Lumber Merchants need to be Controlled
11/20/97
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Lumber Merchants need to be Controlled
Source: Servico Brasileiro de Justica e Paz
Date: 11/20/97
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NEWS FROM BRAZIL supplied by SEJUP (Servico Brasileiro de Justica e Paz).
Number 293, November 20, 1997.
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ECOLOGY
- Lumber merchants need to be controlled alerts ecologist.
On November 09, the 'Folha de Sao Paulo' published an
interview with the director general of the WWF, Claude Martin. In
the interview Dr. Martin called special attention to the activity
of Asian lumber companies in the Amazonian region. Referring to
well-known tactics of such companies in other parts of the world,
Dr. Martin said that they ''buy a Brazilian lumber company and
put it in somebody else's name - at times in the name of another
foreigner or even of a Brazilian. It is what we have witnessed in
Africa .... Some of these companies work very quickly. They clear
the forest and disappear''.
A recent study of the WWF showed that Brazil is the country
where the largest areas of forest clearance take place. This
amounts to approximately 30 thousand square kms each year. Half
of this takes place in the Amazon and the other half in the
savannah areas (cerrado) and in the Atlantic Rainforest. "Taking
into account all the tropical forests in the world, the annual
rate of deforestation is 170 thousand square kms. Brazil is
responsible for between a fifth and a sixth of this
deforestation'' commented Dr. Martin.
The head of IBAMA (the Brazilian federal environmental
agency), Eduardo Martins, commented in the same edition of the
'Folha' that he knew eight Brazilian companies with foreign
capital involved in deforestation in the Amazonian region. He
admitted that the reputation of these companies ''is not good''
and that '' everything is being done to control them, including
fines''. However Mr. Martins criticized the WWF report saying
that it is not correct to use the total area deforested to
measure forest devastation instead of using the relative area of
destruction of the forests, that is the percentage of the area
cleared in relation to the area of forest still intact. According
to IBAMA's calculations approximately 600 thousand cubic meters
of timber which was illegally cut will have been confiscated by
the end of 1997 - 5 times more than the amount confiscated during
1996. The head of IBAMA estimates that 80% of the timber cut in
the Amazonian region is taken out illegally.