NYTimes: Brazil Slashes Money for Project Aimed at Protecting Amazon (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Save this article for your anti-IMF files. This is very, very damning.

Robert Weissman
Essential Information			|   Internet:	rob@essential.org

January 1, 1999
New York Times

          Brazil Slashes Money for Project Aimed at Protecting
          Amazon

          By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

               RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Under intense pressure to reduce
its spending, the Brazilian
               government has slashed funds toward a $250 million pilot
project backed by seven
          leading industrial nations that has been the centerpiece of
Brazil's efforts to save the Amazon
          rain forest. 

          Environmentalists warn that without Brazil's participation, the
project stands to lose almost all
          the donations yet to come from the Group of Seven industrial
nations. Under the main
          agreement, approved at the 1992 Earth Summit here, Brazil was to
provide just 10 percent of
          the $250 million. 

          The pilot program pays for surveying the rain forest, and it has
been the principal vehicle for
          marking off 40,000 square miles for indigenous reservations. 

          Surveying what is in the vast mysterious rain forest is seen as
the first step toward protecting it
          from destruction by ranchers, loggers, farmers and miners. 

          The Group of Seven money was also earmarked for promoting
sustainable development,
          controlling deforestation and other objectives. 

          In addition, the money also would have helped pay for setting
aside 10 percent of the rain
          forest, or 240,000 square miles, as national parks and
ecologically protected areas. Amid much
          fanfare, Brazil's president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, had
pledged to establish the protected
          areas during a visit to New York last April. 

          Covering an area half as big as the continental United States,
the Amazon is a lush laboratory of
          plants, animals and bacteria that contains more than 20 percent
of the world's fresh water
          supply. 

          Throughout much of the decade, as other countries criticized
Brazil for failing to protect the rain
          forest, the government insisted that wealthy nations pay to map
the rain forest and to protect its
          resources, and it frequently contended that the scale of the
program agreed to was insufficient
          to the task. 

          But environmentalists say that even that modest effort is now in
jeopardy. Under pressure to
          rein in its budget deficit, Brazilian government officials have
slashed spending across the board. 
          A recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund, which
is spearheading a $41.3 billion
          standby loan for Brazil, reduces government spending on
environmental programs by
          two-thirds. 

          Under the pilot program, the Brazilian government provides
matching funds and manpower to
          administer the Group of Seven grant. The government's revised
budget, released in November,
          cuts the amount Brazil can expect to get from the group to $6.4
million from more than $61
          million. 

          "It is arguably a far more irrational and perverse consequence
of the IMF agreement than even
          the harshest critics of the IMF could have imagined," said
Stephan Schwartzman, a senior
          scientist at the Washington-based Environmental Defense Fund. 

          The state of Acre, in western Brazil, one of the nine states
covered by the rain forest, had
          developed a three-year program counting on some $5 million of
the Group of Seven funds to
          survey and zone its forest. Ninety percent of the cost would
have been underwritten by the
          group. 

          "When it was all under way and ready to move forward -- boom --
the cuts came," said Maria
          Janet Santos, who is coordinating zoning for Acre's
environmental protection agency. "It really
          cuts into the credibility of what we're trying to do." 

          Paulo de Oliveira Lopes, who also works on the zoning project,
said that without the Brazilian
          government contribution, the project would collapse. "Without
the resources of the G-7 to
          carry out zoning, there's no way it can happen," he said. 

          Congress is expected to vote on the budget by Jan. 15, and Sen.
Marina Silva of the opposition
          Workers' Party said the government had not ruled out restoring
the environmental funds if cuts
          could be found elsewhere.