Call for More Forest Reserves in the Brazilian Amazon
12/25/98
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE
In the aftermath of recently proposed Brazilian government cuts of
some 90% of Amazon rainforest conservation programs, the NGO community
is calling for increased extractive forest reserves. It is criminal
of the international community and Brazilian government to allow
short-term economic issues to jeopardize perhaps the World's most
important ecological system. The necessary resources must be made
available to weather the economic storm without forfeiting the Amazon
to inevitable diminishment.
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: NGO'S Press for More Forest Reserves
Source: Inter Press Service
Status: Copyright 1998, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 23, 1998
WASHINGTON, (Dec. 22) IPS - Non-governmental organizations, fearful of
the aftermath of proposed budget cuts to environmental programs in
Brazil, want to transform 10 percent of the Brazilian Amazon
rainforest into "extractive reserves" by the year 2002.
These reserves would be managed by people such as rubber tappers, who
live in the Amazon collecting wild rubber latex from trees, say the
National Council of Rubber Tappers of Brazil and two heavyweight
Washington-based environmental groups: the Environmental Defense Fund
and the National Wildlife Federation.
"This will allow us to defend 50 million hectares of forest, secure
the land rights and improve the living conditions of tens of thousands
of families," said Atanagildo de Deus Matos, president of the council.
The groups acknowledge that they face an uphill political battle to
reach their goal after the Brazilian government announced last month
that it was slashing about 90 percent of its Amazon conservation
programs.
Overall, environmental programs would be cut by an estimated 65
percent as part an austerity deal to win billions of dollars in
emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The cuts come as the Amazon is in desperate need of conservation
efforts, say environmentalists who add that some 52 million hectares -
or 12.5 percent - of Amazon jungle was destroyed between 1978-96.
With 2,700 bird species and more than 2,000 different types of fish,
the Amazon is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world,
and also one of the most threatened. Cattle ranches, gold mining and
soy plantations are rapidly replacing the dense tropical forest at an
estimated rate of about eight football fields per minute or 13,000
acres a day, according to Steven Schwartzman, a senior scientist with
the Environmental Defense Fund.
"The crisis in the Amazon, ecologically and socially, has never been
worse," he said.
According to an analysis of satellite data of the region, compiled
over several decades, the conversion of forest to agriculture is
rapidly accelerating, said Compton Tucker, a scientist with the U.S.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
"Changes in tropical forest in the Amazon are always tied to some
improvement in transportation infrastructure, like paved roads or
railroads -- you see this again and again," said Tucker. Such
infrastructure development opens up the area to large scale farms and
other settlements.
"It is clear that legally enforced reserves are needed," he said.
Groups calling for more reserves, however, say they not against all
road building.
"Obviously if people are going to live in a sustainable manner in the
forest they must have transportation so that they can sell their
products and their children can go to school," said Barbara Bramble,
Latin American affairs specialist with the Washington- based National
Wildlife Federation. "What there has to be is a rational management
plan for the forest."
The trick, said Bramble, is to set aside reserve land before the roads
come into the region. In the Brazilian state of Rondonia where the
road came in first, "you saw the destruction" but in the state of
Acre, rubber tappers led by Chico Mendes in the 1980s demanded clear
land rights before the development of new roads.
Mendes, who was assassinated in 1988 reportedly by cattle rangers,
first came up with the idea of "extractive reserves," according to the
Environmental Defence Fund and the National Wildlife Federation.
In an effort to resolve the conflict between cattle ranchers who want
to clear the forest and rubber tappers who depend on the trees, Mendes
urged the formation of legally protected areas that managed by local
communities, who harvest forest products in a way that does not harm
the environment.
Since then, more than 20 such reserves have been created in the last
decade by the Brazilian government, covering about three million
hectares, said a report by the groups.
"Chico showed us that people were indispensable to the conservation
process," said Schwartzman.
But the Brazilian government cut its endangered rainforest program
which developed and enforced these reserves because of the IMF-
imposed austerity measures, said other environmentalists.
"Brazil can take credit for developing some of the best methods for
long-term forest conservation, by involving local communities --
especially extractive reserves," said Bramble.
Sadly, the implementation of these programs has been getting under way
only recently, under the auspices of the programs that are now slated
for near-elimination.
While many of the environmental cuts are in actual government
spending, environmental activists say that the endangered rainforest
program was largely funded by grants from European nations. This is
because the government reports the budget cuts as savings without
having to account for the corresponding loss of donor funds.
"The proposed funding cuts would paralyze Brazil's best hope for
conserving their great national heritage, but would do little to
balance the budget," said Bramble.
"The Brazilian Congress has the power and responsibility to restore
the budget for Amazon conservation, for wildlife and people; and the
IMF has an equal responsibility not to turn a blind eye to the
environmental impacts of its deals," he said.