More Fires by Farmers Raise Threat to Amazon

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

11/28/97

OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE

Following is a few week old article from the New York Times which

details the continued degradation of the Amazon. The interesting

points are made that many of the fires in the region are set by small

farmers, but that the forest is more easily ignited following logging.

LIST NOTE:

The Gaia Forest Conservation Archives web site at http://forests.org/

has new discussion bulletin boards regarding forest conservation. If

you wish to comment on this piece, or generally to discuss Amazonian

forest conservation issues, check out the Amazon Raiforest Web

discussion space at http://forests.org/amazonweb/

g.b.

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Title: More Fires by Farmers Raise Threat to Amazon

Source: The New York Times Company

Date: November 2, 1997

Byline: By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- In Porto Velho in western Brazil, thick

clouds of black smoke have forced airports and schools to shut down.

In southern Para state near the Amazon frontier, people gasping for

air have collapsed and ended up in hospitals. In the city of Manaus,

the sun has disappeared for days at a time.

Twenty years after the goal of rescuing the Amazon rain forest first

captured world attention, becoming the pet cause of celebrities and a

regular topic in children's schoolbooks, deforestation and the burning

of vast territories are again climbing.

Data in recent weeks suggest that the burning going on in Brazil this

year is greater than what has occurred in Indonesia, where major

cities have been smothered under blankets of smoke that spread to

other countries.

Despite the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent

to save the rain forest, burnings in the Amazon region are up 28

percent over last year, according to satellite data, and 1994

deforestation figures, the most recent available, show a 34 percent

increase since 1991.

"Deforestation has done nothing but go up," said Stephen Schwartzman

of the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit group based in

Washington. "Where the most money has gone is where the fires have

increased the most." The group noted that half the fires recorded

this year were in Mato Grosso, where the World Bank lent $205 million

to save the rain forest in a natural resource management program.

Roughly a fifth of the fires that rage annually between June and

October cause new deforestation, and another tenth is burning of

ground cover in virgin forests. Scientists say that the Amazon rain

forest may be reaching a critical level of dryness, in which standing

forest could catch fire and burn out of control.

A report by the Environmental Defense Fund warned the Amazon "may be

edging closer to catastrophic fire events," and predicted "potentially

enormous global consequences."

The World Wildlife Fund found that 93 percent of the original Atlantic

rain forest in the northeast had disappeared over the centuries, and

some 12 to 15 percent of the Amazon rain forest. The report said that

Brazil was losing more rain forest each year than any other country on

the planet. In addition to the 5,800 square miles a year that

satellite images show are deforested each year, the Woods Hole

Research Institute estimates that another 4,200 are thinned through

logging beneath the forest canopy.

Eduardo Martins, the president of the Brazilian federal environmental

agency, said in an interview that the increase in fires, while

worrisome, did not result in an increase in deforestation, although

the two problems have risen in tandem. He contended that most fires

were set by small farmers who would starve if they could not clear

land for planting, and that the environmental damage paled next to

fossil fuel emissions in the United States.

Beneath the noxious haze covering much of Brazil every burning season

is an opaque, often contradictory, government policy toward the

environment. "Properly speaking, we still don't have a policy, but we

have a start," Martins told a Brazilian news magazine earlier this

year.

Lacking enforcement muscle, the government environmental agency

ultimately collects only 6.5 percent of the fines it imposes. The rest

are thrown out in court.

In a recent interview, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso

acknowledged that the agency needed more money and muscle. A bill to

strengthen it, stalled in Congress since 1991, passed the Senate this

year. It is now idling in the House, where the Federation of

Industries is lobbying against it on the ground that threats of cash

fines and prison will open the way for corruption.

For now, not surprisingly, the agency is usually ignored by the people

it is supposed to monitor. While permits are required for burning, the

agency has reportedly issued licenses to clear a total of only about

24,700 acres this year -- an area seemingly far smaller than what

would produce the dense clouds of smoke that have appeared over

several states. Martins disputed that permits were issued for only

such an area, but his office declined to provide another figure, or

the number of permits issued last year.

While even poorly enforced measures and licensing procedures are

intended to deter deforestation, until recently other government

statutes deemed cleared forest to be "an improvement on the land,"

which meant it was less likely to be considered unproductive and

seized for agrarian reform. If the owner sold it for government

redistribution to peasants, burning and planting paid off in higher

compensation. Martins said that is changing now.

But the pace of destruction appears to be dictated more by the

marketplace than by any government measure. The demand in Europe and

the United States for hardwoods like mahogany, used for furniture, has

ushered in large illegal logging operations throughout the Amazon. And

a report by the federal secretary of strategic affairs, recently

disclosed in the Brazilian press, said that 80 percent of all logging

in the Amazon is illegal.

The government appears caught between largely international pressure

to reduce the amount of burning and deforestation, and powerful

domestic lobbies from the logging industry, farmers and large

landholders. It is building several major roads that will cut into the

Amazon, and a $1.2 billion state-of-the-art surveillance project will

soon locate minerals, ores, and other natural resources hidden beneath

the forest canopy.

The Amazon surveillance project could also provide current information

on deforestation, but ecologists are wary, for the Brazilian

government has been in no hurry to analyze the data it has already.

After years of saying that deforestation was on the decline, last

year the government released deforestation figures for the first time

in four years -- showing the 34 percent increase.

The government tried to diminish criticism by announcing measures to

reverse the trend. It increased the share that each landowner in the

rain forest was barred from burning from 50 to 80 percent, and

announced a moratorium on new licenses for logging mahogany and

another hardwood, virola.

But field reviews by the environmental monitoring agency show that the

conditions of its permits are routinely ignored. And once again, the

figures of deforestation since 1994 are late.

"The scene in general is one of rampant illegal logging," said Robert

J. Buschbacher, conservation director of the World Wildlife Fund-

Brazil.

The government has also fought successfully to keep mahogany off a

list that would have subjected the licenses for logging it to outside

monitoring and established targets to reduce exports. It argued that

globally mahogany is not an endangered species, even though

domestically it is considered one.

Martins said his government opposed the move because it was sponsored

by the United States, which he considered "hypocritical," since

America provides much of the market for hardwood furniture. He said

that Brazil had seized hundreds of thousands of illegally cut logs,

which he said the government plans to use for low-income housing and

public buildings.

A recent study by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute

estimated that for every acre that shows up as cleared and burned in

satellite images, another partly burned or logged acre goes undetected

beneath the forest canopy.

Daniel C. Nepstad, president of the Amazon institute and a scientist

at the Woods Hole Research Institute, said such burning and logging

make the forest more vulnerable to fire and means a 50 percent greater

likelihood of deforestation.

For the first time in 14 years, as part of his research, he was able

to set fire to virgin rain forest, he said. Though he quickly

extinguished it, the lesson was important: Until now, a moist root

system and dense vegetation had made it virtually impossible to set

fire to a standing primary forest.

"With logging it becomes more flammable," said Philip M. Fearnside, an

ecology professor at the National Institute for Research in the

Amazon. "So the fires can escape and go into the forest."

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