Race to save Amazon Basin
Copyright 2000 The Times (London)
December 19, 2000
By Gabriella Gamini
Hi-tech systems are being used to beat the criminals, says Gabriella Gamini.
After decades of giving tacit approval to the deliberate torching and felling of the Amazon rainforest, and fostering the destruction of its habitat, the Brazilian authorities have turned a new leaf.
Sensitive to international criticism of its failed drive to "modernise, populate and develop" the world's largest remaining tropical rainforest, Brazil now wants to be seen as the guardian of this biological wonderland.
Part of this drive will come in the form of a modern system of radar, satellites, weather centres and air control towers that are scheduled to be established there by July 2002 to monitor the vast Amazon Basin.
Manufactured by the American company Raytheon, the Amazon Vigilance System (known as Sivam) is an ambitious project, costing $ 1.4 billion. The Brazilian Government aims to use it to help in its efforts to keep a lid on forest fires, and illegal activity such as drug trafficking and gold prospecting in areas reserved for indigenous tribes.
"The Amazon has long been a victim of violent predators, illegal timber merchants, gold diggers, farmers who torch stretches of jungle, drug traffickers who hide inside the vast forest," says Jose Orlando Bellon, an army general who will be in charge of the Sivam project.
Although the armed forces, which have traditionally been in charge of overseeing the Amazon, will be involved in operating the Sivam patrol system, the project is seen as non-military.
"It's a vast area which has been open to lawlessness because of its sheer size. The new radar and satellites will for the first time give us a way to control illegal activity," says General Bellon.
Amazonia covers 5.3 million square kilometres (61 per cent of the country's territory). It is the world's largest freshwater basin and encompasses nine Brazilian states: Acre, Amapa, Amazonas, Maranhao, Mato Grosso, Roraima, Rondonia, Para and Tocantins.
It has a population of 16.5 million (12 per cent of Brazil's population). Its rainforest-covered area makes up one third of the world's remaining tropical forests, which is home to 30 per cent of the world's flora and fauna.
"The problem with the Amazon has been that the state has not been able to make its presence felt sufficiently," says General Bellon. "Sivam is a response to those who say we have not taken proper care of the Amazon. It will help us in the task of fostering renewable activities that will preserve the forest and clamp down on destructive forces."
By 2002, the US specialists in vigilance networks have committed themselves to installing 25 ground radar units, six mobile radar units and supplying five airborne radar units to cover the patrol area. They will be mainly used in the detection of low-flying aircraft used by drug traffickers, or illegal miners who have for long fuelled violence that has led Amazonia to be called "green hell".
The company will also set up 200 environmental sensors and 900 patrol stations equipped with telephones, faxes and computers with access to the Internet, in remote areas. Satellites will also be launched to oversee the region.
Some of these stations will be set up in Indian reserves and nearby posts of the Funai (National Indian Foundation, which is the body in charge of protecting indigenous people). The sensors will pass information about forest fires to three regional headquarters, in the state capitals of Manaus, Porto Velho and Belem, which will centralise the data.
"The Sivam will be our eye on the Amazon. It will supply information about deforestation and therefore make it possible for us to combat illegal activity more effectively," says President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who has spearheaded the project.
So far, Brazil has relied on satellite images supplied by Nasa to give itself an idea of the extent of the forest's destruction, but has been less willing to react to international pressure, seeing this as an invasion of national sovereignty.
But the incongruency of different estimates has made it difficult to gauge the real extent of ecological damage.
"With Sivam we will no longer have any excuses. Brazilians will have to take account of their responsibility as guardians of the world's largest rainforest," says Senhor Cardoso.
The intentional torching of vast stretches of tropical rainforest during the 1970s and 1980s was the most widely publicised form of ecological violence. It began with a drive by the military Government of the day to open up the Amazon to development.
Even now the traditional slash and burn habits of farmers who are moving into the forest continue to cause the most destruction. Every year, clouds of smoke and flames engulf huge stretches of rainforest.
But this activity has been just a part of the list of destruction, which has included the extermination of Indians by gold diggers and bloody conflicts over land ownership, that plunged much of the region into anarchy.
At first little attention was paid to the fires because there seemed to be an inexhaustible expanse of forest to burn. By the end of the 1970s, satellite images provided evidence that as much as a tenth of the Brazilian Amazon had already been razed.
The soil that lay beneath turned out to be infertile and susceptible to erosion. Environmentalists predicted that if destruction went on unchecked, the region would one day become a wilderness of scrub.
In the 1980s the rate of deforestation continued to increase, although there were no exact figures available to back up cataclysmic projections from environmental organisations.
Hanging in the balance is also the fate of 330,000 surviving tribal Indians who depend on the rainforest, and that of forest people who make a living by gathering latex.
Also in the picture are hundreds of thousands of poor economic migrants who have been lured to Amazonia with false promises of land and work. Much of the region is also in the hands of landowners who have remorselessly felled rainforest.
These problems still exist. But political leaders, regional governors and environmental organisations have realised that Brazil may be better off exploiting the rich natural resources of the forest. Scientists say the Amazon harbours the cure for many diseases. More Brazilians want to see their natural treasure saved.