If there’s one thing Brazil has a lot of, it’s trees. And so long as climate change remains a hot button issue, Brazil’s massive Amazon rainforest (about half the size of Europe) and so-called Cerrado plains will be a top concern for climate and environmental policy wonks. But here, the latest forestry policy to be approved (July 6th by Lower House of Congress) won’t get signed into law until next year. The latest version of a new “Codigo Florestal” gives farmers more land to clear for agriculture.
Federal deputies in the House’s special committee on forestry (where deforestation legislation is made) approved by a vote of 13 to five the opportunity for the equivalent of a Get Out of Jail Free card for land owners who illegally cut back forest for cattle and crops as late as 2008. If you broke the law up to then, you could be forgiven. The new policy, if approved as is, will allow land owners in the Cerrado region (center-west to northeast) to reduce current free standing forest to 20% of acreage owned from 35% currently. It also would allow for recuperation of deforested areas to be made with exotic plant life (like eucaplytus or pine for the paper and pulp industry), rather than native species plants. Another proposed changed would allow property owners to dig up land a little closer to river beds. Current law bans deforesting from 30 meters away from rivers and lakes to 15%, and would allow states to decide if the number can be as low as 7.5%.
Proposals are just that, ideas for a future that never comes. As it is, present-day policies are rarely enforced. There have been numerous stories in the press about the lack of manpower at Environmental Protection Agency, Ibama.
Brazil’s forestry policy matters to farmers and environmentalists alike. Farmers, especially large commercial operations, are nearly all against deforestation in the Amazon because they have taken a beating from European NGOs for the last five years, which has led to embargoes and export restrictions for Brazilian agriculture. Meanwhile, farm lobbies like the National Agriculture Confederation argue that commercial farmers should be given more leeway regardless of what the Europeans think, and that current policies to preserve at least 30% (80% in Amazon) of the property to free-standing forest is not working because smaller subsistence farmers — which are greater in number — are not abiding by the rules. Most of the deforestation in Brazil over the last three years has been caused by small stakeholders in the north, according to studies by the Brazilian Census Institute, IBGE. The land is usually cleared for cattle and some row crops. Yet, new policies will only work if they can be enforced. Brazil’s Amazon deforestation saw a 45% drop — still to a whopping 7,000 square miles — last year, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, INPE. Overall, Brazilian leaders see the Amazon as sovereign turf, naturally, and do not take kindly to foreign pressures to protect it. It has set up its own funding mechanism called The Amazon Fund, run by the National Development Bank, BNDES, to allocate funds (over $40 million last year) to groups in the region that preserve forest. It’s been one of Brazil’s main policy sales pitches over the last several years actually: if you want to save the Amazon from local deforesters, pay them not to cut it down. Most people see it as a short term solution. It’s better than nothing. Now if they can only enforce the law without hamstringing farmers — largely seen around the world as having clorophyl on their hands. And if they are allowed to reduce the amount of area they need to keep in preserve on their properties by as much as 50%, deforestation under the new rules will see a marked increase in the years ahead.
Brazil will host to 2nd International Conference on Climate, Sustainability and Sustainable Development in mid-August. The conferece, scheduled for August 16th to 20th, will try to turn people away from the Amazon and onto the Cerrado plains, where a sizeable portion of Brazil’s commercial farming takes place. Around 60% of Brazil’s coffee production and 55% of its cattle ranches are located in this area, according to Embrapa, Brazil’s Agricultural Research Corporation. (Coffee areas have not expanded in at least five years, but cattle ranching has. Brazil is the world’s lead exporter of both coffee and beef.)
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