Cutbacks in Amazonian Protection Put Off
12/18/99
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY
Brazilian conservation organizations mobilized swiftly to stop a
major weakening of Brazil rainforest protection laws. This included
efforts to reduce Amazon conservation areas, expand areas open to
logging and the types of trees available for harvest, reduce riparian
buffer zones, and exempt smaller properties from environmental laws.
The international community must organize to support local
conservationists in resisting this legislative give-away as the bill
is still lurking in the shadows. Anyone that cares about the future
of the Amazonian rainforest "should now be getting ready for the
biggest fight of the decade." If the gutting of Brazilian rainforest
environmental law goes through, the genie will never be put back in
the bottle. The Amazon will inevitably be lost as a functional
regional and global ecosystem of unrivaled significance.
g.b.
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ITEM #1
Title: Cutbacks in protection of Amazon put off
Source: The Boston Globe Online, Boston.com
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 8, 1999
Byline: Nicole Veash, Globe Correspondent
SAO PAULO - Environmental activists, crowding into a hearing of a
special congressional committee, last night fended off a lightning
legislative initiative that would have significantly reduced
environmental protections for the Amazon rain forest.
A powerful coalition of Brazilian landowners and logging companies
was persuaded to put off a vote on a proposed amendment to the Forest
Code. The revised code would have allowed the destruction of huge
swaths of the rain forest to make way for giant cattle-grazing
pastures and eucalyptus and pine plantations.
Following personal pleas from the secretary of state for biodiversity
and Brazil's director of forests, the congressional committee agreed
to delay a vote on the legislation that had been scheduled for today.
Despite the postponement of the vote until after the New Year,
Analuce Freitas, policy officer for World Wildlife Fund in Brazil,
said environmentalists were still feeling ''very betrayed'' that the
government had not slowed the legislative initiative earlier.
''We have a weak environment minister who hasn't done enough to stop
this proposal from becoming law,'' Freitas said. ''They may have
given us a few months extra for discussion, but it will be difficult
to make sure our voices are heard. The problem is nobody in Brazil
cares about the rain forests.''
The proposed changes to the Forest Code, which was established in
1965, would:
Reduce the Amazon conservation area from 80 percent to 50 percent.
Reduce the protected rain forest outside the Amazon from 50 percent
to 20 percent.
Reduce the conservation area surrounding riverbanks and lagoons from
100 meters to 30 meters.
Exempt smaller properties, up to 50 acres in size, from all
environmental law.
Allow landowners to cut down rain forest trees for economic
expansion, including planting crops, without applying for a
licence from authorities.
Give those farmers who have already illegally built on protected land
amnesty from prosecution.
The legislation had been pushed through Congress at lightning speed.
The special committee, which published its report recommending the
new Forest Code, allowed just six days of consultation time instead
of the usual 30.
''If the proposal becomes law it will set the environmental movement
back 30 years,'' said Flavio Monteil, political adviser for
Greenpeace in Brazil. ''The government is going to allow destroyers
of the environment to do whatever they like without consequence.
The measure enjoys the support of the influential agriculture
minister and the minerals and energy minister, as well as that of the
National Council for Agriculture.
''The main problem is that there has been no public discussion of
these recommendations,'' said Andre Lima, an environment lawyer for
the Socio-Ambient Institute. ''Anyone who cares about the environment
should now be getting ready for the biggest fight of the decade.''
The landowners coalition had maintained earlier that it had already
given the green movement adequate time to discuss the proposed change
in legislation.
''Landowners want to develop their properties to bring money and jobs
into the Amazon region,'' said Ronaldo Troncha, chief of staff for
Moacir Micheletto, chairman of the special committee. ''The law has
never been clear about the amount of land that is legally protected.
A new Forest Code would maintain the rain forest and clarify the
rights of landowners.''
Environment Minister Sarney Filho has openly expressed his opposition
to the proposed legislation.
''It's very important that there is further consultation so everyone
has time to analyze these new proposals,'' a spokesman for his
department said.
''That's why we prefer to reschedule this vote for early in the new
year.''
The green movement maintains that the state-sanctioned destruction of
Brazil's native woodland would contravene international treaties on
ecological protection.
ITEM #2
Title: Brazil greens cheer forest bill postponement
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 9, 1999
Byline: Axel Bugge
BRASILIA - Brazilian environmentalists applauded on yesterday the
shelving of a legislative proposal they said threatened the Amazon
rain forest by expanding the areas open to logging and the types of
trees available for harvesting.
Further parliamentary discussion of the bill, which would amend the
country's forestry code, was halted until March, they said.
If Congress approved the bill, it would represent "the largest known
setback for Brazilian environmental laws," said Andre Lima, a
representative from Brazil's Social Environmental Institute.
Brazilian Greenpeace representative Fabio Montiel said his
organisation will join other environmental groups, the environment
ministry and agricultural groups in offering an alternative proposal.
"This outcome was only possible thanks to the work of hundreds of
people and institutions from everywhere, which mobilised in record
time," World Wildlife Fund Director Garo Bamanian said in a
statement.
The bill, backed by Brazil's powerful farm lobby, had the goal of
increasing the amount of land available for agriculture.
But environmentalists said it would threaten the Amazon tropical rain
forest - the world's largest - by reducing the areas of forest
protected from farming and logging. It also would permit the
substitution of native woods for non-native species such as
eucalyptus and pine, they said.
Last week the U.S.-based Environmental Defence Fund wrote to U.S.
Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers urging him to express his
opposition to the bill during his visit to Brazil last weekend.
"We are gravely concerned with recent proposals that the government
of Brazil has negotiated with large landowners and ranchers to
drastically weaken the forestry code, upon which forest protection in
Brazil is based," the letter said.
The letter argued that the changes would have contradicted
commitments undertaken by Brazil under a $280 million Amazon
protection effort funded by the world's seven richest economies.
Environmentalists estimate that 20 percent of Brazil's tropical
forests in the Amazon and along its Atlantic coast have already been
destroyed.
ITEM #2
Title: ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Activists Block New Forestry Code
Source: InterPress Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 9, 1999
Byline: Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 9 (IPS) - Fast work by 189 non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) in mobilising support led the Brazilian
Congress to postpone a vote on a new forestry code which
environmentalists warn would lead to an increase in deforestation.
If approved, the new code, drawn up quickly by a parliamentary
commission, would represent a setback in conservation of Brazil's
forests, reducing the proportion of jungle to be preserved in large
rural properties.
Under pressure from the NGOs and the Environment Ministry, the
bicameral commission discussing the matter decided late Tuesday to
put off the vote on a proposal submitted by Deputy Moacier Micheletto
until March.
Due to that decision, the plenary session of Congress was blocked
from discussing the initiative Wednesday, as originally planned.
''This was a triumph by civil society,'' said Garo Batmanian,
executive-director of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Brazil.
Brazil's forestry code dates back to 1965, and there is broad
agreement among all sectors - from government to environmentalists to
landholders - that it is obsolete.
The code was amended in 1996 after it was announced that around
29,000 square kms of Amazon jungle had been lost in 1995, which
sparked a repeat of the wave of protests around the world which put
Brazil on the bench in the late 1980s, when huge forest fires swept
through the Amazon region.
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's modifications of the law
increased the proportion of forest to be conserved on large rural
properties in the Amazon from 50 to 80 percent, and from 20 to 50
percent in the rest of the country.
But the initiative was passed by means of a Provisional Measure, a
presidential decree that immediately takes effect, but only for a
month. Without the necessary support in parliament to make the
initiative a permanent law, Cardoso reissued the decree every month -
40 times in a row so far.
While the debates dragged out in the National Council on the
Environment, Deputy Micheletto presented another proposal, reducing
the percentage of areas to be preserved as set by Cardoso.
The draft law submitted by Micheletto also encroaches on the
environment in other aspects, such as allowing autochthonous forests
to be replaced with non-native species, and reducing the swath of
forest to be protected around lakes and reservoirs from 100 to 30
metres.
The speed with which the new draft law shot through parliament caught
environmentalists off guard. The proposal was only discussed with the
National Confederation of Agriculture, which represents Brazil's
large landowners - explaining the setback to forest protection
efforts.
But in just a few days, 189 NGOs, headed by WWF and the
Socioenvironmental Institute, organised protests to block the vote,
and activists were mobilised to lobby Congress.
Greenpeace Brazil called a Dec 2 demonstration outside the Planalto
Palace, the seat of the Brazilian presidency.
Activist Eduardo Quartim was arrested and held in custody for several
hours after attempting to hand over a chainsaw to a senior
presidential official, Pedro Parente, in a symbolic gesture.
The new forestry code represents ''government authorisation to those
who destroy the environment,'' said Flavio Montiel, a Greenpeace
political adviser.
The Technical Chamber of the National Council on the Environment has
been put in charge of studying the matter and proposing alternatives
by late February. (END/IPS/tra-so/mo/dm/sw/99)