Brazil's Timber Harvest in Public Forests Privatized

***********************************************

WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

***********************************************

Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

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.

*******************************

RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

ITEM #1

Title -- To Fight Outlaws, Brazil Opens Rain Forest to Loggers

Source -- The New York Times Company

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.

###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###

This document is a PHOTOCOPY for educational, personal and non-commercial

use only. Recipients should seek permission from the source for

reprinting. All efforts are made to provide accurate, timely pieces;

though ultimate responsibility for verifying all information rests with

the reader. Check out our Gaia Forest Conservation Archives at URL=

http://forests.org/

Networked by Ecological Enterprises, gbarry@forests.org