SUNS  4249 Thursday 9 July 1998

Environment: Brazilian groups challenge Amazon plan



Washington, Jul 8 (IPS/Abid Aslam) -- Brazilian peasants and environmental groups are assailing high-profile international plans to protect the Amazon forest as arbitrary and likely to undermine
grass-roots initiatives.

The plans - drawn up by the Brazilian government, the World Bank and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) - involve bringing 25 million hectares of forest under full protection by the year 2000. Another 200 million hectares would be opened to 'sustainable management' techniques including 'low-impact logging' by 2005, according to Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

The initiative, announced in April, was hailed as the first outcome of a new alliance between the World Bank and WWF. At a crowded Washington media conference, Bank and WWF officials assured journalists their scheme was based on local consultation.

But local groups, in an open letter, say that is not so and urge the government and its international partners to back local efforts.

"The plan to create, in two years, twice as many reserves as have been created in all the years to date, means a great risk of creating paper parks, existing in name only," the groups assert, highlighting "the added risks of incorporating lands occupied by traditional populations, and thus intensifying the conflicts that already exist among these populations and Ibama," the government-run Brazilian Environmental Institute.

While the scheme thus is likely to fuel ongoing disputes over the land rights of indigenous and peasant communities, it also will undermine local initiatives to promote forest conservation by failing to "consider efforts already under way, such as the organisation of the Amazon Workshop, as part of Probio (the Protection Fund for Biodiversity), led by a consortium of Brazilian NGOs." Yet, the
Brazilian government itself has asked the Workshop to consult local communities and suggest alternatives to existing conservation policy.

"We do not oppose the creation of new conservation areas," say the groups, which include the 'Brazilian Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Social Movements Forum for Development and Environment'; 'Rede Brasil', a Brazilian NGO network on multilateral financial institutions; the Amazon Working Group; and the Rubber-tappers' National Council. "On the contrary," they argue, "we consider the system of protected areas currently in existence as insufficient to protect the Brazilian ecosystem, both in terms of overall size and in the variety of environmental systems being protected".

The groups charge that areas already designated as 'protected' are so only on paper because government and other conservationists lack political will, labour, and funding. Officials here say the new plan has full political backing but others concede it risks remaining under-funded.

Establishing the protected sites will cost 90-125 million dollars and an undetermined additional amount will be needed to maintain those areas, according to Robert Buschbacher, WWF's programme director in Brazil. Yet, the initiative was launched with only some 720,000 dollars in funding commitments from the Brazilian government, WWF, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a multi-agency consortium dominated by the World Bank.

New reserves, the groups insist, "should encompass a broad mosaic of protected areas...(and) take into account the rights of traditional populations." The problem, as they see it, is that the current plan - which would bar all human settlement and activity from some 10 percent of the Amazon - is "randomly chosen, inadequate, and ignorant of the reality of Brazil."

Ten percent, they say, appears too small a proportion because 85 percent of the Amazon remains intact. But the set-aside amounts to 25 million hectares - a vast area - and "there are as yet no studies or dependable data to answer the question of the availability of such a large amount of land without the presence of indigenous populations" or other communities dependent on the forests for subsistence and modest livelihoods.

The fate of communities living in areas to be brought under 'full' protection has yet to be worked out, officials say. Sites previously designated as indigenous peoples' reserves will not be covered by the
latest effort, according to Buschbacher. Brazilian NGOs, however, says some three million hectares covered by the plan "have been superimposed on 12 pre-existing indigenous territories." Officials here acknowledge that some peasant communities living in the new protected areas could be made to move.

According to the Brazilian groups, "were it not for the resistance of these populations to the predatory behaviour of large estate owners, lumber companies, prospectors, and political forces... the Amazon today would be in an even worse condition."
Yet, they add, indigenous people "live in miserable conditions, without access to consistent government support to develop their traditional economic activities, or even to guarantee minimum prices for their products, the making of which essentially depends on the continued existence of the forest."

Also unanswered is the question of which independent group will ensure that 'sustainable management' is practised on the 200 million hectares set aside for judicious exploitation.

The World Bank/WWF alliance has adopted criteria for certifying that logging operations have been deemed to be compliant with local laws and international environmental principles. WWF and Bank officials say the only independent group capable of meeting those criteria is the Mexico-based Forest Stewardship Council, which was set up by the 1992 U.N. 'Earth Summit' to monitor the international logging industry.

Timber executives, with whom World Bank President James Wolfensohn has been working since January to develop voluntary industry standards for low-impact logging, have opposed the Council's involvement. Companies have argued they should certify their own operations - exactly what the
Council was established to counter.

The World Bank-WWF alliance was set up to help countries establish 50 million hectares in new protected areas by the year 2000 and bring 500 million hectares under sustainable management by 2005, according to World Bank President James Wolfensohn. That would increase the world's
protected forest area from the current six percent to 10 percent.