Ray of Hope for Rainforest as Brazil Protects Amazon
4/30/98
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Title: Ray of Hope for Rainforest as Brazil Protects Amazon
Source: The Electronic Telegraph
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 4/30/98
Byline: Jeremy McDermott, Latin America Correspondent
THE Brazilian government yesterday unveiled the most ambitious conservation
project yet undertaken in the Amazon, which will eventually create a protected
forest area of 62 million acres.
As a first step, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso signed decrees for two new
protected areas in the Amazon and two in the Atlantic forest, together
totalling almost 1.5 million acres. Steve Howard, senior forest officer of the
World Wide Fund for Nature, said: "What we are talking about here is an area
the size of the UK being zoned out of mainstream development in perpetuity."
Amazonia is home to about 400 unique Amerindian cultures and about half of the
world's terrestrial species. It also plays a major role in the global water
cycle. About one-fifth of the planet's fresh water flows down the river.
The forests have been under attack for decades by unscrupulous logging
companies intent on pillagin resources before protective legislation is
introduced. In 1995 destruction of the Amazonian rainforest reached an all-time
high, with 18,000 square miles felled, up from fewer than 7,000 in 1990.
This year an area the size of Belgium was destroyed in a vast forest fire that
swept the northern state of Roraima, burning everything in its path. Reinaldo
Barbosa of the Amazonia Research Institute estimated that it would take a
century for the area to recover from the fires. So far around o36 million has
been pledged towards the project, with the World Bank providing o21 million.
The Rainforest Trust Fund and the Brazilian government also promised to
contribute.
The government and conservationists want a further o55 million in funding from
the leading industrial countries. The initiative increases the percentage of
protected forest from 3.5 to 10. Environmentalists have been scathing in recent
months about the government's will in protecting the fast-disappearing
rainforest. Nigel Sizer, a senior associate with the World Resources Institute,
and Jose Goldemberg, a former Brazilian environment minister, described
President Cardoso's response as "pure public relations".
They said in an article: "A plethora of new programmes has been announced in
recent years to combat illegal logging, burning and timber cutting. In
practice, however, the promised funds almost never turn up, and the ambitious
plans have merely gathered dust on the shelves of the technocrats in Brasilia."
The Brazilian authorities maintain that environmental concerns have to be
combined with economic realities.
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