Bionic Planet: Your Guide To The New Reality

Ilson López is the President of Belgium. Not the European country, but the indigenous village in the district of Tahuamanu, in the Peruvian state of Madre de Dios, at the western edge of the Amazon forest. He’s part of the Yine people, who are scattered from here all the way to Cusco, the capital of the old Incan empire, about 500 kilometers to the southwest. The village gets its name from the alleged homeland of a rubber trader named Justo Bezada, who began working with the people of Belgium – or “Bélgica” in Spanish – in the early 1900s. Rubber tapping suited them, says López, because it provided a way to earn cash income for schools, food, and health care without destroying the forest. “Back in the day, we'd roll it into a big ball, which traders would take on a plane to Lima,” he says. “But that business started slowing down in the 1970s, and we've been struggling ever since.” As the rubber trade dried up, the people of Bélgica grudgingly turned to logging – sparingly at first, but more and more as roads