Brazil Considers Logging National Forests
11/2/97
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
The Environment News Service provides a good overview of current
threats to the Brazilian Amazon, including disclosing that forest
burning has increased dramatically (28%) in the past year. The author
discusses the Congressional Committee that is investigating the
presence of foreign logging companies in the Amazon. The Brazilian
government is considering opening National Forests to logging,
disregarding the severe forest ecosystem that has resulted in the
United States and elsewhere from such logging. "Sustainable
industrial logging" is to be pursued, despite the fact that it has
never been proven that rigorous environmental sustainability is
possible when logging rainforests.
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Brazil Considers Logging National Forests
Source: Environment News Service
Status: Copyright c 1997 ENS, Inc., contact for reprint permission
Date: October 29, 1997
Byline: By Beto Borges
Forest burning in the Brazilian Amazon has increased by 28% between
1996 and 1997 according to INPE, the government's National Institute
for Spatial Research. Government officials, however, argue that this
figure is lower than 1995. What they do not say is that the satellite
used in 1995 to monitor forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon, NOAA 14,
passed over the region during the day when cattle ranchers and small
farmers use fire to clear forest lands.
There is a very significant difference now. The new satellite used to
monitor forest fires, NOAA 12, covers the region at night, when most
of the fires started during the day have been extinguished. But even
without capturing most of the fires burning in the Brazilian rain
forests, the satellite shows an increase by 28%.
The interest on the part of Brazilian society about the future of the
Amazon region also seems to be increasing. I just returned from Brazil
where I was invited to address a Congressional Committee that is
investigating the presence of foreign logging companies operating in
the Brazilian Amazon, especially companies from Southeast Asia that
have started to log in the region in the past three years.
This Committee is headed by Congressman Gilney Viana from the state of
Mato Grosso, a long time advocate for better environmental protection
policies, who was until recently the head of the Commission on
Environment, Human Rights, and Minorities at the House of
Representatives.
I was asked to give a presentation about the systems of logging
concessions in the national forests of the United States and Canada as
part of a series of hearings that the Committee has been carrying out
on logging practices in the Amazon region of Brazil.
Why a hearing about forest practices in the United States and Canada?
Because the Brazilian government is trying to allow logging companies
to log in the Brazilian National Forests. This means that forests all
over the country, principally in the Amazon region, that have been
closed to industrial developments such as logging may start supplying
the ever increasing demand for tropical hardwoods for the Brazilian
and foreign markets.
The Tapaj›s National Forest in the state of Par , is the first where
logging concessions are being proposed by IBAMA (The Brazilian
Environmental Protection Agency).
The link between the Brazilian plan and forest practices in the United
States and Canada is that logging in these countries has been taking
place for many years inside national forests. The results have been
disastrous. For instance, only 3% of primary forests now remains in
the United States. In Canada, much of Alberta's Wood Buffalo National
Park has been clearcut, and clearcuts have left just a few remnants of
the temperate rainforest giants of British Columbia.
This first experiment of logging in Brazil's National Forests has
received a lot of criticism from Brazilian environmentalists. It has
also been halted by a Federal Court order because the communities who
live in the Tapaj›s National Forest were not consulted as to whether
they wanted logging to take place in their forest homelands or not.
Now, IBAMA is trying to bring the communities into the loop and will
try to approve its plan before the end of the year.
Some critics suggest that IBAMA's motivation is political. They note
that Eduardo Martins, the agency's president, has aspirations to
become the next Minister of Environment and that the "privatization of
Brazilian national forests," as many like to call it, would position
him well to be nominated for the Ministry of the Environment in next
year's presidential elections.
IBAMA's proposal to log Brazil's National Forests is very
controversial. The agency wants to put a hypothesis into practice
before its scientific conclusion. The hypothesis is that the
ecologically sustainable logging of the rainforest is possible.
But worse yet is IBAMA's vision for the National Forests. It has
announced that it will promote "sustainable industrial logging" in the
Tapaj›s National Forest. The world's scientific community has not even
proven that sustainable logging is possible in small scale, let alone
on an industrial scale.
Foresters within IBAMA who wish to remain anonymous are against the
plan on technical grounds, calling it inadequate. They say likelihood
for further environmental devastation in the Brazilian Amazon is very
high.
Not surprisingly, local environmentalists, the media, and some
Congress officials are very concerned. The National Forum of Brazilian
NGOs and Social Movements, an organization representing hundreds of
other groups of environmentalists, scientists, indigenous peoples, and
other traditional forest peoples, such as the rubber tappers, has
recently released a lengthy declaration that criticizes the federal
government's forest policy as largely inadequate.
The Congressional Committee that is investigating the Asian and other
foreign logging companies in Brazil has announced that it is getting
close to its conclusions and the media has been covering the increased
rate of burning in the Amazon with special interest.
Unfortunately, business seems to be proceeding as usual for the
federal government. Despite the seriousness of the forest destruction
in the Amazon, it is always trying to portray an image of being on
control of the situation. Antonio Carlos do Prado, a high official
within the Ministry of Environment told O ESTADO DE SAO PAULO, one of
Brazil's largest newspapers, that the arrival of Asian logging
companies from Malaysia and China in the Brazilian Amazon is a
positive fact and that with their presence it will be easier to
control logging in the region.
But many informed Brazilians are asking a very legitimate question.
"What can guarantee us that these Asian companies that had no respect
for their own national forests will do any different in Brazil?" World
renowned scientist and former Secretary of the Environment, Jos,
Lutzenberger is also very concerned about the arrival of the Asian
loggers, "It will be very difficult to control their insatiable
demand," he said recently.
President Fernando Cardoso has recently stated that there is no major
problem with burning in the Amazon region of Brazil. However, the New
York Times editorial of October 20 criticized Cardoso's role in
protecting the Brazilian Amazon region.
Unfortunately, the Amazon issue made it only to the margins of the
official agenda between U.S. President Bill Clinton and Cardoso,
during President Clinton's recent visit to Brazil. They preferred to
talk about trade, as if trade had nothing to do with the environment.
While the presidents argued over Mercosul and the Free Trade Area of
the Americas (FTAA), the official data on the environment was leaving
through the back doors of the Palacio do Planalto: increased
deforestation by 34% between 1991 and 1994, increased burning in the
Amazon by 30% between 1996 and 1997, and the most alarming of all,
their Intelligence Agency's reporting that 80% of all logging in
Brazil is illegal and predatory.
{Brazilian born Beto Borges is an ecologist and Brazil Program
Director for Rainforest Action Network in San Francisco, California.
He can be reached by phone at 415-398-4404 or by email:
brazilpro@ran.org Rainforest Action Network works to protect the
Earth's rainforests and supports the rights of their inhabitants
through education, grassroots organizing, and non-violent
direct action.}