ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Stiffer Fines for Amazon Logging and Burning

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 8 1999 (IPS) - Brazil’s government launched a new offensive against the destruction of Amazon forests by loggers and ranchers, applying laws that slap violators with steep fines for harming the environment.

The Environmental Crime Law, in effect since September 21, has resulted in more than a thousand fines for illegal logging or burning of the Amazon forests, practices which continue on a grand scale in the region.

Authorities fined the Juary business group an unprecedented 4.7 million dollars two weeks ago for burning 9,000 hectares of virgin forests in southern Pará state, the region hardest hit by forest destruction.

The total of fines imposed on ranchers, logging companies and charcoal producers in the region during the second half of October was even higher.

Brazil’s previous forest protection legislation capped fines at the equivalent of 2,600 dollars per infraction.

The illegal logging of trees like mahogany and cedar is one of the principal targets of inspectors from the Brazilian Environmental Institute (IBAMA), the nation’s executive body for environmental policy, with police powers.

Logging companies were fined more than two million dollars over the last two months. The most expensive punishment was handed to the Cella company for felling mahogany trees, an expensive wood that is in high demand. The tree species risks extinction.

Environmentalists point to logging companies as the Amazon forests’ worst threat. They applaud the government for stepping up preventive measures, but have doubts about the results.

Without follow-up, the measures will not be effective – it is still too early to judge, said Roberto Smeraldi, Brazil’s co- ordinator of Friends of the Earth, an international non- governmental organisation

“Passing stricter laws is not enough to change the loggers’ habits,” Smeraldi maintained, based on his years of experience defending the forests. There are many ways to flout the legislation, he said.

In the last year, just two percent of the fines imposed on loggers in the Amazon were actually paid. Legal appeals, postponements and various other manoeuvres mean they can avoid the sanctions, he explained.

Logs seized from those acting outside the law often fall back into the hands of the violators, or are acquired in public auctions – at ridiculously low prices – by the same company that requisitioned them in the first place, pointed out the environmentalist.

If the government’s measures have continuity and if authorities can prevent violators from side-stepping the laws, they would have a stronger inhibitive effect on illegal loggers. Fines raise the cost of illegal logging, meaning companies that obey the environmental laws would be more competitive, reasoned Smeraldi.

Effective control over logging activity demands “that inspections are more than just sporadic,” and that they are performed by agents familiar with the local reality. Control requires continuous vigilance “without excessive repression,” so environmental authorities “are not seen as the enemy” of logging companies, he said.

But inspection is still a gigantic task. Burning forests is a traditional method among Brazil’s farmers to prepare land for cultivation. In times of drought, the practice is widespread in the Amazon region’s east and south.

Eduardo Martins, former president of IBAMA and an environmental activist, affirmed that 80 percent of the wood coming from the Amazon is cut illegally.

A part of the huge profits from illegal logging is used to bribe authorities and to pay off indigenous groups whose lands hold commercially valuable trees.

IBAMA has just 380 inspectors to police the immensity of the Amazon, and the lack of technical resources and funding has become more acute as a result of the government’s financial problems.