Posted on 11 May 2011
Brazil’s most important environmental legislation
is on the chopping block again, with politicians
in the country’s lower chamber proposing
to alter it by claiming it impedes economic
growth.
Brazil’s Forest Law
(also known as the Forest Code) was first
enacted in 1934 and determines how much
a landowner can deforest and how much must
be kept as a "legal reserve".
The percentage of a forested property that
needs to be set aside as a legal reserve
varies from region to region. Currently
in the Amazon, the law states that 80% of
a property has to remain forested. For the
Cerrado, this figure is 20%.
A proposed amendment
to the law by the ‘ruralistas’, and put
forward by Federal Representative Aldo Rebelo
of the Brazilian Communist Party would make
profound alterations to the law.
Representative Rebelo
has said the changes will address the outstanding
needs of Brazilian agriculture, especially
in the case of small-scale farmers and livestock
producers.
In June 2010, a proposed
revision to the Forest Law was submitted
to Brazil’s Congress that claimed that the
current law is holding back Brazil’s economic
development. This proposal is led by a disproportionately
large delegation representing the agribusiness
sector. In July, a congressional committee
approved the proposal, moving it for consideration
to the full Chamber of Representatives and
then to the Senate.
Voting on the alterations
by the lower chamber has been delayed several
times, as recently as late last week. The
vote now is expected to come up again soon,
possibly as early as next week.
If it passes, it will
then move onto senators, and then to the
country’s president for consideration.
This comes as Brazil
prepares in 2016 to host the Olympic Games,
and ahead of the United Nations’ Conference
on Sustainable Development (Rio +20) in
June 2012. Rio+20 is a major meeting attended
by heads of state focused on securing renewed
political commitment for sustainable development.
Ignoring advice
If the amendment is
approved, it will be done without heeding
suggestions made by the federal government,
the scientific community, the evaluations
of environmental groups, or the opinions
of the family-based agriculture sector who
have all weighed in against the proposed
changes.
“If the amendment is
voted as it stands now, it will be the first
Forest Law elaborated in Brazil since 1934,
without any scientific input whatever. If
we had more time to debate the issue we
would have an opportunity of constructing
environmental legislation suitable for the
21st century, modern and scientifically
illuminated,” stated Antônio Nobre,
a researcher at the National Institute of
Space Studies (Inpe).
The proposed changes
also would roll back one of the most effective
pieces of legislation to protect forests
and biodiversity in the country, while at
the same time slowing Brazil’s reduction
of greenhouse gas emissions.
"Representative
Aldo Rebelo is creating a series of snares
and agendas hidden in the modifications
he made to the text,” said Carlos Alberto
de Mattos Scaramuzza, Conservation Director
at WWF-Brazil.
“His behaviour is imperilling
a historical opportunity to construct legislation
that simultaneously promotes conservation
and benefits rural production. Organised
civil society and scientists have not had
a hearing in this process. Putting the text
to the vote as it stands would be a very
serious mistake.”
Among the tricky catches
Aldo Rebelo has included in the text is
empowering more than 5,500 municipal authorities
to authorise forest clearing, even in areas
currently under environmental protection.
The legislation opens up the possibility
of doing so for “any area that is to be
dedicated to the production of foodstuffs”.
It also transfers the onus for the demarcation
and registration of the legal reserve areas
– areas of natural vegetation that must
remain undisturbed on every rural landholding
– to municipal government bodies.
This will effectively
pass control of deforestation will pass
from the federal government to a piecemeal
state by state approach among local municipalities,
in turn allowing for strong agribusiness
interests being influential in the interpretation
of the law. Under this scenario, a strong
upsurge in deforestation is expected.
The proposal now before
the Chamber of Representatives additionally
brings with it a series of other threats
to Brazil’s great natural wealth, and not
only to the Amazon region.
It reduces the mandatory
width of the protective strip of gallery
forest vegetation that must be preserved
along the courses of streams and rivers;
liberates the tops of hills, mountains and
plateaus for cattle raising activities;
permits the felling of tree species under
threat of extinction like the Brazilian
Pine, and reduces the socio-environmental
functions of rural landholdings by diminishing
the percentages of natural vegetation that
must be maintained on them.
Contributing to disappearing
forests
The debate about Brazil’s
Forest Law comes as a new global analysis
released last month showed that more than
230 million hectares of forest around the
world will disappear by 2050 if no action
to stop deforestation is taken.
The first chapter of
WWF’s Living Forests Report, released April
27, examines the drivers of deforestation
and identifies the opportunities to shift
from business as usual to a new model of
sustainability, which can benefit government,
business and communities.
The report proposes
that policymakers and businesses unite around
a goal of zero net deforestation and forest
degradation (ZNDD) by 2020 as a groundbreaking
global benchmark to avoid dangerous climate
change and curb biodiversity loss.
“We are squandering
forests now by failing to sort out vital
policy issues such as governance and economic
incentives to keep forests standing,” said
Rod Taylor, WWF International Forests Director.
NOTE: This story was updated May 12 and
May 17.
