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Facebook announced measures to stop attempts to sell protected lands – in particular in the Amazon region – on its marketplace
What’s going on
- The largest IT giant Facebook announced a ban on the purchase or sale of land in ecological protected areas on the Facebook marketplace and in its WhatsApp and Instagram applications.
- The move follows a BBC investigation in February that found people were illegally selling large tracts of land in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest on the Facebook Marketplace platform.
- Facebook plans to match listings on its marketplace with the World Conservation Watch Center database of protected areas to identify people who violate the company’s new commercial policies. Advertisements for the sale of protected areas will be blocked.
- It is noted that these are only the first steps aimed at solving the problem of illegal sale of protected lands – in the future, Facebook plans to strengthen these measures if necessary.
- The tech giant has previously refused to update its trade policy, but has been willing to work with the governments of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia to prevent the sale of Amazon protected forests on its marketplaces.
What does it mean
The Amazon is the largest protected area, which is responsible for stabilizing the climate in South America and around the world, and also has 10% of all biological species on our planet. However, for decades, the Amazon rainforest has been under the threat of extinction, and the world community has not yet been able to develop a set of measures for their conservation.
The BBC documentary on the illegal sale of protected lands in the Amazon shed light both on the existing problems of state and legal regulation of protected areas, and on loopholes in the largest marketplaces, thanks to which attackers can openly trade protected lands.
The scheme is simple – first, the traders cut down the forest in the protected area, then seek the removal of the protected status of the land on the grounds that it no longer serves its original purpose. So it can be easily sold even legally, initially buying a piece of land from the state at a low price. According to illegal Amazon traders, in Brazil there is no risk of scrutiny of such frauds by state bodies – the government has cut the budget for inspections of the federal agency IBAMA, which is responsible for regulating deforestation, by 40%.
Why did the sale of protected areas become possible on trading platforms on the Internet? The fact is that marketplaces are not able to adapt their commercial policies as quickly as the global e-commerce market is growing. And if it is obvious that the sale of psychotropic substances, child pornography and weapons should be banned in the first place, few would have thought that protected lands would be sold on trading floors.
It is worth noting that a number of experts believe that the measures proposed by Facebook are not effective:
“If Facebook does not require users to indicate the geolocation of territories for sale, any attempt to block potentially dangerous ads will be a mistake. They can use the best database in the world, but without georeferencing, these measures will not work,” says Brazilian lawyer Brenda Brito.