05/15/00 -- New Plan to Protect Amazon Rainforest

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

New Plan to Protect Amazon Rainforest

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05/15/00

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

A new initiative seeks to place 10% of the Amazon rainforest under

strict preserved status. At this juncture, when significant vast

expanses of intact rainforest landscapes still exist, this upscale

approach is the best tropical rainforest conservation strategy. By

virtue of maintaining an intact context for any particular plant

community or forest stand, it is more effective in conserving

biodiversity in the long-term than exclusively focusing on hotspots

within a fragmented context. Large forests maintain critical global,

regional and local ecosystem processes upon which life depends. Too

often the importance of large forests in sustaining weather patterns,

carbon sequestration, soils and hydrological processes is overlooked.

The only problem with the announcement is that keeping 10% of the

Amazon in an intact, contiguous and natural state is not enough to

guarantee regional and global ecological sustainability. Indications

from the disciplines of landscape ecology and conservation biology

are that forested bioregions require strict preservation of much

higher percentages of the landscape. Protecting somewhere between

25-75% (dependent on local circumstances) of naturally forested

landscapes is required to ensure ecological viability, maintain

ecological pattern and process, and protect against inevitable,

spiraling decline. It is critical that this not be used as

justification to devastate the other 90% of the Amazon.

g.b.

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ITEM #1

Title: $30m plan to protect rainforest

Brazilian public opinion is changing

Date: May 11, 2000

Byline: Brazil Correspondent Stephen Cviic

An international environmental agency says it has raised $30m for a

plan to preserve 10% of Brazil's Amazon rainforest.

The agency, the Global Environment Facility, says the area to be set

aside will be among the most strictly protected land in the history of

nature conservation.

The plan, which was originally announced two years ago, will also

receive a total of $23m from the Brazilian Government and the

Worldwide Fund for Nature.

Brazil is home to the world's largest rainforest, and although

international reports of its demise have sometimes been exaggerated,

there is no doubt that it is steadily being eaten away by farmers,

ranchers and loggers.

International interest

The Brazilian Government has already created reserves for indigenous

people and nature conservation, and some of this land will be

incorporated into the new larger scheme.

Preserving 10% of the rainforest may not sound like much, but if it is

done properly, it will make a difference, since the areas to be

protected would also be home to a large number of bird, mammal and

reptile species.

The Global Environment Facility is an agency which gets its funding

from 30 member governments, a sign of continuing international

interest in the preservation of the Brazilian Amazon.

The Facility's chairman, Dr Mohamed El-Ashry, says the money will make

the new Amazon reserve one of the most strictly protected regions in

conservation history.

Indigenous people

He told the BBC: "The new project involves enough funding for the

management and for the monitoring and surveillance to ensure that no

encroachment and no major actions like logging and mining are taking

place illegally in these areas.

"In practice, there will be people who will be hired as park rangers.

The indigenous people themselves will also be trained to ensure that

they can report the encroachments that could happen on a larger

scale."

Inside Brazil, public opinion is now more concerned about the fate of

the Amazon than it used to be.

The present government has improved its monitoring of forest fires and

introduced new heavier fines for environmental crimes. But the rate

of deforestation is still high and on Wednesday, the farmers' lobby

scored a big victory in congress when a parliamentary commission

approved a proposal reducing the amount of forest that individual

landowners are obliged to preserve.

ITEM #2

Title: Environmental Groups, Brazil to Preserve 91 Mln Acres of

Amazon

Date: May 11, 2000

Washington, May 11 (Bloomberg) -- At least 10 percent of the mammoth

Amazon rainforest will be protected from logging and mining over the

next ten years under a project spearheaded by Brazil, environmental

groups and the World Bank, the groups announced.

The groups pledged $53 million, including $30 million from the

multilateral lender Global Environment Facility, to make the first

payment for the development and enforcement of environmental

protection that will protect an area the size of Montana. The 10- year

project would triple the amount of protected land in Brazil,

supporters said.

``For the first time we'll have a system covering all the Amazon

region, saying what can be done and how it can be done,'' said Mary

Allegretti, the top official for the Amazon in the government Brazil.

Global lenders, developed countries and the government of Brazil have

funded a number of programs over the past decade to slow the

destruction of the Amazon, the world's largest remaining tropical

forest. Together with the nearby Atlantic Forest, the Amazon contains

the largest diversity of plant and animal life in the world, according

to the World Bank.

The outside efforts have reduced the rate of destruction of the

rainforest, according to an annual satellite survey by the government

of Brazil. Still, environmental experts say weak enforcement of

national laws has allowed logging for high-priced woods to continue.

``What we'll really need to look for is the enforcement of this,''

said Atossa Soltani, who heads Amazon Watch, a group that supports the

rights of the indigenous people living in the Amazon area.

It is better enforcement that the Global Environment Facility, which

is funding this through the World Bank, says is the goal of this

project.

Unclaimed Lands

Right now 3 percent of the Amazon region is set aside as protected

reserves, while 28 percent is reserved for use by local people. Most

of the lands to be set aside in this effort are now called ``unclaimed

government lands,'' a Global Environmental Facility statement said.

``The existing protected reserves have suffered from poor enforcement

and substantive threats such as timber extraction, agricultural

development, deforestation and mining,'' according to the GEF

statement. The facility is an independent lender that assists

developing countries in protecting the environment. Each of its

projects is administered through either the World Bank or United

Nations.

The environmental lender pledged $30 million over four years today, to

fund the first leg of the 10-year plan. Brazil pledged $18 million and

the World Wildlife Fund $5 million. The total cost of the 10-year

project is $270 million, the statement said.

``We recognize that local and indigenous populations are those best

suited to manage the (reserve) lands,'' said Mohammed El-Ashry,

chairman of the environment fund.

The project will also try to find ways to make money off the

preserves, said Bruce Cabarle, director of global forest programs at

the World Wildlife Fund.

``We'd like to find ways to exploit the wealth without stripping the

land,'' he said.

For home builder and lumber sellers in the U.S., protection of the

Amazon has become a large consideration, as advocacy groups have told

them to buy only that wood certified as harvested in a sustainable

way.

For example, after more than 1,000 demonstrations organized by the

Rainforest Action Network, Home Depot Inc., the largest U.S. home-

improvement retailer, agreed to phase out the sale of lumber from

trees in endangered forests.

``This is one part of complimentary projects, some for protection,

others for sustainable use,'' Allegretti said.

ITEM #3

Title: 10 percent of Amazon rain forest to be preserved by

coalition

Date: May 14, 2000

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The largest single commitment to preserve land in

the Amazon region of Brazil will take place over the next 10 years,

when a minimum of 10 percent of the rain forest will be set aside in

an effort to preserve the region's extensive biodiversity.

The area will become some of the most strictly protected land in the

history of nature conservation through a program funded by the

Washington, D.C.-based Global Environment Facility, the World Wildlife

Fund and the Brazilian government.

Brazil has long been known as the most biologically diverse country in

the world, but it also has been a prime target for logging and mining

companies. They have exploited much of what was pristine wilderness by

targeting rare hardwoods and mineral resources.

In the 1970s and 1980s, loggers and farmers cut down or burned vast

stretches of the forest. International condemnation since then

prompted the government to begin action toward preservation.

Even so, destruction has continued, to the point that illegal logging

and farming last year destroyed an area of the Amazon rain forest

larger than Hawaii, according to the Brazilian government's annual

report on devastation of the world's largest rain forest.

'The lungs of the Earth'

The Amazon ecosystem is the most plant-rich in the world.

"The Brazilian ecosystem is important to the whole world for many

reasons," said GEF senior environmental specialist Mario A. Ramos.

"The Amazon is the largest area of continuous tropical rain forest in

the world compared with that of the Congo or Indochina. For example,

one-fifth of the world's plants are found in the Amazon ecosystem."

One in six of all the world's birds, one in 11 of the world's mammals

and one in 15 of the world's reptiles are found in the Amazon

ecosystem.

But massive deforestation and development have fouled the environment

and jeopardized many plant and animal species.

The GEF says the project will benefit not only the region but the

entire world, given the size and importance of the Amazon rain

forest's biodiversity.

"The tropical forest keeps a stock of 120 million tons of carbon that

are sequestered in that forest, which leads some observers to call the

Amazon the lungs of the Earth," said GEF chairman Mohamed T. El-Ashry.

The deforestation of the Amazon and the public outcry that resulted

have prompted the government to move toward adopting environmentally

friendly policies for sustainable development.

But selection of land for reserves has been controversial, as land and

water rights and the interests of local communities have had to be

balanced with environmental priorities.

Selection of land for protection under the new program will be based

on biological content: Areas with the largest number of species and

areas with unique species will be prioritized.

The first of these sustainable development reserves is Mamiraua,

currently the world's largest protected block of rain forest and part

of an area of protected wilderness larger than Costa Rica.

It was founded on the basis that the people living in it -- some

20,000 in dozens of villages -- would be allowed to stay and play a

major role in protecting the natural resources.

Harvests in the area have increased, and there are new sources of

earnings, such as an ecotourism. And, as the local population has

benefited, it has taken responsibility for enforcing conservation

laws.

Volunteer guards patrolling the reserve report violations to

authorities. Without participation by the local residents, government

officials say it would be almost impossible to provide sufficient

money and guards to protect the 22,000-plus square mile (57,000-plus

square km) reserve.

But the GEF says its project, originally agreed to by Brazilian

President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1998, will be even more

strictly protected to preserve its precious biodiversity.

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