Human Interest

Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo, which provides one third of the countries GPD, is now running low or water due to one of the worst droughts in 8 years. There are more than 21 million people in this city and 13 million of them are facing water outages. If it doesn't rain soon, the city could face a collapse. The city has blamed the drought of lack of water in the vapor clouds that the amazon usually provides to the city. They also blame it on deforestation and global warming. President Dilma Rousseff has questioned the cities misusage of their water supply, claiming that the city mismanaged their water supply.  

This shows just how important water is the human race. It also shows how humans have no sense of urgency in conserving water until it's too late. The saying "you never know a good thing until it's gone" applies in this case. The Brazilian government did not take any sufficient measures to conserve water until it realized how depleted the reservoir is. This event demonstrates the environmental impact of  water depletion on humans, and how humans have such a huge impact on the geographical landscape on Earth. As seen in the picture above, many greens turned yellow as a result of the lowering water levels. The river beds are soon going to be overgrown by shrubbery as water no longer exists there. These are all results of a combination of natural (lack of rain) and human causes of resource depletion.

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For those of you soccer fans, the upcoming World Cup and Olympics in 2016 will both be significant challenges for Brazil, considering both their political, economic, and urban challenges. Brazil was a bold choice for both events, but will they meet the challenge?

This seems to be a great and fun way to get kids involved in learning something new.  It uses multiple ways to get kids to learn and remember at the same time while keeping it fun and interesting.  This could be used for many major sporting events around the world, including men and women world cups and the olympics.  It could also be used domestically to learn about different cities in America, specifically cities or regions that host the Super Bowl, World Series, or any other major sporting event.  Great geography and social studies tool.

ESPN is covering this topic only because of the upcoming Olympics, but underneath the veneer of a sports article are some weighty geographic issues that loom large for Brazil.  

I would say. Just imagine three mega cities like Rio de Janeiro, population 11,960,000 then Buenos Aires with a population of 13,530,000 and finally Sao Paulo with the Southern Hemisphere's largest metropolitan area with a population of 19,920,000 with 2 more Mega cities to be added by 2025.

I cannot believed the size of Brazil is at this scale because we don't hear a lot about it as being a world power. It shows that even though the country is this big, most of the land is uninhabitable due to the forests and geography of the land. In addition, from history class one cannot imagine a small country like Portugal controlled a big country as Brazil from the colonial times. Seeing this map with all these European countries inside of it with some space leftover, one can see the massive size of this South American country.

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I believe that absolutely no one is surprised that right before an international event, the hosting city is cracking down on its problem areas. I am skeptical of the Brazilin governments  promise to develop the long neglected Favelas. After Rio finishes hosting the 2016 Summer games, the government will once again neglect the Favelas. There will no longer be an incentive for the government to care about the favelas. The eyes of the world will be off the  city and things can return to normal. The only losers in this equation are the actual residents of these slums. Once again the promise of better days will ripped  from them. An added injury is that there informal economy will have been destroyed. While life in an informal economy is hard by any measure, it is still a way of making a living. The increased police presence will destroy that way of life and replace it with empty promises.