'Sustainable Extraction' Spreads in Amazon
Copyright 2000 InterPress Service
November 13, 2000
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 13 (IPS) - Local communities of rubber-tappers and others who make a living selling wild fruits and other natural products gathered in Brazil's Amazon jungle have been forming associations and cooperatives authorised to collectively work in special reserves.
The so-called ''Extractive Reserves'' (Resex), a community- based model for the sustainable exploitation and preservation of natural areas, aimed at guaranteeing means of subsistence for communities in the Amazon, have access to soft loans as of this month, channeled through the Environment Ministry, which also put into effect a programme aimed at expanding the number of reserves.
A government fund will earmark some 15.5 million dollars a year to the Resex reserves, at 0.5 percent interest, compared to the going rate of five percent.
''That population provides environmental services to the country and to humanity at large, which means the benefits are more than justifiable,'' the Environment Ministry's secretary of coordination of the Amazon, Mary Alegretti, told IPS.
''The 'extractors' are the best protectors of the forests,'' she said.
The new financing will have ''a major social and economic impact'' on the Resex reserves, whose main objectives -- ensuring subsistence for local communities and improving their quality of life -- have already been achieved, according to Alegretti.
The next step on the agenda is to boost the commercial production of the ''extractors,'' she added.
Environment Minister Jos‚ Sarney Filho estimated that around 100 million rubber-tappers and other gatherers of wild natural products would benefit by the Environment Ministry's new measures, which were adopted last week.The first Resex reserves -- demarcated tracts of public land worked by associations of rubber-tappers and gatherers -- were officially created in early 1990, after the impact of the December 1988 murder of Chico Mendes, an environmentalist and the leader of the ''seringueiros'' (rubber-tappers), at the hands of gunmen hired by large landowners.
Today there are 16 federal reserves, administered by the central government, and many more under the protection of state governments. Rondonia alone, a state in the southwestern part of Brazil's Amazon jungle, has 17 protected natural areas, Alegretti reported.
Local communities organised in associations or cooperatives of ''seringueiros'' and others whose livelihood is based on the gathering of natural resources in the jungle submit proposals for the creation of new areas. Authorities then evaluate the proposals, and demarcate the new ''Environmental Conservation Units'' to be collectively and sustainably exploited.
Last week, Minister Sarney Filho formalised the creation of a new 152,000-hectare reserve in Tarauac , in the state of Acre. The area will be worked by 200 local families.
The new reserve arose from a suggestion made by Chico Mendes shortly before he was killed. The area has many ''seringueiras'' -- the trees that produce the latex that is converted into rubber.
The area of Tarauc was the focus of Alegretti's doctoral thesis 22 years ago, when the extraction of latex was still dominated by ''rubber-bosses''. The creation of the Resex reserves thus represented the ''liberation'' of the rubber-tappers, the official pointed out.
But there is too much bureaucratic red tape involved in the procedure for creating new reserves to keep up with the applications for new Resex, lamented Alegretti, who said the measures announced last week would trigger an even greater inflow of requests to set up new protected areas.
Sarney Filho announced that the new reserves would be expanded by adapting the land reform programme to the sustainable extraction of natural raw materials. The beneficiaries will not own their own plots of land as do people settled in the framework of the government's agrarian reform programme, but will collectively exploit the Resex reserves.
Rubber, Brazil nuts, vegetable oils, tropical fruit, wood, artisanal fishing and small-scale farming and stockbreeding are the sources of food and income of the communities of ''extractors.''
Some Resex reserves have already made headway in the market, and are even planning to add value to their products. The Xapur¡ Resex, created in the state of Acre, where the first such reserves emerged, will produce condoms with the latex rubber gathered by its members, in local factories currently being built by the Health Ministry.
An Italian company, Pirelli, is buying rubber to make tires, which it plans to call Xapur¡, said Alegretti, who pointed out that the use of the new product name should entail the payment of royalties to the members of the Xapur¡ Resex.
Other reserves have signed contracts through which they will supply, under preferential conditions, raw materials to a company producing leather of vegetable origin. And international environmental groups like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund are buying materials to make footwear and a green-friendly computer mouse.
Technological innovations are also on the drawing board. A seminar will be held this week in R¡o Branco, the capital of Acre, to identify the needs of Resex reserves that universities and research centres can help address.
But what is lacking in order to design a global policy for the sector is data on the ''extractors'' who do not form part of reserves that have already been created. Authorities admit that they do not even know how many people fall into that category.
To improve knowledge on that sector of the population, the non- governmental Socioenvironmental Institute has been hired to start drawing up a map that will indicate the location of communities of rubber-tappers and gatherers in the Amazon.
''It will be difficult, due to the wide spread of such communities'' throughout a broad region accounting for half of the territory of Brazil, the fifth largest country in the world, noted the project's coordinator, Adriana Machado, who said that a true census was impossible to carry out, because it would simply be far too expensive.
But since a large part of the ''extractors'' are organised in associations, cooperatives and communities, it would be possible for a range of institutions to gather information, which could be complemented by visits to the field, said Machado.