 |
|
|
Crackdown Not Enough to Stop Deforestation |
|
By Mario Osava*
Entrepreneurs
and activists are challenging the results of Operation Curupira,
which in June struck at the mafias behind destruction of the Amazon
forest. They charge that the government's sting operation also paralyzed
the legal lumber industry.
RIO DE JANEIRO - Operation Curupira looked
like a spectacular triumph in defense of the Amazon forests. It
dismantled corruption and fraud network that had helped make the
central-western Brazilian state of Mato Grosso the nation's leader
in deforestation. But the police sting did not resolve the problem,
and apparently generated some others.
The offensive led by the Federal Police and the Attorney General's
Office, began on Jun. 2. The police detained nearly a hundred people
and ended up charging 174 with "association to commit a crime."
The main crime was sales, by environmental authorities to entrepreneurs,
of false documents authorizing the transport and trade of illegally
extracted lumber.
But the crackdown entailed other measures that had an impact on
the legal logging sector.
The Brazilian Environment Institute, IBAMA, suspended in early June
all authorizations for transporting lumber, "suffocating the industry
and forcing worker layoffs or company closures," says Augusto dos
Passos, president of Simenorte, a union of logging companies in
northern Mato Grosso state, based in Alta Floresta.
Dos Passos's company, which had 120 employees in March, today has
just 35. The firms affiliated with Simenorte represent 8,000 workers
whose jobs are now at risk.
Another measure, still being studied by the government, is a moratorium
on deforestation six months out of the year, proposed by Elielson
Ayres de Souza, an investigator designated to oversee IBAMA in Mato
Grosso after Operation Curupira arrested or fired more than 40 local
leaders from that institute.
Dos Passos is an outspoken opponent of the six-month moratorium.
It is an initiative "of a madman who knows nothing about the lumber
industry or about Mato Grosso," and if it were to be carried out,
would mean "the death of the industry," he told Tierramérica.
The entrepreneur is calling for a march to the capital, Brasilia,
this week, "with 1,000 trucks filled with logs and lumber to make
a great bonfire in front of the (Presidential) Palace," to demonstrate
"the desperation" of the legal logging companies.
But his colleague Jaldes Langer, who heads another logging union
in the city of Sinop, in central-north Mato Grosso, says a rally
in Brasilia would be "premature", although it is a "very serious
situation." He prefers to wait for clarification of the government's
measures.
In the neighboring city of Juara, loggers closed down business on
July 11 and brought together thousands of people to protest against
IBAMA.
According to De Souza, who took over the helm of IBAMA in Mato Grosso,
the moratorium is the only way to contain deforestation and promote
sustainable forestry activities, allowing extraction of raw materials
only in areas with approved environmental management plans.
Neither the local IBAMA office nor the state's Environmental Secretariat
can control the extensive forested areas of Mato Grosso with their
limited number of inspectors, he admitted. With the moratorium,
all deforestation would be illegal, and satellite imaging would
allow officials to shut down any such activity immediately, De Souza
said.
But Dos Passos disagrees. The problem, he says, is that the areas
of the state that have approved forest management plans in place
are insufficient to maintain legal extraction activities.
State legislation would allow deforestation of half of the properties
in the "transition zone" of the Amazon forests. However, national
law requires 80 percent "forest reserve" status in the entire Amazon,
including the transition zones, and therefore IBAMA, a federal agency,
does not recognize the management plans based on state-level legislation.
According to Mato Grosso state attorney Carlos Teodoro Irigaray,
the new environmental policy of Governor Blairo Maggi would adjust
local law to the national law, and strengthen the appropriate agencies.
Mato Grosso is the central scenario of the defense of tropical forests
because it is where 48 percent of the deforestation of 26,130 square
km occurred that was recorded in nine Amazon states during the 12
months that ended in August 2004.
Furthermore, deforestation in that state increased 20.3 percent
during that period in relation to the 12 previous months.
Satellite data through May of this year gave rise to forecasts of
a new increase in deforestation in the state, according to the non-governmental
Institute of Man and Environment in the Amazon.
Another non-governmental organization in Mato Grosso, the Center
of Life Institute, says that Operation Curupira underscores the
"myopia" that affects even journalistic coverage of the issue, which
blames deforestation on the loggers, and forgets that the main factor
behind it is the advance of the agricultural frontier -- of livestock
and farming -- into the Amazon.
"Thousands of hectares of forest were cut down in the northern part
of the state even after Operation Curupira arrested many illegal
loggers and paralyzed the legal ones," Laurent Micol, coordinator
of the Center of Life Institute, told Tierramérica.
The deforestation of Mato Grosso was dispersed among many different
expansion frontiers, making it difficult for inspectors despite
the technological advances. As a result, it will only be possible
to save the Amazon forests through economic tools, such as tax and
credit stimuli for sustainable activities, respecting the local
reality, with flexibility and dialogue, said Micol.
The proposed moratorium could "foster even more mafias" in the logging
industry, as the prohibition on alcohol did in the United States
80 years ago, he said.
In the opinion of Ana Luiza da Riva, former head of the IBAMA offices
in Alta Floresta and Sinop, it is essential to change the "economic
logic" that favors deforestation businesses, like the big livestock
projects, and instead authorize loans that today the banks are denying
to smaller, healthy environmental initiatives.
For example, under current conditions, denuded land is three times
more profitable than land covered by forest, she said.
Farmers and ranchers burn or tear up the trees without even selling
off the wood, which if it were used could prevent the logging industry
from seeking raw material in the virgin forests, commented Da Riva,
an environmental sciences expert whose removal from IBAMA was one
of the "excesses" of Operation Curupira, according to Micol and
other local NGOs.
The former environmental official now works for an environmental
NGO and for her husband's business, which produces Brazil nuts (Bertholletia
excelsa).
* Mario Osava is an IPS correspondent.
|
