Environmental groups back Amazon protection plan
Date: 05-Sep-02
Country: BRAZIL
Author: Axel Bugge
The World Wide Fund, formerly the World Wildlife Federation, the World Bank and the Global Environmental Facility - a fund aimed at helping poor countries clean up their environment - will contribute much of the $395 million to the plan that will gradually set aside land, reaching an area the size of Spain in 10 years.
The backing by the three international organizations of the Brazilian government's plan was decided at the Earth Summit in South Africa, according to a statement by the WWF in Brazil.
"The Amazon region is a biodiversity treasure," the statement quoted Mohamed T. El-Ashry, chairman of the Global Environmental Facility, made up of 32 donor countries, as saying. "This program is important for the people of Brazil, as well as for the region and the world."
The Amazon - which extends to neighboring countries like Venezuela, Peru, Colombia and Bolivia - is the world's largest tropical forest, covering an area larger than Western Europe and is home to up to 30 percent of the planet's plant and animal species.
About 15 percent of the Brazilian Amazon has been destroyed since the mid-70s and despite commitments made at the first Earth Summit - held in Brazil in 1992 - its destruction continues unabated, with an area about half the size of Belgium burnt or cut down each year.
The Brazilian government's plan aims to set aside 193,050 square miles (500,000 square km) out of the Amazon's total area of 1.54 million square miles (4.1 million square km) under complete federal protection.
The areas will be made into national parks or biological reserves, meaning they cannot be touched.
Increasingly large parts of the Amazon have been put under complete protection over recent years. Among them has been the demarcation of Indian lands equivalent to the size of Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland combined.
The rest of the Amazon, such as private farmland, is protected by a law obliging 80 percent of a property to be set aside for protection, while loggers are only allowed to cut down trees if they have a sustainable logging plan. Still, because of the vastness of the Amazon, it is extremely difficult to monitor and control how much of it is destroyed.
As part of its plan to set aside 12 percent of the Amazon for full protection, Brazil's government last month created the Tumucumaque National Park - the world's largest tropical forest park - which covers 15,000 square miles.
One of the biggest current fears by environmentalists is that a large government plan to build new roads across the Amazon will open vast new areas to illegal loggers and farms.
