05/13/00 -- Draft Law Could Reduce Brazil Amazon Reserve Area

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Draft Law Could Reduce Brazil Amazon Reserve Area

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05/13/00

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

During the process of drafting a new forestry code, Brazil appears to

be backsliding from earlier commitments to strengthen forestry

protection. The current draft law would cut from 80 to 50 percent

the amount of land that must be maintained as rainforests when

developing land. Allegations have been made that email of

environmental groups reporting on this attack on Brazil's rainforests

has been cut--indicating the clout of those who would benefit from

this change. The President of Brazil has indicated he may veto the

bill, but there are no guarantees.

g.b.

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Title: Draft law could reduce Brazil Amazon reserve area

Date: May 11, 2000

BRASILIA - A Brazilian parliamentary commission on Wednesday approved

a draft law which would cut the legally-protected Amazon reserve area

from 80 to 50 percent, causing outrage among environmentalist

activists.

The bill will move on for debate in Brazil's Congress, where it will

have to be approved in order to enter the statute books. A date for

the vote still has to be set.

Environmentalists, fuming at the commission's vote - which passed the

bill by 10 votes to three with one abstention - said that if it became

law, it would seriously accelerate the destruction of the Amazon

rainforest.

"This is an enormous defeat," said Adriana Ramos, spokeswoman at the

Social Environmental Institute, one of Brazil's leading ecologist

organisations. "And this defeat is the fault of the government," she

told Reuters.

Ramos added that the government had fallen prey to lobbying from

powerful agricultural companies trying to modify Brazil's forest laws

which, among other provisions, include strict penalties for

environmental crimes.

On Tuesday, the Brazil branch of environmental group Greenpeace

deposited a truckload of wood chips in front of the Congress building

to protest the bill, displaying a poster saying "Don't let our forests

turn into dust".

The bill is backed by Brazil's powerful farm lobby, which hopes to

increase the amount of land available for agriculture. It also

permits landowners to exploit 80 percent of Amazonian tropical

savannah.

Currently, federal law stipulates that 50 percent of tropical savannah

is a protected area.

Environmentalists estimate that 20 percent of Brazil's tropical

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

destroyed, mainly by logging and fires.

They say the law threatens the Amazon rain forest - the world's

largest - by reducing the areas of forest protected from farming and

logging and would permit native woods to be substituted by nonnative

species such as eucalyptus and pine.

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