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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Brazil
Auctions Off Jungle
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Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
8/17/1997
OVERVIEW,
SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
Following
is additional coverage of Brazil's plan to auction off
logging
rights in National Parks. Is there a
future for undisturbed
tropical
wildernesses, or will all areas of the remaining rainforests
be
taken under some degree of management?
What is the likelihood that
intensive
forestry management will lead to continued ecological
decline?
g.b.
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Title: Green groups frown as Brazil auctions off
jungle
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1997 by Reuters
Date: August 4, 1997
Byline: Michael Christie
BRASILIA
(Reuter) - The Brazilian government Monday published rules
for the
auction of a chunk of Amazon rainforest in an effort to
promote
sustainable exploitation which environmental groups greeted
with
caution.
The
federal environmental agency Ibama said a decree issued in the
government's
Official Journal opened bidding to manage and extract
timber
from 2,471 acres of jungle in the Tapajos National Park in the
northern
state of Para.
"It's
the first time we are auctioning off a piece of the Amazon for
sustainable
development. It's in many ways experimental ... but if
we're
satisfied, we might auction off more," Ibama president Eduardo
Martins
told Reuters.
Brasilia
hopes to collect $266,000 from the Tapajos concession, which
will be
followed by the auction of another 9,884 acres over the next
four
years.
Ecological
watchdogs Greenpeace and the Worldwide Fund for Nature,
also
known as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), reacted with skepticism
to the
auction plan.
"We
don't understand why the government has to open up a new area of
the
Amazon to exploitation when they can't control logging where it's
already
taking place," said a Greenpeace spokesman.
The
spokesman said recent studies showed 70 percent of all tropical
timber
felled in the Amazon was illegally cut and that Ibama was
incapable
of doing anything about it.
As
proof of Ibama's inability to supervise timber firms, he said only
0.2
percent of fines slapped on loggers in 1996 for illegal logging
had
actually been collected.
Paulo
Lyra of the Brasilia branch of the WWF welcomed the plan "in
principle."
But he also harbored some doubts.
"From
an economic point of view, it makes sense. We don't yet know
whether
it makes sense ecologically," Lyra said.
The
Tapajos concession, which will give the successful bidder the
right
to cut various types of tropical timber over 30 years, is part
of a
project backed by the International Tropical Timber Organization
(ITTO).
Ibama
president Martins said criticism by the ecological groups was
partly
justified but he appealed for patience.
"We
know things can go wrong," he told Reuters.
Martins
said he believed supervision of logging would be much easier
in a
controlled concession zone, and that establishing cooperation
with
"nice" timber firms would help Ibama's fight against loggers who
bend
the law or break it.
Also,
he hoped the concession mechanism and guarantees of origin would
give
Brasilia greater control over prices in the $20 billion a year
international
tropical timber market, where the Amazon countries hold
two-thirds
of the world's supply.
The
Tapajos concession holds an estimated 270,000 square yards of
tropical
timber.
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