Rubber Tappers Urge World Bank to Review Amazon Plan
5/29/98
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Title: Rubber Tappers Urge World Bank to Review Amazon Plan
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 5/29/98
BRASILIA, May 29 (Reuters) - A Brazilian rubber-tappers group urged the World
Bank on Friday to reconsider its support for a plan to preserve a vast area of
the Amazon rain forest because it excludes traditional jungle communities.
In a letter to the World Bank, the National Rubber-tappers Association (CNS)
criticized the Brazilian government's proposal to turn 10 percent of the
Brazilian Amazon -- an area the size of Britain -- into uninhabited
reservations.
``It is the people who are born in the rain forest and who depend on it for
their survival who are most likely to protect the environment in the Amazon,''
CNS president Atanagildo de Deus Matos said by telephone from the Amazonian
town of Maraba.
He said up to 1.5 million people who depend on the forest to harvest fruit and
nuts and for fishing, as well as an estimated 100,000 rubber-tappers, would
be left out under the proposal which also has the backing of the World Wide
Fund for Nature.
``We're not against the creation of conservation area. But they do not help
extractivist communities,'' Mato said.
The World Bank and Brazil should review the plan to include areas where
rubber-tappers and other jungle communities would be able to live and work, he
said.
A spokeswoman for the government's environmental agency IBAMA said Brazil had
created several extractivist reservations in recent years and would continue to
create more.
``The introduction of uninhabited areas does not mean there will be a halt to
the earmarking of new reservations for rubber-tapping,'' the spokeswoman said.
Brazil's plan to turn 10 percent of its Amazon rain forest into protected
conservation areas was announced by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in
April. He said the proposal showed Brazil's commitment to protecting the
environment.
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