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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

40 Percent of the Brazilian Amazon to Be Protected, Is This Enough?

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal

http://forests.org/links/ -- Forest Conservation Links

11/29/01

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

A new project by the World Bank and World Wildlife Fund has set as

their goal protection of 40% of the Amazon. Why 40%? What happens

to the other 60%? How was this figure arrived at? Is it based upon

landscape requirements for sustainability of ecological process and

pattern, or is it born of political expediency and setting easily met

targets? Namely, given the fact that the 40% figure includes

indigenous reserves (only 17% would be national parks), is this

essentially what was likely to be protected already? And of more

concern than anything, does this ensure commercial harvest of the

other 60%? Why do nearly all forest conservation solutions advocated

by the World Bank and WWF include continued large-scale, industrial

diminishment of the majority of the World's remaining relatively

intact and natural forest ecosystems? In their vision, is forest

conservation primarily about maintaining commercial scale harvest of

most primary and old growth forests? Does this project amount to

anything more than window dressing and posturing by financial and

environmental conglomerates while maintaining market access to logs

from ancient forests? The World's forests have been diminished to

such an extent that the remaining large forest expanses are required

for global ecological sustainability. If they are lost, so are we.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: More than 40 percent of the Brazilian Amazon protected

under new plan

Source: Copyright 2001 Associated Press

Date: November 20, 2001

Byline: MICHAEL ASTOR; Associated Press Writer

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - More than 40 percent of the Brazilian Amazon

will be protected after a joint project by the World Bank and the

World Wildlife Fund is completed, a leading conservationist said

Tuesday.

Speaking before the third Parliamentary Conference of the Americas,

uniting some 500 lawmakers from more than 20 countries,

Thomas Lovejoy, a tropical biologist and chief biodiversity adviser

to the World Bank, said the figure included national parks, Indian

reservations, and reserves where natives live by extracting fruits,

nuts and other rainforest products without cutting down trees. He did

not say when the new World Bank/World Wildlife Fund project, to

protect 10 percent of the rainforest, would be completed, but it

would mean a total of 17 percent forest will be a national park.

The remaining 23 percent is Indian reservation or has been declared

as a reserve.

The Brazilian Amazon covers 4.9 million square kilometers (2 million

square miles), or 60 percent of Brazilian territory. It crosses

Brazil's borders to enter Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru,

Bolivia, Suriname, Guayana and French Guayana.

Environmentalists say the world's largest remaining tropical

wilderness is disappearing at a rate of about 17,000 square

kilometers (6,800 square miles) a year.

According to the World Bank an area the size of France has already

been cut down.

Lovejoy cited rainforest protections as a bright spot in an otherwise

gloomy environmental scenario. He cited global warming as the most

pressing threat.

"We will need to reduce greenhouse gases on a timetable much more

ambitious than currently proposed," Lovejoy said. "The process needs

to be hastened and the U.S. has to make a serious contribution."

The Bush administration in March said it was withdrawing from the

1997 Kyoto agreement, arguing that its mandatory regulation of

greenhouse gases would hurt the U.S. economy.

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