Who actually owns the rain forest land? It seems odd to me that this article does not really get into that. The simplest way to save the rain forest would be for some entity, private or public, to buy it up and turn it into a park. That seems way more effective than trying to convince companies to not use it for farming, since there is no limit to the supply of companies that are capable of operating a farm.
That's hard to say. Arguably nobody.[0] Some say everyone, but then why not say that about <insert favorite national resource>? In reality, it's total chaos. Multiple generations of overlapping government grants, poor records, and lots of forgery.
People are burning it down for farmland and palm oil even after someone else tells them they own it. Enforcement doesn't always work since nobody is that motivated to guard it - you have to actively involve locals in using all the trees for something.
> I imagine it would cost a pittance compared to the cost of buying the land.
In my parts of the world (Eastern Europe) most of the locals themselves are the one tearing the forests down, because high in the mountains where they live this is one of the only income sources they have. In order to convince them not to cut down trees anymore you'd basically have to implement a guaranteed minimum income across all those areas, which should be big enough to buy its beneficiaries 4x4 vehicles and build big houses (that's what cutting trees affords those people to buy right now).
The anti-deforestation discourse comes mostly from people living in urban areas, who do not economically depend on cutting forests down. Ours is a complicated species.
The Amazon deforestation problem is not the chopping down of a few trees, but large scale clear felling of large tracts of land. Think two bull dozers with a chain inbetween driving forwarding, clearing everything it's path.
Another problem, but smaller is single plots of land cleared to make way for a family to farm / raise cattle.
