Brazil Agrobusiness and Ranchers in Secret Forest Destruction Deal
12/7/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Urgent Action: Brazil agrobusiness and ranchers in secret
forest destruction deal
Vote to legalize massive new forest destruction could come
tomorrow
Source: Environmental Defense Fund,
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 7, 1999
-Please fax or email Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers with a
copy to Brazil President Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Are Your Tax Dollars Bankrolling Disaster?
December 7, 1999
Brazil's large landowners and ranchers last week cut a secret deal to
roll back environmental regulations and allow greatly increased forest
destruction. Only quick action from Brazilian environmental
organizations and Senator Marina Silva held off the concerted attack
on forest protection. The proposed changes to Brazil's Forestry Code
would open up tens of millions of acres of rainforest to destruction.
Help stop this disastrous deal for good! Only last year, the US
spearheaded a $41 billion financial bailout from the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, Inter American Development Bank and
the US Treasury to keep Brazil's currency strong. Should US taxpayer
dollars bail out a government whose President condones backroom deals
to undo environmental legislation that he himself signed so that
latifundistas can ravage the forest at will? Fax or email Secretary
of the Treasury and ask that he relay your concerns to the government
of Brazil.
At the end of 1997 and beginning of 1998, thousands of concerned
citizens around the world gave their support to Brazilian
environmentalists and parliamentary leaders such as Marina Silva to
encourage the Brazilian government to pass the legislation needed to
give Brazil's environmental agency, IBAMA, the authority to assess
fines, shut down environmental law-breakers --- in short, to enforce
Brazil's environmental law. Specific regulations (e.g., the amounts
of fines) were only issued earlier this year. IBAMA issued a string of
record fines for illegal deforestation and burning, seized illegal
timber and logging equipment.
Faced for the first time with effective environmental regulation,
Brazil's powerful rural elite resorted to back- room politics to try
and gut the law and get back to business as usual. The proposal
designed in secret by the ranchers' lobby and the government, was sent
to the Senate for a vote November 23rd, and would, among other abuses,
have:
* amnestied illegal deforestation
* increased the areas of Amazon forest and tropical savanna available
for deforestation by 30%
* severely limited environmental agency authority over large parts of
private land
Environmentalists blocked the vote, and are pushing for withdrawal of
the bill and a broad public discussion of changes in the Forestry
Code.
Please fax:
Secretary of the Treasury
Larry Summers
Fax 202- 622 0073
cc
Presidente da Republica
Fernando Henrique Cardoso
fax - 011 55 61 411 1456 or 011 55 61 224 0289
pr@planalto.gov.br
Sample:
Secretary of the Treasury
Lawrence Summers
Department of the Treasury
Dear Mr. Summers:
Our government has committed substantial taxpayer funds to the $41
billion International Monetary Fund package to support Brazil's
economy. Having taken this step, we should expect that Brazil's
government not renege on its repeated commitments to forest
protection, in the context of the publicly funded G7 Pilot Program for
Protection of Brazilian Tropical Forest as well as other international
forums. The Brazilian government recently agreed to gravely weaken its
forest protection laws in a proposed reform of the Forestry Code, in a
secret negotiation with large ranchers. Please inform your
counterparts in the Brazilian government that the American people
favors openness and transparency in decisions that affect the public
interest and supports forest protection, as do most Brazilians. Please
urge your counterparts to withdraw proposed changes to the Forestry
Code until an informed public discussion of the issues can be held.
Thank you for your attention to this.
Sincerely