ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL Alarm Over Forestry Plans

By Fabiana Frayssinet Reprint | | Print |

Fabiana Frayssinet

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 5 1997 (IPS) - A government project involving the possible granting of concessions in the forest preserves of Brazil has needlessly alarmed ecologists, according to the Environment Ministry.

The proposed scheme involves the release of 14 million hectares of Amazonian jungle to private corporate interests and already has been dubbed by newspapers as the “privatization of the wilderness.” This has upset Aspasia Camargo, Executive Secretary of the Environment Ministry.

“I protest the use of the word “privatization” because in fact the plan is quite the opposite, ” she said. “We intend to turn forest lands over to the State so that more of Brazil’s forests can be exploited rationally with a some measure of State supervision.”

Camargo, who has been involved with environmental issues since the 1960s when she studied at the Sorbonne, says the “drama” Brazil is living through is that of a country whose abundant supply of wood is embedded in a global context of diminishing availability.

In every 150 million square kilometers of Amazon forest there are at least four and a half billion cubic meters of wood with an average value of 50 to 70 dollars per meter.

Camargo pointed out that “if we wish to maximize the value of a scarce resource like wood, we have to produce it so that the State exercises some control over Brazil’s forests. Only then can we establish rational rules of development that result in equitable utilization.”

The government project, details of which have still to be formally presented, has already evoked suspicion among ecologists and oppositiion politicians.

Fernando Gabeira, a federal deputy for the Green Party, asked Gabeira asks, “If Brazil currently doesn’t exercise any control vover forested lands which are not under concession, how will it control those that are?”

Brazilians only recently learned through reports published overseas that forest product companies based in Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia, had purchased 4.5 million hectares of Amazonian land.

Gabeira denounced this covert activity pointing out that “we’re already forming an investigative commission in Congress yet the Brazilian government doesn’t even know where or how much forest land these Asian interests have purchased.”

In the view of Brazil’s Ecological Defense Association, this situation had jeopardized national sovereignty. An official of the group said that “we’re going to stop paying other countries for our own products such as medicines extracted from medicinal plants that grow in the Amazon.”

Responding to the charges, Camargo said “this allegation of having surrendered national autonomy has become an obsession. We simply intend to increase the area of public lands just as Canada and the United States have been doing since last century.”

She added: “If the State controls these lands, it becomes possible to establish mechanisms of efficiency and control which, in turn, enable sustainable forest management through rational exploitation, and, of course, reforestation.”

Camargo stressed that any tracts of forest turned over to private enterprise would be carefully chosen. So-called “biological corridors” whose enormous biodiversity made sustainable control impossible, would not be ceded, she said.

Camargo emphasized that “if we want to understand Brazil’s political position in these matters, it is necessary to understand that on the one hand we have policies that want to stimulate vigorous use of our forests, while on the other, there is political pressure to protect biodiversity.”

Recent satellite photos have shown that the annual rate of deforestation in Amazonas – an expanse that covers half of Brazil’s total territory – rose from 11,000 square kilometers in 1991 to nearly 15,000 square kilometers in 1994.

According to the Environment Ministry, deforestation is taking place because the State does not control sufficient Amazonian acreage. Camargo said she was convinced that the real threat to the rain forest is not the development of the forestry industry, but the spread of agricultural interests.

“We want Brazil to become a developer of its own forests, yet often it seems that countries with huge forestry interests don’t want any new competition.”

Camargo will coordinate Brazil’s participation at this month’s meeting “Rio-plus-Five” conference on the environment to be held in Rio de Janeiro March 13-19.

The conference will be attended by non-governmental organizations from 80 countries which will evaluate compliance with accords signed at the Global Environmental Summit in 1992.

Once the forestry concession project was ready for presentation, Brazilians – along with the world’s forest product industries – would have the chance to study it before any legislation was introced, Camargo said.

“There is no intention to impose this project in an arbitrary and irresponsible manner,” she said. ” We believe that public debate of these issues is critically important, since this is the first time that Brazil has attempted to devise a comprehensive forestry politic as opposed to a mere body of regulatory law.”