Brazil Slashes Amazon Protection Money

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

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1/2/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

A recent agreement between the International Monetary Fund and the

Brazilian government, which is spearheading a $41.3 billion standby

loan for Brazil, reduces government spending on environmental programs

by two-thirds. It appears Brazil will not be able to make all of its

$25 million contribution to maintain Brazil's primary rainforest

conservation program. By not being able to make its contribution,

Brazil stands to lose over $50 million in grants from the Group of

Seven. And the Amazon may well be significantly harmed in the

bargain; as even current inadequate programs, just starting to have

results, are shelved. Ludicrous!

The World's richest nations routinely spend many billions of dollars

on the military, space exploration, and social-welfare programs.

Governments and multi-lateral financiers of the World must step

forward and fully fund Brazil's forest programs during this crisis.

You would hope that maintaining the ecological integrity of the planet

would be worth the cost of a few pieces of military equipment.

Apparently not. It is a sad day if the price of weathering the

Brazilian economic downturn is going to be the mortgaging of the

Amazon--the World's primary ecological system in terms of both

biodiversity and ecosystem functionality.

g.b.

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Title: Brazil slashes money for project protecting amazon

Source: New York Times

Date: December 31, 1998

Byline: Diana Jean Schemo

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Under intense pressure to reduce its

spending, the Brazilian government has slashed funds toward a $250

million pilot project backed by seven leading industrial nations that

has been the centerpiece of Brazil's efforts to save the Amazon rain

forest.

Environmentalists warn that without Brazil's participation, the

project stands to lose almost all the donations yet to come from the

Group of Seven industrial nations. Under the main agreement, approved

at the 1992 Earth Summit here, Brazil was to provide just 10 percent

of the $250 million.

The pilot program pays for surveying the rain forest, and it has been

the principal vehicle for marking off 40,000 square miles for

indigenous reservations.

Surveying what is in the vast mysterious rain forest is seen as the

first step toward protecting it from destruction by ranchers, loggers,

farmers and miners.

The Group of Seven money was also earmarked for promoting sustainable

development, controlling deforestation and other objectives.

In addition, the money also would have helped pay for setting aside 10

percent of the rain forest, or 240,000 square miles, as national parks

and ecologically protected areas. Amid much fanfare, Brazil's

president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, had pledged to establish the

protected areas during a visit to New York last April.

Covering an area half as big as the continental United States, the

Amazon is a lush laboratory of plants, animals and bacteria that

contains more than 20 percent of the world's fresh water supply.

Throughout much of the decade, as other countries criticized Brazil

for failing to protect the rain forest, the government insisted that

wealthy nations pay to map the rain forest and to protect its

resources, and it frequently contended that the scale of the program

agreed to was insufficient to the task.

But environmentalists say that even that modest effort is now in

jeopardy. Under pressure to rein in its budget deficit, Brazilian

government officials have slashed spending across the board. A recent

agreement with the International Monetary Fund, which is spearheading

a $41.3 billion standby loan for Brazil, reduces government spending

on environmental programs by two-thirds.

Under the pilot program, the Brazilian government provides matching

funds and manpower to administer the Group of Seven grant. The

government's revised budget, released in November, cuts the amount

Brazil can expect to get from the group to $6.4 million from more than

$61 million.

``It is arguably a far more irrational and perverse consequence of the

IMF agreement than even the harshest critics of the IMF could have

imagined,'' said Stephan Schwartzman, a senior scientist at the

Washington-based Environmental Defense Fund.

The state of Acre, in western Brazil, one of the nine states covered

by the rain forest, had developed a three-year program counting on

some $5 million of the Group of Seven funds to survey and zone its

forest. Ninety percent of the cost would have been underwritten by the

group.

``When it was all under way and ready to move forward -- boom -- the

cuts came,'' said Maria Janet Santos, who is coordinating zoning for

Acre's environmental protection agency. ``It really cuts into the

credibility of what we're trying to do.''

Paulo de Oliveira Lopes, who also works on the zoning project, said

that without the Brazilian government contribution, the project would

collapse. ``Without the resources of the G-7 to carry out zoning,

there's no way it can happen,'' he said.

Congress is expected to vote on the budget by Jan. 15, and Sen. Marina

Silva of the opposition Workers' Party said the government had not

ruled out restoring the environmental funds if cuts could be found

elsewhere.

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