as the world’s premiere economic power.

One such American horror story (likely apocryphal) was that Japan had offered to absorb Brazil's international debt (with a supporting profit-sharing deal) for the exclusive right to develop the Amazon Rainforest. Assuming such a deal was actually in the offing and that an economically desperate Brazil took such a deal, do you think Japan today would be, what so many Americans feared, the dominate economic power? How so?
 
Not sure. Japanese culture maintains a great deal of respect for the environment, even if they have trouble with that at times.

I do figure that US influence and later stuff would have Japan maintain the Amazon as a large sanctuary for environmental purposes though I do feel they’d find a way to use to maintain Brazil by the balls of you will
 
This reminded me of two things: first, the Norwegians used some of their sovereign wealth money to basically bribe the Liberians into not selling most of their rainforest to logging companies. Environmental groups would probably go berserk unless Japan makes some guarantees about the level of development they're going to make, or not make. Secondly, there was a story I read forever ago about a Japanese medical ship acting as third party humanitarian aid in a conflict between a surviving Al-Andalus and a Christian Spain that had fled to the new world. Basically a rip off of apocalypse now, but still interesting.

To get back to the point though, this would probably be a waste, assuming such a deal ever even took place. Whatever Brazilian government approves this is going to suffer, and hard. The Brazilian people aren't going to take kindly to their government selling a huge portion of their country to a foreign power. Not only that, but there'd probably be low-level backlash against the Brazilian-Japanese population. No lynchings or anything so extreme, but probably some boycotts of small businesses and Japanese brands.

On the positive side for Japan, control over the valuable mineral resources will probably pay off in the 2000's during the commodities boom. Not sure if it'll be worth it though.
 
How does a country buy a rainforest. All things considered though, i think a lot more protections actually in the long run, even on the right their is a big emphasis on the environment and like people mentioned, they'd have to otherwise they'd probably face sanctions if they tried to log it heavily.
 
I guess I hold a prejudice towards Brazil; I viewed the prospect (back in the '80s) as a good thing for the Rainforest believing (maybe mistakenly so) that Japan would do a better job maintaining the environment while garnering its resources, in particular its pharmaceutical possibilities. I thought at the time that Brazil was allowing great areas of the Rainforest to be slashed and burned and that the World was calling for them to stop. -- Maybe I just don't know Japanese business ethics and its attitude towards the environment as well as I though I did.
 
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