Logging Plan Designed to Reduce Illegal Cutting Criticized
8/2/97
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Logging Plan Designed to Reduce Illegal Cutting
Criticized
Source: CNN
Date: 8/2/97
Correspondent Frida Ghitis contributed to this report.
Copyright 1997: Cable News Network, Inc.
PARA STATE, Brazil (CNN) -- Critics say a new
logging plan, designed to reduce illegal cutting
in the Amazon rain forest, will instead cause
harm.
The controversy involves the world's biggest
tropical forest, which produces about one fifth of
the world's oxygen.
The Brazilian government has decided to allow big
business to cut millions of acres of trees in the
Amazon River basin.
Logging in the Amazon
The government maintains that the new program will
put loggers under strict controls -- limiting them
to one-year concessions and designating how much
wood can be cut during a given period.
The government says these regulations will allow
the forest to regenerate, and it maintains that,
despite its flaws, the plan is a step in the right
direction.
But critics counter that the country doesn't have
the funds necessary to enforce the government
regulations. They say that thousands of acres of
forest are cut down illegally every day.
Twenty percent of the world's fresh water flows
through the Amazon forest and the trees there are
indispensable to maintain the water supply.
The laws designed to protect the trees have done
nothing to stop the massive clear-cutting so far,
and the government's new plan will allow even
greater access to the remote forest areas.
Critics say loggers will no doubt open new roads,
and even moderate environmentalists believe the
plan will do more harm than good.
"The intent is good but I don't think this is the
solution. Finding a solution to the problem of
illegal logging, is a daunting task," said Joel
Korn of Conservation International.
Choice between jobs and environment?
Analysts say that when it comes to protecting the
environment in a country with a great deal of
poverty and unemployment like Brazil, then it's a
choice between the present and the future. In
other words: it's a choice between jobs and
opportunities now, and a livable environment for
the people of tomorrow.
Logging in Brazil means jobs for workers, and
money for the national coffers. "Brazil intends to
be a producer of wood," says Aspasia Camargo of
the Environment Ministry. And she suggests that
some efforts to protect the Amazon forest are less
than honest because they are aimed at squeezing
Brazil out of the market.
Environmentalists agree that Brazil should be
allowed to find an acceptable way to profit from
its enormous resources. But they also say that
monitoring and control measures must come first.
Many scientists say the Amazon Rain forest is an
ecosystem that the entire world needs to survive.
The question is how to save the forest while at
the same time profiting from its bounty.