Brazil & Southern Cone - September 2011 (ISSN 1741-4431)

On 21 September police in the remote Brazilian Amazon state of Pará arrested a third suspect over the murder on 24 May last of two well-known environmental activists, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo.

José Cláudio Ribeiro was gunned down six months after he predicted his own death at an environmental conference, prompting international condemnation and fresh embarrassment for the Brazilian government. The government had loudly trumpeted a record fall in Amazon deforestation in late 2010, only to have to backtrack months later as illegal clearances surged in response to high global commodity prices and a perception of impunity among illegal loggers and cattle ranchers.

Brazil’s Amazon Institute of People and the Environment (Imazon) estimates that deforestation levels rose a whopping 158% month-on-month (and 15% year-on-year) in August. Pará, which has long had lawless reputation, is the worst offending state. The official figures produced by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) have indicated rising deforestation every month since April this year.

Cláudio Ribeiro and his wife took a strong stance against illegal loggers, cattle ranchers and charcoal producers operating in Praia-Alta Piranheira, a remote Amazon settlement in Pará. On 18 September the police arrested José Rodrigues Moreira, the alleged intellectual author of the murders, and his brother Lindon Johnson Silva Rocha, who police believe carried out the executions. The third detainee was named as Alberto Lopes Teixeira do Nascimento.  The men had been hiding out in a jungle camp.

Brazil’s senate is currently examining controversial reforms to the country’s forestry code, which dates back to 1946. The reforms, backed by agri-lobby groups, contemplate an amnesty for illegal logging up to 2008, allowing individual states to choose how (or if ) they enforce the recuperation of degraded forest areas and, in a bid to support small farmers, they also moot loosening up restrictions on land use. The government is at odds with congress over the bill and President Dilma Rousseff has threatened to veto the most contentious elements.

Deforestation makes Brazil one of the world's top greenhouse gas emitters. At the UN General Assembly, President Rousseff reiterated Brazil’s commitment to reducing forest losses by 80% by 2020.

Mozambique courts Brazilians

The government of Mozambique has offered large areas of the country to Brazilian farmers to grow soya, maize and cotton.  Brazil has three advantages for Mozambique: the first is that both countries speak Portuguese; the second is that Brazil has successfully developed over the past 30 years the Cerrado (an area of the outer-Amazon basin), which Pacheco claims physically resembles land in Mozambique. The third reason is that Brazilians are more in tune with the rhythm of life in Mozambique than the Chinese who are also seeking agricultural land in Africa and Latin America. Mozambique has reportedly offered Brazil 60,000 km² of land in the north of the country for US$13 a hectare (0.01 km² per hectare) a year for a term of 50 years. The local government has stipulated that 90% of the labour employed in developing the land should be from Mozambique.

Carlos Ernesto Augustín, the president of the Mato Grosso cotton growers’ association, says that Mozambiquean land is very similar to a lot of the interior of Brazil. He adds that another advantage the African country offers is a simpler system for environmental permits. Augustín said that it was now all but impossible to get permission to clear new land in Mato Grosso and thus open it up for agricultural development. However, developing northern Mozambique comes with its own constraints; due to poor infrastructure in the north of the country, any agribusiness would require an expansive long-term investment in infrastructure. Whilst the soil types are claimed to be similar, the climates are in fact quite different: Brazil has four seasons; Mozambique has two.  END BOX

• Agri-business

Brazil dispatched around 40 agribusiness owners to Mozambique in September to visit the northern regions of Niassa, Cabo Delgado, Nampula and Zambezia.