The Worldwatch Report: Amazon Hatchet Job

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

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6/26/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

Despite indications that damage to the Amazon is consistently being

underestimated, Brazilian Amazon conservation programs are to be

gutted. For want of a relative pittance of money, the World's primary

ecosystem engine is to be jeopardized. What folly.

g.b.

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Title: The Worldwatch Report: Amazon Hatchet job

Source: Environmental News Network

http://www.enn.com:80/features/1999/06/062199/amazon_3870.asp

Date: June 21, 1999

Byline: Chris Runyan

Preliminary reports show that logging in the Amazon jumped by 30

percent in 1998. Based on conventional estimates, about 17,000 square

kilometers of forest in the Amazon were destroyed -- an area nearly

the size of Israel.

The Brazilian government is planning to effectively gut efforts to

protect the Amazon, despite news that the world's largest and most

quickly disappearing rainforest is being cleared twice as quickly as

previously thought.

In response to the fiscal austerity measures imposed by the

International Monetary Fund's $41 billion bailout package signed last

November, Brazil is planning to zero out between 60 and 90 percent of

its $70 million budget for conservation and environmental programs in

the Amazon.

Ironically, the cuts will slash some programs funded largely by

international aid, such as the Pilot Program for the Conservation of

Brazilian Tropical Forests, which surveys and sets aside indigenous

lands, aims to curb deforestation and has plans to set aside 240,000

square miles -- nearly 10 percent of the Amazon -- as preserves for

conservation and indigenous people.

International governments have agreed to pay up to $250 million for

the Pilot Program -- but Brazil must first put up matching funds of 10

percent. In addition, the government has proposed reducing the budget

for environmental programs by 66 percent.

While alarmed by the cuts, environmental activists are more concerned

that the IMF's measures will set off a social and environmental chain

reaction, driving those facing unemployment into the Amazon to

illegally log trees or to clear land for small farms or mines.

The recessionary impact is going to aggravate an already serious

problem of unemployment and environmental damage, said Steven

Schwartzman of the Environmental Defense Fund. People on the edge will

be pushed into desperation -- wild cat mining, illegal logging and

subsistence farming.

Indeed, last August President Fernando Cardoso rescinded a much-

heralded new law to crack down on illegal logging and pollution, once

again giving timber and mining companies nearly free rein.

Already, people come to sack the region, warned Claudionor Barbosa da

Silva, president of the Amazon Working Group, a coalition of more than

350 Brazilian indigenous and environmental grass-roots groups. What we

need from the IMF is information and investment, not deforestation and

extractionism.

Preliminary reports show that logging in the Amazon jumped by 30

percent in 1998. Based on conventional estimates, about 17,000 square

kilometers of forest in the Amazon were destroyed -- an area nearly

the size of Israel. But a recent study in the April 8, 1999 issue of

Nature shows that actual rates of deforestation may be more than twice

as high, as satellite imagery has underestimated the true extent of

the damage.

Present estimates capture less than half of the forest area that is

impoverished each year, concludes the report, because forest openings

created by logging and fires are covered over by regrowing vegetation

within one to five years, and are easily misclassified in the absence

of accompanying field data.

(Chris Runyan is senior editor of World Watch, the bimonthly magazine

of the Worldwatch Institute.)

1. http://www.enn.com/index.asp

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