Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Agrarian Reform to Pay for Reforestation

By - - and IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 20 2009 (IPS) - Farmers who received land in an Amazonian distribution will receive about 50 dollars a month to reforest their plots, announced the government's national settlement and agrarian reform agency, INCRA. The program aims to make up for the deforestation of the past two decades and comply with the law that requires preservation of forests for 80 percent of properties in Brazil's Amazon region.

“We hope by 2010 to involve the 57,000 families settled in the Amazon's 43 most deforested municipalities in planting 500 million trees,” INCRA's César José de Oliveira told Tierramérica. That would reforest 1,140 square kilometers, or 0.25 percent of the Brazilian Amazon.

The program is slated to last two years. Seedlings will be native species, for timber or fruits and nuts, with economic potential.

According to Ricardo Rettmann, of the Environmental Research Institute of the Amazon, it is interesting that the government is paying poor people with environmental strings attached.