Brazil to Protect Large Tracts of Amazon Rainforest
4/29/98
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Title: Brazil to Protect Large Tracts of Amazon Rainforest
Source: The Associated Press
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 4/29/98
WASHINGTON - In an unprecedented step to protect Amazon forests, Brazil
announced a two-year commitment to bring under government protection new forest
areas almost two-thirds the size of Texas.
The step on Wednesday is the first outcome of a broad-based alliance between
the World Bank and the World Wildlife Fund, a conservation group, for forest
conservation and sustainable use.
''The pledge represents a very important step,'' Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
Brazil's president, said in a videotaped statement. ''This is a testimony of
our commitment to preserve the environment. ... I sincerely hope the steps we
are taking will encourage other countries to do the same.''
Cardoso said the protected areas will total 62 million acres. As a first step
toward fulfilling his goal, Cardoso said he has signed decrees for two new
protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon and two in the Atlantic Forest,
together totaling almost 4 million acres.
James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, said he was thrilled with the
announcement.
''We're concerned about forests. We're concerned about biodiversity,''
Wolfensohn said. ''It's necessary for us environmentally in every sense, and if
we don't do something about it ..., then our kids are not going to have forests
and the environment is going to be much worse than it is today.''
He said he has informed the Brazilian government that the World Bank stands
ready to support and finance the protection of the forests. Germany and other
European countries also have made contributions, he said.
Claude Martin, director general of the World Wildlife Fund International, said
more needs to be done and urged leading industrial nations to participate in
the alliance and contribute to forest conservation.
The alliance between the World Bank and the World Wildlife Fund aims to help
countries set aside 125 million acres of forests in new protected areas and
bring 500 million acres of production forests under independent certification
by 2000.
Almost two-thirds of the earth's original forest cover already has been lost.
In the past three months, forest fires have raged across an area of Brazil the
size of Belgium. Home to one-tenth of the world's plant and animal species, the
Amazon contains some of the planet's most important tropical habitat.