Cutbacks in Amazonian Protection Put Off

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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12/18/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

Brazilian conservation organizations mobilized swiftly to stop a

major weakening of Brazil rainforest protection laws. This included

efforts to reduce Amazon conservation areas, expand areas open to

logging and the types of trees available for harvest, reduce riparian

buffer zones, and exempt smaller properties from environmental laws.

The international community must organize to support local

conservationists in resisting this legislative give-away as the bill

is still lurking in the shadows. Anyone that cares about the future

of the Amazonian rainforest "should now be getting ready for the

biggest fight of the decade." If the gutting of Brazilian rainforest

environmental law goes through, the genie will never be put back in

the bottle. The Amazon will inevitably be lost as a functional

regional and global ecosystem of unrivaled significance.

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title: Cutbacks in protection of Amazon put off

Source: The Boston Globe Online, Boston.com

Date: December 8, 1999

Byline: Nicole Veash, Globe Correspondent

SAO PAULO - Environmental activists, crowding into a hearing of a

special congressional committee, last night fended off a lightning

legislative initiative that would have significantly reduced

environmental protections for the Amazon rain forest.

A powerful coalition of Brazilian landowners and logging companies

was persuaded to put off a vote on a proposed amendment to the Forest

Code. The revised code would have allowed the destruction of huge

swaths of the rain forest to make way for giant cattle-grazing

pastures and eucalyptus and pine plantations.

Following personal pleas from the secretary of state for biodiversity

and Brazil's director of forests, the congressional committee agreed

to delay a vote on the legislation that had been scheduled for today.

Despite the postponement of the vote until after the New Year,

Analuce Freitas, policy officer for World Wildlife Fund in Brazil,

said environmentalists were still feeling ''very betrayed'' that the

government had not slowed the legislative initiative earlier.

''We have a weak environment minister who hasn't done enough to stop

this proposal from becoming law,'' Freitas said. ''They may have

given us a few months extra for discussion, but it will be difficult

to make sure our voices are heard. The problem is nobody in Brazil

cares about the rain forests.''

The proposed changes to the Forest Code, which was established in

1965, would:

Reduce the Amazon conservation area from 80 percent to 50 percent.

Reduce the protected rain forest outside the Amazon from 50 percent

to 20 percent.

Reduce the conservation area surrounding riverbanks and lagoons from

100 meters to 30 meters.

Exempt smaller properties, up to 50 acres in size, from all

environmental law.

Allow landowners to cut down rain forest trees for economic

expansion, including planting crops, without applying for a

licence from authorities.

Give those farmers who have already illegally built on protected land

amnesty from prosecution.

The legislation had been pushed through Congress at lightning speed.

The special committee, which published its report recommending the

new Forest Code, allowed just six days of consultation time instead

of the usual 30.

''If the proposal becomes law it will set the environmental movement

back 30 years,'' said Flavio Monteil, political adviser for

Greenpeace in Brazil. ''The government is going to allow destroyers

of the environment to do whatever they like without consequence.

The measure enjoys the support of the influential agriculture

minister and the minerals and energy minister, as well as that of the

National Council for Agriculture.

''The main problem is that there has been no public discussion of

these recommendations,'' said Andre Lima, an environment lawyer for

the Socio-Ambient Institute. ''Anyone who cares about the environment

should now be getting ready for the biggest fight of the decade.''

The landowners coalition had maintained earlier that it had already

given the green movement adequate time to discuss the proposed change

in legislation.

''Landowners want to develop their properties to bring money and jobs

into the Amazon region,'' said Ronaldo Troncha, chief of staff for

Moacir Micheletto, chairman of the special committee. ''The law has

never been clear about the amount of land that is legally protected.

A new Forest Code would maintain the rain forest and clarify the

rights of landowners.''

Environment Minister Sarney Filho has openly expressed his opposition

to the proposed legislation.

''It's very important that there is further consultation so everyone

has time to analyze these new proposals,'' a spokesman for his

department said.

''That's why we prefer to reschedule this vote for early in the new

year.''

The green movement maintains that the state-sanctioned destruction of

Brazil's native woodland would contravene international treaties on

ecological protection.

ITEM #2

Title: Brazil greens cheer forest bill postponement

Source: Reuters

Date: December 9, 1999

Byline: Axel Bugge

BRASILIA - Brazilian environmentalists applauded on yesterday the

shelving of a legislative proposal they said threatened the Amazon

rain forest by expanding the areas open to logging and the types of

trees available for harvesting.

Further parliamentary discussion of the bill, which would amend the

country's forestry code, was halted until March, they said.

If Congress approved the bill, it would represent "the largest known

setback for Brazilian environmental laws," said Andre Lima, a

representative from Brazil's Social Environmental Institute.

Brazilian Greenpeace representative Fabio Montiel said his

organisation will join other environmental groups, the environment

ministry and agricultural groups in offering an alternative proposal.

"This outcome was only possible thanks to the work of hundreds of

people and institutions from everywhere, which mobilised in record

time," World Wildlife Fund Director Garo Bamanian said in a

statement.

The bill, backed by Brazil's powerful farm lobby, had the goal of

increasing the amount of land available for agriculture.

But environmentalists said it would threaten the Amazon tropical rain

forest - the world's largest - by reducing the areas of forest

protected from farming and logging. It also would permit the

substitution of native woods for non-native species such as

eucalyptus and pine, they said.

Last week the U.S.-based Environmental Defence Fund wrote to U.S.

Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers urging him to express his

opposition to the bill during his visit to Brazil last weekend.

"We are gravely concerned with recent proposals that the government

of Brazil has negotiated with large landowners and ranchers to

drastically weaken the forestry code, upon which forest protection in

Brazil is based," the letter said.

The letter argued that the changes would have contradicted

commitments undertaken by Brazil under a $280 million Amazon

protection effort funded by the world's seven richest economies.

Environmentalists estimate that 20 percent of Brazil's tropical

forests in the Amazon and along its Atlantic coast have already been

destroyed.

ITEM #2

Title: ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Activists Block New Forestry Code

Source: InterPress Service

Date: December 9, 1999

Byline: Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 9 (IPS) - Fast work by 189 non-governmental

organisations (NGOs) in mobilising support led the Brazilian

Congress to postpone a vote on a new forestry code which

environmentalists warn would lead to an increase in deforestation.

If approved, the new code, drawn up quickly by a parliamentary

commission, would represent a setback in conservation of Brazil's

forests, reducing the proportion of jungle to be preserved in large

rural properties.

Under pressure from the NGOs and the Environment Ministry, the

bicameral commission discussing the matter decided late Tuesday to

put off the vote on a proposal submitted by Deputy Moacier Micheletto

until March.

Due to that decision, the plenary session of Congress was blocked

from discussing the initiative Wednesday, as originally planned.

''This was a triumph by civil society,'' said Garo Batmanian,

executive-director of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Brazil.

Brazil's forestry code dates back to 1965, and there is broad

agreement among all sectors - from government to environmentalists to

landholders - that it is obsolete.

The code was amended in 1996 after it was announced that around

29,000 square kms of Amazon jungle had been lost in 1995, which

sparked a repeat of the wave of protests around the world which put

Brazil on the bench in the late 1980s, when huge forest fires swept

through the Amazon region.

President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's modifications of the law

increased the proportion of forest to be conserved on large rural

properties in the Amazon from 50 to 80 percent, and from 20 to 50

percent in the rest of the country.

But the initiative was passed by means of a Provisional Measure, a

presidential decree that immediately takes effect, but only for a

month. Without the necessary support in parliament to make the

initiative a permanent law, Cardoso reissued the decree every month -

40 times in a row so far.

While the debates dragged out in the National Council on the

Environment, Deputy Micheletto presented another proposal, reducing

the percentage of areas to be preserved as set by Cardoso.

The draft law submitted by Micheletto also encroaches on the

environment in other aspects, such as allowing autochthonous forests

to be replaced with non-native species, and reducing the swath of

forest to be protected around lakes and reservoirs from 100 to 30

metres.

The speed with which the new draft law shot through parliament caught

environmentalists off guard. The proposal was only discussed with the

National Confederation of Agriculture, which represents Brazil's

large landowners - explaining the setback to forest protection

efforts.

But in just a few days, 189 NGOs, headed by WWF and the

Socioenvironmental Institute, organised protests to block the vote,

and activists were mobilised to lobby Congress.

Greenpeace Brazil called a Dec 2 demonstration outside the Planalto

Palace, the seat of the Brazilian presidency.

Activist Eduardo Quartim was arrested and held in custody for several

hours after attempting to hand over a chainsaw to a senior

presidential official, Pedro Parente, in a symbolic gesture.

The new forestry code represents ''government authorisation to those

who destroy the environment,'' said Flavio Montiel, a Greenpeace

political adviser.

The Technical Chamber of the National Council on the Environment has

been put in charge of studying the matter and proposing alternatives

by late February. (END/IPS/tra-so/mo/dm/sw/99)

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