Greenpeace Calls for Boycott of Amazon Timber
6/19/97
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Headline: Greenpeace Calls for Boycott of Amazon Timber
Source: Reuters
Date: 6/19/97
Byline: William Schomberg
Copyright 1997 by Reuters
BRASILIA (Reuter) - Environment group Greenpeace called
Thursday for an international boycott of timber from the Amazon
to counter what it said was Brazil's defense of uncontrolled
logging in the rain forest.
``Thoughout the years, we have tried to cooperate with the
government in the belief that it was serious in its
intentions,'' Greenpeace's executive director Roberto Kishinami
said.
But Brazil's opposition to stricter controls on the trade in
mahogany -- one of the most prized and endangered Amazon trees
-- showed that the government was ``internally supporting the
interests of loggers,'' he said.
Brazil Wednesday abstained from a vote at the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Zimbabwe to
include bigleaf mahogany in Appendix Two, a list of species
subject to controls by exporting and importing nations. The
proposal was defeated.
Greenpeace alleged Brazil worked behind the scenes to ensure
it did not pass after the United States, the world's biggest
importer of mahogany, and Bolivia, its biggest exporter, dropped
their long-standing opposition to inclusion of the timber under
Appendix Two.
A spokesman at Brazil's Foreign Ministry said he was unable
to comment on Greenpeace's allegations. Last year the Brazilian
government announced a moratorium on new permits to log mahogany
and virola, another threatened hardwood tree.
The trade in mahogany is considered one of the biggest
factors behind deforestation of the rainforest. Loggers cut
paths through virgin forest to reach the trees and often damage
Indian reservations and national parks in the process.
After the loggers are done, settlers use the paths to gain
access to the forest, which they clear for grazing cattle.
Kishinami said the recent purchase of land and sawmills in
the Amazon by powerful Asian logging groups meant new measures
were needed urgently if the rainforest's biodiversity was to be
protected.
He said Greenpeace was not against the existence of the
timber industry in the Amazon but said inclusion of bigleaf
mahogany under the CITES appendix would have obliged Brazil to
take adequate steps to make sure logging laws were observed.
A recently leaked government study suggested as much as 80
percent of timber from the Amazon was felled illegally.
Greenpeace, along with Friends of the Earth and other
environmental groups in Brazil, will announce next week how they
intended to implement the boycott of Amazonian timber, one the
region's biggest exports, Kishinami said.