Brazil Defends Amazon Protection Efforts
Date: 04-Jun-04
Country: BRAZIL
Author: Andrew Hay
The nation's center-left government has promised to create 33 million acres of environmental reserves in 2004, after Amazon destruction last year reached its second-highest level. But so far, the government has met only a small fraction of its goal.
Speaking at an event to mark this week's international environment day, Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva said she wasn't worried. She saw big reserves on the horizon and said it took time to build areas that could protect the rain forest as well as people's livelihoods.
"It's all about uniting the environment, development and social justice," Silva, a former maid who comes from the Amazon, told Reuters after unveiling plans for new reserves.
In 2003, 5.9 million acres of Amazon jungle, bigger than the U.S. state of New Jersey, were destroyed as ranchers and farmers advanced on the tropical jungle. The Amazon encompasses an area just under half the size of the continental United States.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has faced criticisms from environmentalists that he is more interested in building roads and dams through the Amazon than slowing its destruction.
The former metalworker says he wants to protect the environment, through controlled use of natural reserves that can create jobs.
Some environmentalists complain his government has yet to create Amazon reserves that provide total environmental protection. Others say government agencies lack resources to run existing reserves and the answer is not total protection but sustainable use.
"What's the point of creating new areas when you can't protect what you've already got," said David Cleary of the Nature Conservancy in Brazil.
Despite Marina Silva's promise to create 33 million acres of protected areas across Brazil in 2004, the government has so far set aside just 1.58 million acres -- most of that with Thursday's announcement of two new Atlantic rain forest reserves.
"The plan is very good but we've got to see it carried out, we've got to see the reserves created...we want action," said Rosa Lemos de Sa of conservation group WWF, which on Thursday donated $500,000 toward a program to protect Amazon areas.
Environmentalists fear deforestation of the Amazon because it is the world's biggest reservoir of fresh water, home to up to 30 percent of the world's plant and animal species, and a source of medicines.
Around 15 percent of the jungle has been destroyed so far. Brazil's Atlantic rain forest -- once a third the size of the Amazon -- has been cut to 7 percent of its original size.
Brazil's environment ministry says it will take months of consultations with local people and governments to establish reserves to allow sustainable use of rain forest. They point out some past reserves failed to ensure communities could still earn a living and that protections could be enforced.
"It takes time to do it right, there will be many more in coming weeks," Joao Paulo Capobianco, the ministry's secretary of biodiversity and forests, told Reuters.
