Posted
on 28 June 2010
Brasilia, Brazil: The Amazon is facing an
urgent new threat as legislators allied
to agribusiness interests and landowners
seek to drastically weaken conservation
requirements of the country’s Forest Law,
the foundation of several decades of sometimes
impressive progress in reducing deforestation.
The issue could come
to a head tomorrow (June 29), with a so-called
“ruralist bloc” trying to push “flexibilisation”
of the laws through a Special Committee
on Forest Law Change on the back of a parliamentary
special commission report claiming the laws
are holding back economic prosperity.
If the Special Committee
accepts the report, it will then go to the
parliament for a vote which is expected
to be favourable. The president has the
option of signing or vetoing any amendments,
but a veto is considered unlikely in the
charged atmosphere of Brazilian presidential
and legislative elections.
WWF-Brazil has strongly
attacked the basis of the report, which
takes particular aim at hard fought requirements
for environmental and sustainable production
reserves on private land – an essential
complement to a gradually growing system
of declared reserves. Ruralist bloc legislators
are seeking sharp cutbacks in reserve requirements
and an amnesty covering widespread disregard
of the law.
According to WWF, Brazilian
agribusiness needs to become more productive
rather than to clear – and often then devastate
– new land before moving on. Even with very
patchy enforcement, Brazil’s Forest Law
and related measures have been credited
with a major role in bringing Amazon deforestation
down from the levels that horrified the
world in the 1980s.
"Discussions should
have been based on science . . . "
“Discussions should
have been based on science, not on oblique
and distorted arguments,” said Carlos Alberto
de Mattos Scaramuzza, Conservation Director
of WWF-Brazil. “The scientific community
has been very little consulted in the preparation
of this document.”
The scientific community
has, however, been extensively consulted
in the preparation of counter reports, two
of which were presented by WWF, Greenpeace
and other NGOs in May.
A detailed GIS based
analysis of Permanent Preservation Areas,
conducted by the respected agricultural
college of the University of Sao Paulo (USP/ESALQ),
found the APPs had a negligible impact –
around 1.5% - on agricultural production
in some of Brazil’s leading coffee, grape,
rice and fruit producing areas. The zones,
APPs in the Portuguese acronym, protect
riparian zones along waterways, and vegetation
on steep slopes, hilltops and in high altitude
areas.
Scaramuzza told a May
seminar that positive effects of the APPs
and other Legal Reserve (RL) areas required
to be set aside for conservation and sustainable
development included catchment, river and
water quality protection and reduced soil
erosion and risk from landslides and floods.
The other larger scale
study, still undergoing peer review following
a mammoth one and a half years spent in
constructing a land use database, is the
result of a partnership between USP/ESALQ,
Brazil’s Ministry of Agricultural Development,
WWF and Chalmers University in Sweden.
It finds that the required
area for APPs is about 103 million hectares
– with only about 59 million hectares under
permanent preservation, a 43 per cent deficit.
The area of Legal Reserves is estimated
to be about 43 million hectares short of
the requirement.
In contrast, 97 per
cent of protected areas and indigenous lands
are still covered with natural vegetation.
The study also finds ample area for expansion
of agricultural lands without abolishing
or encroaching on reserve areas in line
with the parliamentary commission proposals.
More prosperity from
boosting productivity than just clearing
more land
Agriculture and cattle
ranching expansion does not depend on further
deforestation to achieve higher productivity
rates or even to enlarge its farming areas,
USP/ESALQ’s Professor Gerd Sparovek told
the seminar. The study points out that much
of the 211 million hectares now used in
Brazil for cattle ranching has very low
rates of cattle per hectare, with sustainable
increases in productivity available from
integrating agriculture and ranching and
improved pasture management.
While Brazil has had
some success reducing deforestation in the
Amazon, other areas with less of an international
profile are under significant assault which
only worsen if Forest Law provisions are
wound back. They include the endangered
Atlantic Forests now the subject of a significant
international conservation effort and high
savannah areas of the Cerrado, headwaters
of many significant Amazon tributaries and
the source of the springs for the Pantanal
wetlands and Paraguay River.
With significant opposition
being expressed to the committee by other
legislators, communities, NGOs and the research
community WWF is hoping the controversial
report is not adopted.
Amazon set to burn again
If the amendments are
signed into law, effective control of deforestation
will pass from strong Federal legislative
control to a piecemeal state by state approach.
Under this scenario, a strong upsurge in
deforestation is expected, raising the spectre
of “the Amazon is burning” past which became
a celebrated cause internationally and helped
form the basis of a structure of international
environmental conventions and institutions.
Passage would also make
impossible the Brazilian action plan on
climate change which relies on continued
reductions in deforestation related emissions.
Independent calculations show the amendments
could lead to several times the quantity
of emissions reductions Brazil has promised.
www.panda.org/media for latest news and
media resources
+ More
Minor reprieve for Amazon
as vote delayed on Forest Law protections
Posted on 29 June 2010
Brasilia, Brazil: A Brazilian parliament
special committee has delayed a vote on
a proposal which would dramatically increase
the areas of the Amazon that could be legally
cleared.
The Special Committee
on Forest Law Changes is now scheduled to
vote on the proposal - which would cut back
forest preservation requirements on private
land and reduce Federal controls on deforestation
– until next week.
Discussions today were
not expected to result in any significant
changes to the report before the Special
Committee.
Pundits quip that the
timing of the vote will be influenced by
the Brazilian team’s prospects in the football
World Cup.
Scientists, WWF and
other environmental, community and indigenous
organisations have been warning that the
proposed changes being advocated by the
so-called “ruralist bloc” - supported by
landowners and agribusiness – could see
Brazil returning to the high deforestation
rates that once horrified the world.
Conservative calculations
also estimate that the deforestation unleashed
by the changes will be several times the
emissions reductions promised by Brazil
- and which were to be mainly delivered
by further reductions in deforestation.
The cutbacks in forest
cover requirements for stream and river
banks and steep and vulnerable land will
also make Brazil more vulnerable to extreme
weather related floods and land slips, WWF
has warned.
