An oil tanker in Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay. Just 250 km from the coast lie the country’s presalt oil reserves, the wealth of the so-called Blue Amazon. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 2 2015 (IPS)

The Atlantic ocean is Brazil’s last frontier to the east. But the full extent of its biodiversity is still unknown, and scientific research and conservation measures are lagging compared to the pace of exploitation of resources such as oil.

The Blue Amazon, as Brazil’s authorities have begun to call this marine area rich in both biodiversity and energy resources, is similar in extension to the country’s rainforest – nearly half the size of the national territory.

And 95 percent of the exports of Latin America’s giant leave from that coast, according to official figures.

Brazil’s continental shelf holds 90 and 77 percent of the country’s proven oil and gas reserves, respectively. But the big challenge is to protect the wealth of the Blue Amazon along 8,500 km of shoreline.

“We haven’t fully grasped just how immense that territory is,” Eurico de Lima Figueiredo, the director of the Strategic Studies Institute at the Fluminense Federal University, told Tierramérica. “To give you an idea, the Blue Amazon is comparable in size to India.”

“But we aren’t prepared to take care of it; it isn’t yet considered a political and economic priority for the country,” the political scientist said.

Figueiredo, who presided over the Brazilian Association of Defence Studies (ABED) from 2008 to 2010, said the Blue Amazon is a term referring to the territories covered by new treaties on international maritime law.

Brazil is one of the 10 countries in the world with the largest continental shelves, in an ocean like the Atlantic which conceals untold natural wealth that offers enormous economic, scientific and technological potential.

According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) comprises an area which extends to 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) off the coast.

Official map of part of the Blue Amazon, off the east coast of Brazil, where conservation and research are lagging behind economic development, mainly by the oil industry. Credit: Government of Brazil

Brazil’s EEZ was originally 3.5 million sq km. But it later claimed another 963,000 sq km, which according to different national institutions – including scientific bodies – represents the natural extension of the continental shelf.

The U.N. Convention’s Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), made up of 148 countries, has so far sided with Brazil, adding 771,000 sq km to its EEZ. The decision on the rest is still pending.

Brazil’s demand, at least with respect to the expansion of the continental shelf granted so far, meets the requisites of the U.N. Convention and grants the country the power to exploit the resources in the expanded area and gives it the responsibility of managing it.

The recognition of Brazil’s claim, although only partial, has annoyed some neighbour countries, because of the huge economic benefits offered by the additional continental shelf it was granted.

Figueiredo said the challenge now is to monitor and protect the continental shelf. “We don’t have full sovereignty with regard to the maritime territory. Brazilian society is unaware of the important need to protect the Blue Amazon. There are enormous shortcomings, with respect to our needs.”

In 2005 a plan was approved to upgrade the navy with an estimated investment of 30 billion dollars until 2025. Defending a country is a complex task, said Figueiredo, because it involves a number of dimensions: military, economic, technical and scientific.

But scientific research in Brazil’s marine territory is currently far outpaced, he said, by the exploitation of resources such as the oil located 250 km off the coast and 7,000 metres below the ocean surface, beneath a thick layer of salt, sand and rocks.

Development of the so-called presalt reserves, discovered a decade ago, would make Brazil one of the 10 countries with the largest oil reserves in the world. And they already provide 27 percent of the more than three million barrels a day of oil and gas equivalent produced by this country.

“That region belongs to Brazil, the country has assumed commitments with the U.N. to monitor and study the living and non-living resources like oil, gas and minerals. If we don’t preserve it, we’ll lose this great treasure,” oceanographer David Zee, at the Rio de Janeiro State University, told Tierramérica.

In his opinion, Brazil is far from living up to the commitments assumed with the international community. “We have duties – we have to meet the U.N.’s scientific research requirements. We have to take greater care of our marine resources,” he said.

Apart from the oil and gas wealth, a large part of the EEZ borders the Mata Atlántica ecosystem, which extends along 17 of Brazil’s 26 states, 14 of which are along the coast.

The environmental organisation SOS Mata Atlántica explains that coastal and marine areas represent the ecological transition between land and marine ecosystems like mangroves, dunes, cliffs, bays, estuaries, coral reefs and beaches. The biological wealth of these ecosystems turns marine areas into enormous natural nurseries.

And the convergence of cold water from the South with warm water from the Northeast contributes to biological diversity and provides shelter for numerous species of flora and fauna.

But only 1.5 percent of Brazil’s maritime territory is under any form of legal protection, Mata Atlantica reports.

Thus, ensuring national sovereignty over jurisdictional waters is still an enormous political and military challenge. In March, some 15,000 naval troops and 250 Navy boats and aircraft took part in Operation Blue Amazon, the biggest of its kind carried out so far in Brazilian waters.

“This was an opportunity to train and guarantee the security of navigation, crack down on drug trafficking, and patrol the sea. The mission involved the entire territorial extension of Brazil,” Lieutenant Commander Thales da Silva Barroso Alves, commander of one of the three offshore patrol vessels that Brazil has to monitor the Blue Amazon, told IPS.

These vessels control the extensive coast in “areas of great economic interest, exploitation and accidents. Illegal fishing is also a recurrent issue,” he said.

The officer argued that the extraction of marine resources should be carried out in a “conscious, sustainable fashion,” with the aim of preserving biodiversity.

Figueiredo, the political scientist, concurs. “Our ability to defend the Blue Amazon depends on our capacity to develop technical-scientific means of protecting biodiversity in such an extensive area,” he said.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

A demonstration against the reopening of the highway in Iguaçu National Park. Credit: Courtesy of SOS Mata Atlântica

By Alice Marcondes
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 13 2013 (IPS)

Environmental groups have appealed to UNESCO to help stop the reopening of Caminho do Colono, a stretch of highway in southern Brazil that crosses through Iguaçu National Park, declared a World Heritage site by the UN agency in 1986.

Hydroelectric dams in the Amazon, amendments to the Forest Code, agrarian reform conflicts: over recent years, the Brazilian public has witnessed a succession of controversies pitting environmental organisations against the country’s authorities.

The most recent conflict involves the Caminho do Colono or “Settler’s Road”, a stretch of highway in the southern state of Paraná that has been closed for over a decade, but could be reopened if a bill currently under study in the Senate is passed. The bill was fast-tracked straight to the Senate following approval by a commission in the Chamber of Deputies, without full discussion in the lower house as a whole.

The origins of the 18-kilometre stretch of highway date back to 1925, when local communities used it as an informal road and for the transport of the “yerba mate” harvested in the region. (Yerba mate is a plant used to prepare a tea-like infusion popular in a number of South American countries.)

Years later the road was integrated into the Brazilian highway network, forming part of Route PR-495, which connects the city of Serranópolis do Iguaçu, on the northern edge of the park, and the town of Iguiporã, in the municipality of Marechal Cândido Rondon.

In 1986 the road was closed for the first time under a management plan drawn up for Iguaçu National Park, which was created as a nature conservation area in 1939 and is home to the largest area of the Mata Atlântica or Atlantic Forest biome in southern Brazil. The closed section of highway falls entirely within the borders of the park.

It was also in 1986 that the park was designated a World Natural Heritage site by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). The road was later reopened illegally, but in 2001 the government declared its permanent closure.

The park is located in the westernmost part of Paraná, 17 kilometres from the centre of the city of Foz do Iguaçu and near the triple border with Argentina and Paraguay. It borders on Iguazu National Park in Argentina, with which it shares the breathtaking Iguazu Falls, a popular tourist destination that earned a spot on the list of Seven Natural Wonders compiled by the Swiss-based New7Wonders Foundation.

Lawmakers from the region have presented numerous bills to get Caminho do Colono reopened. One of them, PL 7.123/2010, drafted by federal deputy Assis do Couto of the ruling Workers’ Party, could be passed by the Senate this month.

The goal is to stimulate tourism and environmental education, and to allow tourists to get to the falls without having to go through Argentina, Couto told Tierramérica*.

The imminent Senate vote on the bill to reopen the road prompted some 1,000 Brazilian organisations to write to UNESCO and request its intervention.

“The author of the bill and its supporters claim that the highway will promote preservation, environmental education and sustainable regional development, although the impacts of highways on protected areas are widely documented and understood. Historical records do not demonstrate any positive effect of the Caminho do Colono on the local, regional, state or national economy,” the letter stresses.

Deputy Couto says that his bill provides for the control of traffic through the park and prohibits the use of the road by trucks.

“The road will not be paved, in order to maintain the permeability of the soil. Cars will not be allowed on it at night. In addition, the opening of the highway will mean a greater state presence, which will curb the current illegal harvesting of palm hearts. The police have even found camps of palm heart harvesters in the area,” he added.

According to Couto, the road will benefit local communities, but this argument does not convince the park’s director of conservation and management, biologist Apolonio Rodrigues.

“The highway is of no importance to the flow of production and the road network of the region. It is simply viewed as a shortcut for people travelling south to north, who would like to shorten the distance they need to drive by going through the park,” Rodrigues told Tierramérica.

“If we consider the importance of the park for humanity, there is no justification for opening the highway to benefit a small group of people,” he said.

Reopening the highway would lead to the fragmentation of the ecosystem, he maintained. “In addition, it could serve as an entryway for exotic species, and its use could lead to the sedimentation and degradation of the waterways,” he warned.

Another problem highlighted by the road’s opponents is the danger it could pose for the local population of jaguars (Panthera onca), which has already shrunk by 90 percent.

It is estimated that there are barely 18 living specimens in an area where up to 180 jaguars once roamed. In fact, the species could be completely wiped out in the region in the next 80 years, according to the coordinator of the National Centre for Carnivorous Mammal Research and Conservation, Ronaldo Morato.

The Centre is a division of the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, which is responsible for the management of Iguaçu National Park.

The area “is already suffering from hunting. Urgent action is needed, and reopening the highway will not contribute to preservation,” Morato told Tierramérica.

Critics of the bill maintain that the efforts to open the road serve the interests of local soy producers, who would be provided with a shortcut for transporting their merchandise.

But Couto refutes this argument by emphasising that trucks would be prohibited. Soy producers, he says, “already have established transportation routes.”

Reopening the highway would require amending the Brazilian legislation on conservation areas in order to include the category of “parkway”. This would set a precedent for the indiscriminate opening of roads in other protected areas, warned the signatories of the letter to UNESCO, which has yet to issue a pronouncement on the matter.

Couto, for his part, believes it would remedy a void in environmental legislation, since there are already highways within the borders of other conservation areas. “One example is the Paraty-Cunha highway inside Serra da Bocaina National Park,” he said.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

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