'Green' Police - A Rare Species in Latin America

Crimes against the environment mostly go unpunished in the region. Only Brazil has an environmental police force, but its scope and authority are limited.

RIO DE JANEIRO - Legislation defining environmental crimes has expanded throughout Latin America over the last few decades, but enforcement of these new laws is nearly nonexistent.

One exception is Brazil, which has institutions that are relatively effective in this regard, although their capacity is limited by the lack of agents, say local environmental organizations.

The governmental Brazilian Environmental Institute (IBAMA) has 1,500 inspectors, in addition to the environmental police forces of the state governments.

In many villages of the Brazilian Amazon - a territory covering 4.9 million square km and home to the world's greatest biodiversity - the IBAMA inspectors are "the only visible face of the government," Paulo Adario, coordinator of the Amazon campaign for the environmental watchdog Greenpeace-Brazil, told Tierramérica.

But there is barely "one agent for every Switzerland-sized area," he added. The work is dangerous, requires specialized training, a great deal of effort and the ability to endure long periods of isolation.

Faced with the lack of infrastructure and budget, Brazil's environmental authority carries out annual "example-setting" operations in which it concentrates its forces.

One such operation took place in October and November 2001 and was aimed at halting illegal wood extraction in the northern state of Pará. The mission was successful because it paralyzed the clandestine market for mahogany wood, according to Adario, who received death threats from traffickers last year.

Taking part in the offensive were 30 IBAMA inspectors, using two helicopters, boats and land vehicles owned by the government, as well as 12 activists and two aircraft from Greenpeace. The authorities confiscated 26,000 cubic meters of mahogany, 11 trucks and tractors, other vehicles and more than 20 weapons.

Two armed men were arrested as they prepared an ambush against the environmentalists and several more fled into the jungle. One justice official and a pilot died when their aircraft crashed.

"Ideally we would have 5,000 inspectors," although the personnel deficit is filled in part by the incorporation of the state environmental police, says Carla Casara, Institutional Support coordinator for IBAMA.

Occasionally the institute turns to the armed forces, non-governmental organizations and volunteers - recruited among the indigenous communities and fishing villages in the affected areas - to create a broad army for environmental protection, Casara said.

The environmental police units were set up based on the state-level military police battalions. The new denomination emerged with the expansion of authority of the forest rangers, a force created more than five decades ago in Brazil.

With 2,105 troops, Sao Paulo state has an exceptionally large force, while Rio Grande do Sul has just 286 environmental police, divided among seven municipalities.

But even in Sao Paulo there are not enough people to protect the forests and rivers, fight illegal dumping of industrial waste and noise pollution, and carry out environmental education efforts, lamented Lieutenant Francislene de Camargo Souza.

The Environmental Crimes Act of 1998 mandated the transformation or creation of these forces. The law "strengthened the police and inspectors, and overcame juridical deficiencies," as well as specifying the crimes and beefing up penalties, said Gilney Viana, lawmaker from the central state of Mato Grosso and former chairman of the Chamber of Deputies environmental committee.

The small Mato Grosso Environmental Battalion is now "more active in enforcement," but the environmental situation is very complicated, observed Viana.

Mato Grosso is an agricultural frontier where soy and cotton plantations are advancing into forest areas. The state is the "champion of logging and forest fires" of the last decade and suffers a high level of contamination from agro-chemicals. The police are powerless to stop the process, which would require economic and fiscal policy changes to discourage destructive activities, he explained.

"There is no conservation without enforcement," stated activist José Truda Palazzo, who praised the actions of the environmental police in southern Brazil.

Although they are "few and poorly armed," the fact that they have tertiary-level educations means they can rehabilitate animals, conduct environmental education and win the respect of the local population, said Truda Palazzo.

In the rest of Latin America, "green" police just do not exist, Isabel Martínez, adviser at the regional office of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), told Tierramérica.

To fight environmental crimes, governments mobilize the army or the police, which have not been trained for this new function, the environmental law expert said.

In Central America, there is a project under way to train police and the armed forces to combat the smuggling of flora and fauna, and the sub-region has a network of "environmental prosecutors" under the local offices of the Attorneys General.

In 1992, Venezuela created the military Environmental Guard, but they are limited to watching over the country's protected areas.

In Mexico, the 3,000 agents of the Federal Procurator's Office for Environmental Protection inspect threatened areas, investigate crimes and evaluate environmental impact, but they are not police, they do not carry weapons and have no direct coercive authority.

The government body has a relatively meager annual budget of 13 million dollars. To fight timber smuggling, it has just 321 inspectors who earn a monthly salary of 364 dollars.

* Mario Osava is an IPS correspondent. Diego Cevallos (IPS Mexico) contributed to this report.