Call for More Forest Reserves in the Brazilian Amazon

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

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12/25/98

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

In the aftermath of recently proposed Brazilian government cuts of

some 90% of Amazon rainforest conservation programs, the NGO community

is calling for increased extractive forest reserves. It is criminal

of the international community and Brazilian government to allow

short-term economic issues to jeopardize perhaps the World's most

important ecological system. The necessary resources must be made

available to weather the economic storm without forfeiting the Amazon

to inevitable diminishment.

g.b.

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Title: NGO'S Press for More Forest Reserves

Source: Inter Press Service

Date: December 23, 1998

WASHINGTON, (Dec. 22) IPS - Non-governmental organizations, fearful of

the aftermath of proposed budget cuts to environmental programs in

Brazil, want to transform 10 percent of the Brazilian Amazon

rainforest into "extractive reserves" by the year 2002.

These reserves would be managed by people such as rubber tappers, who

live in the Amazon collecting wild rubber latex from trees, say the

National Council of Rubber Tappers of Brazil and two heavyweight

Washington-based environmental groups: the Environmental Defense Fund

and the National Wildlife Federation.

"This will allow us to defend 50 million hectares of forest, secure

the land rights and improve the living conditions of tens of thousands

of families," said Atanagildo de Deus Matos, president of the council.

The groups acknowledge that they face an uphill political battle to

reach their goal after the Brazilian government announced last month

that it was slashing about 90 percent of its Amazon conservation

programs.

Overall, environmental programs would be cut by an estimated 65

percent as part an austerity deal to win billions of dollars in

emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The cuts come as the Amazon is in desperate need of conservation

efforts, say environmentalists who add that some 52 million hectares -

or 12.5 percent - of Amazon jungle was destroyed between 1978-96.

With 2,700 bird species and more than 2,000 different types of fish,

the Amazon is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world,

and also one of the most threatened. Cattle ranches, gold mining and

soy plantations are rapidly replacing the dense tropical forest at an

estimated rate of about eight football fields per minute or 13,000

acres a day, according to Steven Schwartzman, a senior scientist with

the Environmental Defense Fund.

"The crisis in the Amazon, ecologically and socially, has never been

worse," he said.

According to an analysis of satellite data of the region, compiled

over several decades, the conversion of forest to agriculture is

rapidly accelerating, said Compton Tucker, a scientist with the U.S.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

"Changes in tropical forest in the Amazon are always tied to some

improvement in transportation infrastructure, like paved roads or

railroads -- you see this again and again," said Tucker. Such

infrastructure development opens up the area to large scale farms and

other settlements.

"It is clear that legally enforced reserves are needed," he said.

Groups calling for more reserves, however, say they not against all

road building.

"Obviously if people are going to live in a sustainable manner in the

forest they must have transportation so that they can sell their

products and their children can go to school," said Barbara Bramble,

Latin American affairs specialist with the Washington- based National

Wildlife Federation. "What there has to be is a rational management

plan for the forest."

The trick, said Bramble, is to set aside reserve land before the roads

come into the region. In the Brazilian state of Rondonia where the

road came in first, "you saw the destruction" but in the state of

Acre, rubber tappers led by Chico Mendes in the 1980s demanded clear

land rights before the development of new roads.

Mendes, who was assassinated in 1988 reportedly by cattle rangers,

first came up with the idea of "extractive reserves," according to the

Environmental Defence Fund and the National Wildlife Federation.

In an effort to resolve the conflict between cattle ranchers who want

to clear the forest and rubber tappers who depend on the trees, Mendes

urged the formation of legally protected areas that managed by local

communities, who harvest forest products in a way that does not harm

the environment.

Since then, more than 20 such reserves have been created in the last

decade by the Brazilian government, covering about three million

hectares, said a report by the groups.

"Chico showed us that people were indispensable to the conservation

process," said Schwartzman.

But the Brazilian government cut its endangered rainforest program

which developed and enforced these reserves because of the IMF-

imposed austerity measures, said other environmentalists.

"Brazil can take credit for developing some of the best methods for

long-term forest conservation, by involving local communities --

especially extractive reserves," said Bramble.

Sadly, the implementation of these programs has been getting under way

only recently, under the auspices of the programs that are now slated

for near-elimination.

While many of the environmental cuts are in actual government

spending, environmental activists say that the endangered rainforest

program was largely funded by grants from European nations. This is

because the government reports the budget cuts as savings without

having to account for the corresponding loss of donor funds.

"The proposed funding cuts would paralyze Brazil's best hope for

conserving their great national heritage, but would do little to

balance the budget," said Bramble.

"The Brazilian Congress has the power and responsibility to restore

the budget for Amazon conservation, for wildlife and people; and the

IMF has an equal responsibility not to turn a blind eye to the

environmental impacts of its deals," he said.

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