The Worldwatch Report: Amazon Hatchet Job
6/26/99
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE
Despite indications that damage to the Amazon is consistently being
underestimated, Brazilian Amazon conservation programs are to be
gutted. For want of a relative pittance of money, the World's
primary ecosystem engine is to be jeopardized. What folly.
g.b.
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Title: The Worldwatch Report: Amazon Hatchet Job
Source: Environmental News Network
http://www.enn.com:80/features/1999/06/062199/amazon_3870.asp
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: June 21, 1999
Byline: Chris Runyan
Preliminary reports show that logging in the Amazon jumped by 30
percent in 1998. Based on conventional estimates, about 17,000 square
kilometers of forest in the Amazon were destroyed -- an area nearly
the size of Israel.
The Brazilian government is planning to effectively gut efforts to
protect the Amazon, despite news that the world's largest and most
quickly disappearing rainforest is being cleared twice as quickly as
previously thought.
In response to the fiscal austerity measures imposed by the
International Monetary Fund's $41 billion bailout package signed last
November, Brazil is planning to zero out between 60 and 90 percent of
its $70 million budget for conservation and environmental programs in
the Amazon.
Ironically, the cuts will slash some programs funded largely by
international aid, such as the Pilot Program for the Conservation of
Brazilian Tropical Forests, which surveys and sets aside indigenous
lands, aims to curb deforestation and has plans to set aside 240,000
square miles -- nearly 10 percent of the Amazon -- as preserves for
conservation and indigenous people.
International governments have agreed to pay up to $250 million for
the Pilot Program -- but Brazil must first put up matching funds of
10 percent. In addition, the government has proposed reducing the
budget for environmental programs by 66 percent.
While alarmed by the cuts, environmental activists are more concerned
that the IMF's measures will set off a social and environmental chain
reaction, driving those facing unemployment into the Amazon to
illegally log trees or to clear land for small farms or mines.
The recessionary impact is going to aggravate an already serious
problem of unemployment and environmental damage, said Steven
Schwartzman of the Environmental Defense Fund. People on the edge
will be pushed into desperation -- wild cat mining, illegal logging
and subsistence farming.
Indeed, last August President Fernando Cardoso rescinded a much-
heralded new law to crack down on illegal logging and pollution, once
again giving timber and mining companies nearly free rein.
Already, people come to sack the region, warned Claudionor Barbosa da
Silva, president of the Amazon Working Group, a coalition of more
than 350 Brazilian indigenous and environmental grass-roots groups.
What we need from the IMF is information and investment, not
deforestation and extractionism.
Preliminary reports show that logging in the Amazon jumped by 30
percent in 1998. Based on conventional estimates, about 17,000 square
kilometers of forest in the Amazon were destroyed -- an area nearly
the size of Israel. But a recent study in the April 8, 1999 issue of
Nature shows that actual rates of deforestation may be more than
twice as high, as satellite imagery has underestimated the true
extent of the damage.
Present estimates capture less than half of the forest area that is
impoverished each year, concludes the report, because forest openings
created by logging and fires are covered over by regrowing vegetation
within one to five years, and are easily misclassified in the absence
of accompanying field data.
(Chris Runyan is senior editor of World Watch, the bimonthly magazine
of the Worldwatch Institute.)
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