Greenpeace Launches Global Campaign to Save Amazon

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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5/31/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

Greenpeace is re-energizing its Amazon campaign, realizing that the

type of corporate plundering of rainforests playing itself out around

the World is heading squarely to the Amazon. Let's hope that

Greenpeace finds a niche, which complements existing efforts, while

bringing their brand of radicalism into the mix. There is clearly a

monumental campaign here--using the resources of one of the largest

environmental groups to emphasize, in a straight up no holds barred

manner, the importance of continuation of the Amazon's ecosystem

functionality for planetary survival.

g.b.

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Title: Greenpeace launches global campaign to save Amazon

Source: Reuters

Date: May 31, 1999

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) -- International environment group

Greenpeace launched its largest ever global campaign on Monday to

combat illegal logging by multinationals and slow the decline of

Brazil's ancient Amazon rainforest.

Logging companies represented the frontline of destruction of the

Amazon forest, an area the size of Western Europe of which only two

thirds now remained, Greenpeace said.

"The Amazon is of global importance. If it is destroyed there will be

climatic changes which will be felt all over the world. To preserve

the Amazon is a global challenge and 60 percent of it is not yet

destroyed," said Thilo Bode, executive-director of Greenpeace

International.

With depletion of the forest in southeastern Asia and central Africa,

the multinational companies were heavily investing in the Amazon as a

key future source of tropical timber and planned to boost production

in the next few years.

"For Greenpeace, it is the most important campaign and also the

largest. If we are successful, we can do something very important for

the planet. It is certainly the most difficult campaign we have ever

had," Bode told reporters.

The campaign has an annual direct budget of $2.5 million plus

fundraising from Greenpeace's 33 offices worldwide. According to

Greenpeace data, until the early 1970s, 99 percent of the Amazon

rainforest -- which represents one third of the world's remaining

tropical forests -- was still intact.

But in the last four years alone, an area the combined size of the

Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg had been lost. In the last three

decades an area the size of France was lost.

Bode said more than 70 percent of the Amazon's worst deforestation

areas were linked to logging, adding that 80 percent of Amazon region

logging activities were illegal and half of the wood exports

uncontrolled.

"Virtually zero percent of the activities could be called sustainable,

so it can be described as causing irreparable damage. We plan to

expose the activities of these transnational companies," Bode said.

Brazil has often been accused of sacrificing the endangered Amazon,

the world's largest tropical rainforest sometimes called the "Lungs of

the Earth," to economic development.

Although it has introduced controls on logging and land clearance

after a wave of international criticism in the late 1980s,

environmentalists still say many laws are not complied with and

federal agencies lack the resources to monitor them.

Greenpeace said a handful of large corporations from Europe, Asia and

the United States controlled more than 12 percent of the Amazon

region's timber processing capacity and almost half of its export

value.

Logging as an industry was also highly wasteful, it said, with two

thirds of all logged timber ending up as unusable fragments or

sawdust. Poor processing, even with logging classed as "legal," was

common and led to enormous wastage.

"Logging is something which is acceptable to us but only under

restricted conditions. Of all that goes on there, we would probably

find that only one percent is acceptable," said Roberto Kishinami,

executive-director of Greenpeace Brasil.

Apart from demanding drastically tightened legislation, the group's

idea is to be a broker between buyers and sellers of Amazonian wood

products.

In certain cases, Greenpeace would promote alternative commercial

areas which would provide the 20 million people living in the region -

- many of whom depend on the forest for economic survival -- with

sustainable means of income.

This mainly included eco-tourism but also rubber, forest fruits such

as palm hearts, Brazil nuts and medicinal plants.

"It's not an empty continent we want to protect, we have to find a

solution which is acceptable to the people living there," said Bode.

"It's not Antarctica where there are just penguins living there."

"It's a problem of political will and a problem to fight commercial

interests. Politically, we think the problem can be solved," he said.

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