'New law threatens rainforest'
2001-04-20 09:35
Brasilia, Brazil - Environmental groups have launched a campaign to oppose a new law that they warned would speed the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
Congress is expected to vote next month on a bill that would drastically roll back requirements that property owners in the Amazon preserve 80 percent of the forested areas and 35 percent of their savannahs largely intact.
The new law would reduce the preservation of Amazonian forests to 50 percent, and savannahs to 17.5 percent of the land.
The bill is supported by Brazil's powerful farm lobby, which argues that the current protections hinder economic development.
Environmentalists, however, argue that the restrictions are essential to protect the world's largest remaining tropical wilderness, which is disappearing at a rate of about 17 000 square kilometres (6800 square miles) a year.
"There are 160 000 square kilometres (64 000 square miles) of degraded land in the Brazilian Amazon already clear cut and abandoned, which could be used for agriculture and cattle farming. There is no need for further forest conversion for agriculture use," Garo Batmanian, director of the World Wildlife Fund in Brazil, said on Wednesday.
Other prominent groups opposing the measure include Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.
Batmanian said agricultural production has increased for the last five years despite the restrictions, showing that they do not inhibit development.
The current regulations were issued by presidential decree in 1997 after an analysis of satellite photos revealed a sudden spike in Amazon deforestation. Some 29 000 square kilometres (11 600 square miles) of Amazon rainforest were destroyed in 1995 alone.
Because the current restrictions on cutting were issued by executive decree, Congress must vote them into law. Legislators allied with the farm lobby have consistently tried to relax the restrictions.
In 2000, a congressional committee approved a new version of the forestry code that could have reduced standing forest by as much as two-thirds. Thanks to a massive campaign by environmental groups both within and outside of Brazil, that bill never came up for a full vote and was sent back to committee.
Environmentalists say, however, that the new bill is only marginally better than the previous version.
- Sapa-AP
- SAPA