[A-List] Death of the Amazon

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Sue Branford and Jan Rocha

New Statesman (July 02 2007)

In Brazil, environmental technocrats talk of saving the rainforest with
satellite technology - but loggers, miners and farmers keep finding
scams to evade the law.


Sitting in an air-conditioned office in Brasilia, Brazil's modernist
federal capital that always has an unreal feel to it, we found it
difficult not to be impressed. Or maybe, after so many depressing
stories about the destruction of the rainforest, we just wanted to
believe what we were being told. We were both beguiled by the vision so
powerfully presented to us.

"A new era is beginning for the Amazon", said Tasso Rezende de Azevedo,
the youthful head of Brazil's National Forest Programme, running a hand
through his thick, brown hair. Bringing up on his computer a bewildering
array of maps and aerial photos, he went on: "Today, thanks to modern
satellite technology, we have instant information. We know almost
immediately when someone is illegally cutting down the forest and we can
send in one of our teams to arrest those responsible. From now on,
loggers and farmers will have to obey the law."

Tasso belongs to a young Brazilian generation of environmental
technocrats who have a fervent belief in the power of technology. Under
the leadership of Marina Silva, the charismatic environment minister,
who herself comes from the Amazon, they have developed an ambitious
strategy for ending deforestation, now running at 1.3 million hectares a
year, making Brazil the fifth largest global contributor to greenhouse
gases. At the centre of this strategy lies a vast mosaic of conservation
units, stretching across the heart of the Amazon Basin from north to
south and already covering some twenty million hectares (an area the
size of England and Scotland together), with more units planned.

The idea is that these reserves will act as a buffer and stop the human
predators - the land-grabbers, illegal loggers, cattle ranchers and soya
farmers - moving into the western Amazon, which is still largely untouched.

Some of these are old-fashioned nature parks, where no human activity is
permitted. Others are so-called "extractive reserves" for the Amazon's
long-term inhabitants such as the ribeir inhos (riverside dwellers,
mainly descended from 19th-century rubber tappers or from runaway
slaves). Yet others, created under Brazil's Project for Sustainable
Development (PDS), are for the Amazon's shifting population of former
gold prospectors, dam workers and landless families that have invaded
indigenous reserves. Key to the success of all these conservation units
are Tasso's satellite images, which will allow the government to ensure
that only permitted, sustainable economic activity is undertaken.

But can it work? During thirty years of visiting the region, we have
witnessed the relentless advance of the agricultural frontier ever
deeper into the Amazon forest. Dared we hope that the destruction might
be ending? We visited Santare'm, an old port built by the Portuguese,
where the mighty Tapajo's tributary meets the even mightier Amazon River.

This area is being ransacked for hardwoods (especially ipe^, now that
mahogany, once known as green gold, has been exhaustively logged and
exports banned) and planted with soya, the international wonder crop,
fed to cattle all over the world. The riverfront, lined by trading and
passenger boats that ply the local waters, is now overlooked by an
ungainly soya terminal, built by the giant US commodities trader
Cargill. If the government's policies were starting to bite here, then a
new era really would be dawning.

We hired a 4x4 to visit Renascer, one of the government's new
sustainable projects, situated about 200 kilometres south-east of
Santare'm. According to figures published at the end of last year by the
National Institute for Rural Settlement and Agrarian Reform (Incra), 360
families have been settled here. To reach the settlement, we travelled
through dense forest, skidding and sliding along dirt roads made as
slippery as soap by recent rains. High up in the jungle canopy, we
caught a glimpse of a pair of arara-azuls, a species of endangered macaw
almost exclusively found in Brazil. Occasionally, a tapir or an agouti
ran across the track. What became clear as we travelled further into the
forest and passed countless loggers' tracks leading off either side of
the road is that Renascer's 44,000 hectares (109,000 acres) had already
been plundered for hardwoods.

We saw no sign of human life as we drove deeper into the settlement. At
the end of the road we found several abandoned huts, strewn with
discarded clothing. On one hung a hand-painted sign that read, somewhat
forlornly, "Agro-Extractive Reserve Renascer, Project for Sustainable
Development". But where were the settlers? The only people we met within
the settlement area were two men and a woman who had moved in on their
own initiative, planting cassava between tree stumps in an area cleared
by the loggers and rearing ducks in a stream. Having plundered the area,
the loggers had moved further into the forest. "We can still hear the
whine of chainsaws in the distance", one of them said.

Corrupt officials

On our return to Santare'm and after talking to government officials,
researchers and settlers, it became obvious that loggers have invented a
scam to continue illegal logging. Under the terms of a Project for
Sustainable Development, settlers can clear one-fifth of the area they
are allocated, while the remaining four-fifths goes to a collective
forest reserve to be used for renewable activities, such as collecting
Brazil nuts, extracting oil from andiroba trees, and sustainable
logging. As the government tightens its control over logging, demanding
proper forest-management projects and legal titles to the land, bandit
loggers who have neither have found the weak spot in the new strategy.
They have gone into partnership with corrupt officials within Incra,
which authorises and administers the settlements, and have set up fake
community organisations to run Project for Sustainable Developments.
Some of these have become facades behind which the loggers carry on
plundering the forest.

Many innocent people are caught up in the scam. We discovered that a few
years ago one logger had enticed some eighty people, desperate for a
plot of land, to join his fake community organisation. He had taken them
by lorry to Renascer to have a look at the land and dumped them there.
But Renascer, set up with the interests of the loggers in mind, is
located in difficult, hilly terrain. Marooned in this remote area, the
would-be settlers began to get hungry and grew frightened after a few
days. They started to trudge back to Santare'm on foot. After walking 27
kilometres, they came to the nearest house, built by a soya farmer, who
gave them food and water and even drove the eldest couple, in their late
sixties, in his jeep back to Santare'm. All that is left of this failed
experiment is abandoned huts.

None of these people wants ever again to hear talk of Renascer, but
others continue to fall into the same trap. We spoke to C, too scared to
give his full name. A small weather-beaten man of 47 with five children,
he is hoping to get a piece of land in Renascer. Like many in Santare'm,
he migrated to the Amazon from the dirt-poor state of Maranha~o, working
as a gold miner, sawmill employee and book salesman - whatever turned
up. When he heard about the new settlements, he thought it was at last a
chance to get land. He eagerly began paying five reals (GBP 1.25) a
month to the association of would-be Renascer residents set up by the
timber company stooge. Two years have passed; meetings are held, but
"nothing happens", says C. "They keep telling us we'll get our plot in
two weeks' time ... I know they're fooling us, but I daren't complain.
If I say anything, they'll kill me."

We showed him a photo of Renascer, his first glimpse of his promised
land. If these settlers ever get their land, they will be able to
survive only with support from the timber companies. But the loggers
will leave once they have stripped out all the timber. The community
will then collapse and Renascer will be seen as another failed attempt
to bring sustainable development to the Amazon. The settlers will be
blamed, because the loggers will have airbrushed themselves out of the
story.

Near Renascer is another Project for Sustainable Development called
Santa Clara. This is on a flat plateau - unusual in the Amazon - that is
devoid of rivers and streams, and is unsuitable for any kind of
settlement because of the risk of forest fires. Yet soya farmers from
Mato Grosso have moved in, attracted by cheap (in reality, illegal)
land. Cargill has agreed to purchase the soya - no questions asked about
origins. Caught unawares by the tougher strategy from Brasilia, the soya
farmers have been given hefty fines for clearing virgin forest, but they
are determined to stay in the area, even if it means allying themselves
with land sharks and corrupt local officials.

Since 2005, almost 100 conservation units of various kinds have been
created in the Santare'm area. One researcher told us that nine-tenths
of them were facades behind which loggers and farmers are hiding. By
claiming that their timber and soya come from environmentally
sustainable projects, they may even get better prices.

Over the past thirty years, the Amazon has become a byword for violence
and lawlessness. As we should have remembered, listening to the head of
the forest programme describe his brave new world in Brasilia,
technology alone cannot change this. Many government officials have a
commitment to stopping the senseless destruction of the forest but, on
the ground, corruption, understaffing and inadequate resources undermine
their efforts.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200707020027


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