LatinNews Daily - 08 December 2008

According to the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), 11,968sq km of Amazon forest were cleared in the year to July 2008, up nearly 4% on a year earlier. The environment ministry defended itself by claiming the rate would have been much higher had it not been for its actions against illegal logging. However, environmentalists said illegal logging was not the main cause of deforestation, but rather that the rate of forest clearance had accelerated again over the past 18 months amid a rise in global commodity prices, particularly soya and beef. This, they say, encouraged a surge in forest clearances by farmers.

The new “national plan for climate change" unveiled by Lula and Minc will seek to slow the annual rate of deforestation to 5,850sq km by 2017, half the latest rate. The target is ambitious, taking into account the fact that the deforestation rate in the Amazon has never been below 11,000sq km annually in the past 20 years, since statistics started being collated. The newspaper O Estado de São Paulo also pointed out that in order to achieve the target set for the four-year period 2006-2009, next year the rate of deforestation should not exceed 9,200sq km next year.

The government intends to boost federal patrols of forested areas, replant 5.5m hectares of forest, and finance sustainable development projects to give locals alternative work in areas where illegal logging dominates the local economy. The government did not say how much the new plan would cost, but it is widely expected to be financed by the recently-launched Fund for the Amazon, which aims to collect donations from foreign government and domestic entities. Brazil had hoped to collect as much as US$1bn in the fund's first year, but that was before the global financial crisis kicked in.

Environmentalists also pointed to other flaws in the plan. Firstly, the plan does not envisage any action for the Cerrado, the savannah area that like the Amazon covers almost one-third of Brazil's territory. Also, the reforestation plans entail mostly the planting of eucalyptus and pine trees, rather than native species. But, the main problem for environmentalists is the fact that the plan does not envisage cutting deforestation per se, but rather illegal deforestation, which is estimated to account for 90% of the total. “If deforestation is illegal, the government's target should be stopping deforestation, full stop," the director of Greenpeace in Brazil, Sérgio Leitão, told O Estado.

The announcement was also aimed as a political response to foreign pressure, as the UN celebrates its latest Climate Change conference. Deforestation accounts for around 55% of total CO2 emissions in Brazil, which along with the rise in industrial and agricultural activity in recent years has propelled Brazil into the ranks of the fastest growing carbon gas emitters in the world. The plan is to reduce these emissions by 4.8bn tonnes annually. The government had previously refused to adopt an emissions-reduction plan, arguing that developed countries ought to assume most responsibility.

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