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NY Times May 11, 2011
Brazil Debates Easing Curbs on Developing Amazon Forest
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Brazil’s Congress fiercely debated changing a
cornerstone environmental law on Wednesday night, a move
conservationists warned could roll back one of the most effective
pieces of legislation protecting forests and biodiversity in
Brazil and undermine the country’s efforts to slow greenhouse gas
emissions.
The debate pitted powerful agribusiness interests and the
government’s own plans for infrastructure projects against
scientists and environmentalists concerned that the Brazilian
Amazon, one of the world’s largest forests, could be reaching a
tipping point in its deforestation.
After announcing an agreement late Wednesday, the government's
leader in Congress could not raise a quorum and the vote was
pushed to next week.
A group of so-called Ruralistas in Congress, who favor expanding
Brazil’s agribusiness, including Representative Aldo Rebelo of the
Communist Party, proposed changes to the law that would open up
more land for agricultural expansion. Currently the law, known as
the Forest Code, requires that 80 percent of a property in the
Amazon, and 20 to 35 percent of land in certain other areas,
remain forest. The proposed revisions would exempt small farms
from those rules, potentially accelerating deforestation,
environmentalists said.
“It is a recipe for disaster,” said Thomas E. Lovejoy, of the
Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment.
A proposed revision was first submitted to Congress last June that
claimed Brazil’s current law, first enacted in 1934, was holding
back the country’s economic development.
With some countries scrambling to ensure food security, including
China, Brazil stands as the nation with the greatest potential in
the world to expand land for cultivation and cattle grazing,
agricultural experts say. Despite restrictions in the Forest Code,
Brazil has become the world’s largest exporter of beef and second
only to the United States in the export of soybeans.
But despite Brazil’s efforts to slow deforestation, scientists say
the Amazon is approaching a tipping point where enough tropical
biomass has been lost to cause large areas of the forest to shift
irreversibly into savanna or other less biodiverse landscapes.
Opening up more land to cultivation could reduce rainfall in the
Amazon and place vast stretches of the tropical forest at risk of
this “dieback,” researchers say. About 18 percent of the Brazilian
Amazon has been deforested, according to official figures.
Climactic changes in the rain forest have begun to alarm
researchers. The Amazon suffered its worst two droughts on record
last year and in 2005. “There are enough signals out there to not
rush into this,” Mr. Lovejoy said.
Antonio Nobre, a researcher at Brazil’s National Institute of
Space Studies, has complained about the lack of scientific input
in the proposed changes to the Forest Code. “If we had more time
to debate, we would have an opportunity to construct environmental
legislation suitable for the 21st century,” Dr. Nobre said this month.
Some members of the government of President Dilma Rousseff,
including her environment minister, have raised questions about
the proposed revisions to the law. If it passes the lower house of
Congress, it will need to be approved by the Senate. Ms. Rousseff
could veto elements of the proposed changes before they become law.
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