BRAZIL: Courts - the Battleground for Fight Against Paper Mills

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Sep 15 (Tierramérica) - The battle against the wood pulp ndustry has intensified in the Brazilian courts, especially in those states where eucalyptus plantations have expanded the most: Bahia and Espírito Santo in the east and Rio Grande do Sul in the south.

In Rio Grande do Sul, five environmental groups joined forces last month in filing a lawsuit against the head of the state government’s environmental protection foundation (FEPAM), Ana Maria Pellini, who they accuse of "moral harassment" in exerting pressure on officials in processes where the paper industry held an interest.

The charges refer to threats and unjustified demotions of public employees who refused to modify the guidelines used in Environmental Zoning for Silviculture, in the licencing for building dams and in the four-fold expansion of the pulp factory of Aracruz, Brazil’s largest paper pulp mill, controlled by the Lorentzen and Safra companies, of Norway and Lebanon, respectively.

"They want to impose an environmental dictatorship, and we reject that control," said Pellini, denying the accusations and underscoring that when she took over the post she found 12,000 environmental permit requests awaiting evaluation and as a result had to launch the FEPAM emergency plan.

Rio Grande do Sul Environment Minister Carlos Brenner de Moraes defended his subordinate as well as the investments in tree plantations, which will reach 10.7 billion reals (6.55 billion dollars) over the 2007-2011 period.

"Every one million reals represent 76 jobs," he argued.

The lawsuits in this southern Brazilian state are aimed primarily at irregularities in the environmental permits and agreements under which environmental impact studies are carried out.

"We demand more restrictions, because the recently approved environmental zoning offers little protection," explained Annelise Steigleder, the environmental prosecutor for Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul.

In the northeastern state of Bahia, the state prosecutor’s office has asked the courts to cancel environmental permits to plant eucalyptus trees, obtained by the pulp mill Veracel, created in a partnership between Aracruz and the Swedish-Finnish firm Stora Enso.

The company used "illicit means, ranging from corruption of officials in licensing bodies to bribes of mayors and city council members," said João da Silva Neto, coordinator of the environmental prosecutor’s office in Eunápolis, a town south of Bahia. Veracel also obtained through irregular channels the quality certificates needed to ensure exports, he alleged.

After 15 years in the courts, the outcome of the first lawsuit filed by the attorney general’s office against Veracel in response to complaints brought by the international environmental watchdog Greenpeace, Brazil’s SOS Mata Atlantica and other environmental groups was handed down in July.

The company was fined 20 million reals (12.3 million dollars) and ordered to remove eucalyptus trees from an area covering 96,000 hectares - distributed among four municipalities of Bahia - and reforest them with tree species native to the Mata Atlantica, the forest ecosystem that was badly affected.

Veracel filed for a suspension of the sentence, arguing that the legal assessment carried out on the basis of the complaint of "alleged irregularities and deforestation" on 64 hectares did not find environmental harm, the company’s president Antonio Sergio Alípio told Tierramérica.

The ruling "surprised us because the area in question had a permit from the state environmental agency and the support of IBAMA (the Brazilian Environmental Institute), and furthermore the company restored the original forest beyond the area required by law," he added.

The prosecutors, however, argued that there were errors in the environmental impact study and that IBAMA was negligent in the case.

In Espírito Santo, a highly deforested state on the eastern coast, Sebastião Ribeiro Filho, attorney for the Alert Network Against the Green Desert, launched the first citizen action against Aracruz in 2001, when the company obtained the permit for its pulp mill.

The courts suspended work on it for nearly a year as a result of a complaint filed by the attorney general’s office for the lack of an environmental study and report, which are required by law. The company signed an agreement pledging to comply with the requirements and thus was allowed to continue construction of the plant, but now faces other lawsuits for deforestation and alleged violations of indigenous rights.

Aracruz is also under fire for diverting part of the Doce River to supply water to one of its pulp mills.

"The company obtained resources from the city government - without having an environmental impact study - to divert water from the Doce River to the Riacho, the main source of water for its mills," just when one of its former directors was serving as development secretary for the state government, Ribeiro Filho told Tierramérica.

The city government justified the operation, saying the diversion of the river was aimed at improving the supply of water to the residents of two nearby neighborhoods.

Civil society does not have the financial conditions to challenge companies like this in the courts, lamented Ribeiro. "It is a battle of David against Goliath," he said.

The legal cases under way in different areas of Brazil are the product of society's increased awareness, lessons learned from the harm caused by eucalyptus monoculture, like the rural exodus and unemployment, as well as environmental disasters, Ivonete Gonçalves, of the Research Centre for the Development of Southern Bahia, told Tierramérica.

"Sixteen years ago in southern Bahia we monitored the pulp mills that committed crimes like planting eucalyptus trees in protected areas or dumping toxins in rivers, and the government was complicit and negligent," she said.

Those who oppose the paper pulp industry in Brazil are now fighting for transparency in October's municipal elections, rejecting candidates whose campaigns are financed by any of the paper companies.

"By supporting a candidate, Aracruz is contributing to the process of strengthening the citizenry, in which all social actors should necessarily participate in democratic processes," the company's press office told Tierramérica.

The president of Veracel argued that his company participated in electoral campaigns in compliance with the law and after broad discussion, given that one of its partners, the Stora Enso group, comes from countries with even stricter laws: Sweden and Finland.

"Furthermore, Veracel joined the Global Compact," promoted by the United Nations to build corporate social responsibility, made commitments to fight corruption, "and, because it wants to be a reference point for sustainability, it cannot commit any slip-ups," said Alípio.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.) (END/2008)

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