Brazil Introduces New Environmental Legislation

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

2/17/98

OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE

Brazil has passed a new environmental law, which the President has

stated will be rigorously applied. Though weakened by amendments,

this still appears to represent a significant step forward.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: Brazil Introduces Law to Protect Environment

Source: Reuters

Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint

Date: February 13, 1998

Byline: William Schomberg

BRASILIA - Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso signed a new

environmental law on Thursday and said it would prove a turning point

in preserving natural resources, including the Amazon.

The law sets down fines of up to $50 million and jail sentences for

crimes ranging from illegal logging and killing wild animals to

industrial pollution and graffiti.

Until now, those punishments have been laid down by decree, making it

easy for environmental offenders to overturn them in the courts. Only

six percent of fines issued by the government's environmental agency

IBAMA are actually paid.

The new law will also disqualify offending companies or individuals

from government tax incentives and loans, a long-standing demand of

environmentalists.

"Some ambassadors present here might be shocked to hear it, but in

Brazil we have a saying -- some laws stick and some laws don't. Well

this one has already stuck," Cardoso told a gathering of lawmakers,

foreign dignitaries and schoolchildren.

He said Brazilian public opinion was increasingly in favor of improved

protection of the environment.

"Given the immense responsibility that we have to humanity...we are

obliged to put into practice everything this law sets down," he said.

The law finally cleared Congress in January, seven years after it was

submitted amid international concern over the Amazon in the run-up to

the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Since the summit deforestation in the world's biggest rainforest has

raged on virtually unchecked. Satellite data released by the

government last month showed an area twice the size of Belgium was

destroyed between 1995 and 1997.

"We are consummate predators of nature because our legal framework has

been weak," Environment Minister Gustavo Krause told reporters.

"But there is a tremendous difference between what we had before this

law and what we have now," he said.

Krause said nine items within the law had been vetoed by the

president, despite a campaign by environmental groups to keep the bill

intact.

Activists say Asian and other foreign logging companies which have

recently set up operations in the Amazon stand to benefit from the

scrapping of an item which would have held controlling shareholders

responsible for environmental damage.

An item dealing with noise pollution was vetoed to avoid angering

congressmen who represent Brazil's evangelical churches, which blast

out sermons into streets around their temples.

The support of the evangelicals and of lawmakers representing powerful

agricultural interests has been key to the government's recent success

in getting major reforms of the civil service and of the social

security system through Congress.

"The law is definitely an advance but it has been watered down to suit

the interests of big business," said Fernando Gabeira, the lone Green

Party representative in Congress.

Officials refuted suggestions that environmental offenders would find

loopholes in the new law.

"There is not one type of crime against the environment which is not

covered by this law," said Krause.

He said the new law came on top of recent legislation to improve the

use of Brazil's water resources and a new tax to rationalize the use

of land by the country's biggest landowners. A bill which would beef

up protection of conservation areas was awaiting approval in Congress,

Krause said.

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