Brazil's Timber Harvest in Public Forests Privatized
7/27/97
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
In response to the recently concluded Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry
into the Brazilian timber industry and to the general perception that
timber cutting in the Amazon is occurring largely unregulated, the
government of Brazil has announced the drastic measure of opening timber
reserves in the Amazon rain forest to commercial loggers. Skeptics,
including myself, are concerned as all trends continue to indicate large
scale industrial logging in the Amazon is to become the norm. Following
are two reports on the recent Brazilian government move.
g.b.
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ITEM #1
Title -- To Fight Outlaws, Brazil Opens Rain Forest to Loggers
Source -- The New York Times Company
Status -- Copyright 1997, seek reprint permissions from source
Date -- July 21, 1997
Byline -- DIANAN JEAN SCHEMO
[R] IO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Faced with rampant illegal logging, the
Brazilian government is opening timber reserves in the Amazon rain forest
to commercial loggers in what it describes as a project to combine
economic potential with controlled development.
The forest reserves cover 5,440,000 acres, an area roughly the size of New
Jersey. They were mapped out during Brazil's military dictatorship, which
lasted from 1964 to 1985, with the prospect of their eventual use by the
timber industry. The government said last week that it would use the areas
to demonstrate logging practices that could sustain surrounding
communities and the environment.
"We aren't going to turn around policy in the Amazon simply through
taxes," said Eduardo Martins, the head of Brazil's environmental agency.
"We have to create a so-called positive agenda in forestry that will allow
people to do this as a stable, economically viable activity, creating work
in a region that needs alternatives."
While Brazil has in the past opened reserves to logging, the new
concessions are the first that will be sold for logging in the Amazon rain
forest. The initial opening will cover 12,355 acres near the Tapajos River
in Para state, with further licenses scheduled for sale later this year
and next. The contracts will run for a year. The environmental agency
selected these areas for logging because it has complete inventories on
all the trees there.
Martins said that loggers who obtain the concessions would be subject to
limits on the amount extracted and other rules that would insure that the
same forest could be used for logging again within 20 years. The
concessions could also include requirements for building housing for local
residents or for fulfilling other obligations to the surrounding
communities.
The plan drew mixed reactions from environmentalists. Israel Klabin, a
pulp and paper scion who now runs a Rio-based foundation for sustainable
development, acknowledged, "If we would be all the way orthodox about what
we are doing, we would say that no development at all is best."
"But we have to see the complete impossibility of treating part of the
country outside the pragmatic reality of what goes on around the world,"
he said.
Klabin added that he feared the concessions were being granted before the
government had created adequate monitoring systems and goals for forest
management.
"Do we have the right definition of sustainability?" he said. "We don't.
Do we have the right system of inspection and monitoring? We don't.
Ideologically the concessions are right, but they're too early."
Gustavo Fonseca, vice president for Brazil of Conservation International,
a Washington-based environmental group, agreed. He predicted that opening
the Amazon's forests for concessions would have "minimal" impact on
conservation or sustainable development.
While illegal deforestation is hardly a new problem in Brazil, the recent
arrival of several Asian logging companies, which bought up failing
domestic logging companies, has fueled concerns of a rapid acceleration in
deforestation. A recent government study found that 80 percent of the
timber extracted from the Amazon is being removed illegally.
While opening once-protected frontiers for logging, he said, the Amazonian
concessions would do nothing to alter the advantages for logging companies
to strip a forest quickly and move on. Fonseca added that "99.9 percent of
the Amazon is being exploited without any control or design."
Tarso Resende de Azeveda, the executive director of Imaflora, a Sao Paulo
based group that rates the environmental soundness of logging operations,
said the government sale of licenses in the Tapajos reserve would destroy
the ecosystem that supports hundreds of people who live along the Tapajos
river.
"It's not so much that the logging itself is damaging, but it's a vector
that brings in roads and machinery and people, that end up changing an
area," he said.
Some also criticized the logic of remedying illegal logging by opening new
reserves.
"It's a bit ingenuous to suggest that by opening another area to logging
that is legal, one is actually helping the environment," said Russ
Mittermeier, the president of Conservation International.
In addition, he said seven previously unknown species of primates had been
found in the Amazon since 1990 -- none of them in the jungle's protected
areas. While the federal environmental agency may have done an inventory
of the trees, it had not studied the different species in national forests
earmarked for logging.
"The big concern to me is to give out an area as a concession without
knowing the biodiversity that's in it," Mittermeier said.
ITEM #1
Title -- Privatization of Forests is Criticized by Environmentalist Groups
Source -- Indianist Missionary Council via Econet's rainfor.general
bulletin board
Status -- News bulletin, distribute generally with attribution
Date -- July 17, 1997
/* Written 6:05 PM Jul 21, 1997 by cimi@embratel.net.br in
igc:rainfor.genera
*/
/* ---------- "ANOTHER PRESIDENT OF FUNAI RESIGNS" ---------- */
Newsletter n. 269
Brasilia, 17 July 1997
Indianist Missionary Council - Cimi
PRIVATIZATION OF FORESTS IS
CRITICIZED BY ENVIRONMENTALIST GROUPS
The plans of the Brazilian government to privatize the exploitation of
public forests were strongly criticized by environmentalists such as
federal deputy Fernando Gabeira (Green Party - Rio de Janeiro), Greenpeace
members and Roberto Smeraldi, a World Bank consultant who is a member of
the Friends of the Earth organization. The decision was announced by the
president of the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable
Natural Resources (Ibama), Eduardo Martins. The area to be privatized is
called Flora Tapajos and covers 5,000 hectares in Santarem, state of Para.
The winning bidder will be allowed to exploit timber in the area for five
years.
The main criticism voiced by the World Bank consultant is that the
period during which companies will be allowed to exploit timber in that
area is too short, as native species such as Andiroba (crab-tree) and
Tabiuba take 30-35 years to grow again. According to Smeraldi, the period
is shorter than the growth cycle of the trees and, moreover, once it
expires, the company will return completely degraded lands to the
government which will be much more subject to erosion. A World Bank
mission which visited the area was warned by local communities that they
won't be able to plant anything in it anymore if a private corporation
takes over.
The director of Greenpeace in Brazil, Robert Kristin, said that the
idea was copied from the United States, Canada and parts of Europe, where
it works because effective inspection mechanisms are in place, where as in
Brazil the activities of woodcutters are practically not inspected at all.
Deputy Fernando Gabeira fears that the proposal will destroy forests.
In Cimi's opinion, the Brazilian government is privatizing forests to
facilitate the action of the same timber companies and woodcutters who
have been plundering the region. The decision will show how ineffective
the inspectors of the federal administration are and will, in practice,
lead to a greater degradation of the environment. It will also show that
this privatization effort is in tune with the neoliberal model being
implemented in Brazil, which stimulates even more the concentration of
large environmental areas under the control of private corporations.