09/23/01 -- Brazilian Bill Would Allow More Rainforest Destruction

ACTION ALERT!

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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Brazilian Bill Would Allow More Rainforest Destruction

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

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TAKE ACTION:

BRAZILIAN FORESTS ENDANGERED - Proposal to change the forest

legislation threatens large ecosystems in Brazil

Background: http://www.codigoflorestal.com.br/english/index.asp

click on green PROTESTO box on left to send protest email, or here

is the actual send alert page:

http://www.codigoflorestal.com.br/english/cyberaction.asp

09/23/01

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

The ecological integrity of the most magnificent rainforest in the

World - the Brazilian Amazon - is threatened as never before. A

pivotal policy struggle is occurring in Brazil between agricultural

interests that want to gut land protections found in Brazil's forest

code, and local environmental groups and citizenry that understand

that long term ecologically sustainable development depends upon

careful stewardship of globally precious and irreplaceable rainforest

ecosystems. The outcome may well prove pivotal in efforts to

successfully conserve the Amazon and maintain global ecosystem

integrity. Please send a protest message to the nearest Brazilian

embassy at http://www.codigoflorestal.com.br/english/cyberaction.asp

- voicing your solidarity with the "SOS Forests Campaign" (SOS

Florestas), a coalition of over 260 Brazilian non-governmental

organizations. Doing so will signal to the Brazilian President the

importance of vetoing the environmentally regressive Amazon forest

code revisions. Below is important international coverage of this

exceptionally significant issue from the New York Times.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: Bill in Brazil Would Allow More of Jungle to Be Razed

Date: September 23, 2001

Byline: LARRY ROHTER

RASILIA - A joint commission of the Brazilian Congress has approved a

measure that would more than double the amount of the Amazon jungle

that ranchers, loggers and miners would be permitted to raze.

The measure, sponsored by a "rural caucus" of legislators, would

weaken many restrictions on Amazon land use and eliminate other

safeguards altogether.

Though the bill must be approved by both houses of Congress to become

law, environmental groups are alarmed and have begun a national

campaign to defeat it.

"This legislation is dangerous to the Amazon and to all of Brazil

because it puts the government's entire program of sustainable

development at risk," said Adriana Ramos of the Social and

Environmental Institute, a research and advocacy group. "The initial

vote reflects the intransigence of a rural lobby that thinks only of

defending its own narrow interests at the expense of society."

The measure, a new forestry code, would modify the government's

current policy of requiring owners of land in the Amazon to preserve

80 percent of their property as forest. Instead of the 20 percent

left for development, the new code would enable landowners to use at

least 50 percent of their holdings for "productive purposes" once a

"zoning study" granted approval.

"We have no objection to preserving the Amazon, which is, after all,

part of the patrimony of the Brazilian people," said Senator Rubens

Moreira Mendes, a leading member of the rural caucus. But the current

restrictions, he said, "go too far in discouraging rational

development and investment."

The draft code would also remove a longstanding provision that

obligates landowners to replant deforested areas along riverbanks,

allow them to replace some virgin forest with nonnative, commercially

attractive species like eucalyptus, and redefine what constitutes

jungle.

President Fernando Henrique Cardoso opposes the changes and was able

to thwart an effort to pass a similar bill in May. But his

government's coalition in Congress has weakened since then and is

likely to become more divided ahead of presidential elections a year

from now.

"A lot of bad things can happen at the end of a government, and one

of the things we are seeing in the eastern Amazon is a sense of a

free-for- all, with nobody minding the store," Stephan Schwartzman of

Environmental Defense said in a telephone interview from Washington.

"It's kind of open season, and that kind of mentality could lead

people in Brazil to do things they think could create some sort of

electoral advantages."

The debate comes as the pace of deforestation in the Amazon, which is

bigger than all of Western Europe, appears to be picking up. After

reaching a record level in the mid- 1990's, the destruction of tree

cover slowed somewhat in 1999 and 2000, according to government

monitors, as the Brazilian economy stagnated.

But Brazil has largely recovered from that crisis, and the current

Amazon dry season has been marked by drought. That makes felling or

burning trees easier.

"We have been seeing massive numbers of trucks and buses hauling

laborers deeper and deeper into the jungle to cut down trees so as to

create new cattle ranches," said Amarildo Gomes Pereira, who monitors

deforestation patterns for the Roman Catholic Church's Pastoral Land

Commission from the jungle town of Tucuma.

The government is seeking to postpone a final vote on the proposal.

But backers of the bill like Mr. Moreira Mendes are pushing for a

quick decision.

"The integrity of the most magnificent forest on the planet is a

right of the many future generations of Brazilians who, unlike large

landholders, have not been heard in Congress," the Minister of the

Environment, Jos‚ Sarney Filho, said recently. "It is up to the state

and public opinion to undertake an intransigent defense of this

right."

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