ENVIRONMENT: Amazon Top Priority for Greenpeace

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 1 1999 (IPS) - The Amazon is now the number one priority of Greenpeace International, replacing the worldwide anti- nclear campaign.

Announcing this Monday, Thilo Bode, executive director of the environmental organisation said that the conservation of the Amazon rainforest will be Greenpeace’s “biggest and most important campaign.”

Bode released a report on Amazon deforestation caused by international logging companies and also plans to meet President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and other government officials dureing his weeklong visit.

According to the report, January’s currency devaluation will force Brazil to increase its wood exports by 20 percent this year to maintain profits. This will accelarate deforestation which has already hit 13.7 percent of the region’s forests, an area equivalent to the size of France.

Logging is the primary cause of forest destruction throughout the world and accounts for 72 percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon region, the report said.

The problem of deforestation in the Amazon has become more alarming in the past 10 years due to an invasion by multinational logging companies from Europe, North America and Asia. They produce 12 percent of the region’s industrial processing capacity and nearly half of the total wood exported, according to studies cited by Greenpeace.

Wood produced in the Amazon is now 85 percent of the country’s total wood production, compared with just 14 percent two decades ago. Currently, 90 percent of the wood is used nationally, says Roberto Kishinami, Greenpeace director in Brazil.

The Amazon has become the world’s principal source of tropical wood for the logging companies faced with the depletion of tropical forests in Southeast Asia and Central Africa.

The increased wood exports also are riding on the wave of Brazil’s currency devaluation. In this context, “it’s a scandal” that the Group of Seven wealthiest countries (G-7) has invested just 70 million of the 340 million US dollars it promised 10 years ago for Amazon forest preservation, said Bode.

He said that Greenpeace must mobilise public opinion to overcome political obstacles and economic interests in Brazil and in the wealthy wood-importing countries if the programme is to move forward.

The Brazilian government must take on the lead role and make the “pilot programme” into a permanent programme, co-ordinated by the World Bank with G-7 resources, added Kishinami.

The Amazon defence campaign will have at its disposal an annual budget of 2.5 million dollars and 33 Greenpeace offices throughout the world to promote the campaign.

“It will be a worldwide mobilisation and we intend to keep it going for many years,” Kishinami said. Greenpeace is an organisation “of combat, of fighting…whose function is to be the catalyst for change and identify appropriate solutions.”

Greenpeace will attempt to mobilise the 20 million inhabitants of the region and promote sustainable development, he added.

Officials from the organisation will accompany a delegation of Amazonian Indians and ‘seringueiros’ – who tap trees for natural rubber – to Europe this week to convince importers of tropical wood that they should demand certification of environmentally sound logging methods for the products they import.

They also hope to identify markets for Amazonian products produced in environmentally friendly ways as a means of diversifying the local population’s sources of income, in addition to promoting sustainable economic activity.

As an example, ecotourism has the potential to provide 10 times the income per hectare of logging, Kishinami said. Most of the wood is poorly used – as disposable construction material – and could be substituted with other materials, he observed.

The defence of the forests will include some spectacular actions, typical of Greenpeace, announced Ruy de Goes, co- ordinator of the Amazon campaign in Brazil.

But Greenpeace plans to take precautions and avoid risks in a region known for violent conflicts and where several social activists have been assassinated, stressed De Goes.