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BRAZIL: Saving the Amazon Depends on Consumers

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 11 2005 (IPS) - Tree species such as the andiroba (Brazilian or Royal mahogany), the cupuacu, and the acai and murmuru palm trees produce fruit, seeds and oils which may help save the Amazon rainforests, if they capture a wider market and are produced in a sustainable way.

That indeed was the objective of the Forest Market fair organised this week by four environmental organisations in the southern city of Sao Paulo, with the aim of establishing links between producers – not only from the Amazon – and potential buyers, from Brazil and from abroad. The event also sought to promote debate about alternative economic policies to preserve the forests and their biodiversity.

The country’s first forest products fair “exceeded expectations in terms of business,” although the number of visitors was lower than the 10,000 hoped for, IPS was told by Luiz Villares, the manager of Services for Sustainable Businesses, of Friends of the Earth – Amazonia, which was the prime mover of the trade fair held from Saturday to Tuesday.

The entrance fee of 20 reals (nine dollars) limited participants to a “qualified audience” of people interested in doing business or obtaining specific information about the market, he explained.

About 200 exhibitors, including businesses, cooperatives and community associations, showed their products and services in areas as widely distributed as food, crafts, cosmetics, medicines, furniture and ecotourism.

A moisturising soap made from the fruit of the murmuru palm in the Amazonian state of Acre, “biojewellery” made from seeds gathered in the jungle, “vegetable leather” and textiles produced with seringueira (rubber tree) latex, the raw material of natural rubber, all formed part of the exhibit.

“The variety of the products and the experiences of community-based economic systems from the different Brazilian biomes (large ecosystems)” was the outstanding feature of the fair, Villares stressed. He said great interest was expressed in the crafts and exotic foods, such as Amazonian fruits and yacaré (caiman, a type of alligator) meat.

The Forest Market fair is important because it promotes a type of trade that “still lacks structure, where the supply is in its initial stages, and the consumer market is uninformed,” he stated.

But timber, which has its own trade fairs, is the product that has the greatest economic importance and also the greatest environmental impact on the forests. “Demand for certified timber products exceeds supply,” stated Ana Yang, executive director of the Forest Stewardship Council of Brazil.

This restricted supply frustrates consumers, and has the additional negative effect of discouraging and reducing demand, instead of promoting “indignation and increasing the pressure to increase production,” Villares acknowledged.

In Brazil this problem has become more serious because it is so difficult to secure approval for forest management plans. Operations against the illegal felling and transport of Amazonian timber, which have included the arrest of corrupt environmental authorities, have resulted in stricter controls. Personnel at Brazil’s Environment Institute (IBAMA) are now reluctant to issue permits at all.

Enlarging the market for sustainable forestry products implies bolstering the quality and quantity of production, improving productivity, boosting the management and marketing skills of producers who know little about the market, as well as “raising the consciousness of consumers, which is a slow process,” summed up Villares.

That is why the international environmental organisation Friends of the Earth created the “buyers group” to work with construction firms, the biggest consumers of timber, to persuade them to opt for certified woods from managed forests.

The use of certified timber in building is still “limited and insignificant,” admitted Karina Aharonian, an activist with the buyers group. There is still little contact between the big consumer markets, like Sao Paulo, which accounts for 15 percent of all the timber used in Brazil, and the producers far off in the north, she explained to IPS.

It is also difficult to get approval for management plans in the Amazon jungle because of problems related to registering land ownership, she observed.

The international environmental organisation Greenpeace also works with the consumer market in Brazil as a means of reducing deforestation in the Amazon. Until last year, the rainforest was being cleared at the rate of nearly 25,000 square kilometres a year.

Greenpeace’s targets are city governments. The programme Cities Friends of the Amazon seeks to elicit commitments from municipal governments to “exclusively use timber of legal origin,” in their construction projects and public tenders, campaign activist Rebeca Lerer explained to IPS. “Later on we’ll try to persuade them to buy timber from managed areas,” she added.

City governments which have made this commitment pass decrees or laws obliging the use of timber of legal origin in all municipal projects.

Seventeen city governments have already joined the programme, including Sao Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, while some large state capitals, like Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre, have also started negotiations. The number of cities joining the programme increased this year, Lerer said.

The limited knowledge of city governments about conditions in the Amazon jungle and their own participation in the chain of production and consumption which results in the destruction of the rainforest is one of the obstacles to this process. Another is the fact that certified timber costs 20 to 30 percent more than illegally logged woodt, according to the activist. The price difference is a serious hurdle in the struggle against illegal felling, which is the source of 80 percent of the timber used in Brazil, said Lerer. Increasing the proportion of legal timber used is essential in order to reverse this situation and create a trend towards using legally felled timber, which is why the effort is being made to persuade municipal governments, she added.

Public institutions must not fuel illegal activities, argued Lerer, who said buying illegally felled timber has a cost in terms of image, and may have legal consequences as well, in terms of the country’s environmental legislation.