Brazil's Bail-Out is a Time Bomb (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

               ENVIRONMENT-AMAZON: Brazil's Bail-Out is a Time
               Bomb 

By Danielle Knight and Abid Aslam 
WASHINGTON, Mar 18 (IPS) - Brazilian groups, in Washington this week to
meet government and development
bank officials, have branded their country's international financial
bailout an environmental and social time bomb. 

Emergency loans assembled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
designed to shore up the country's flagging financial
markets and dwindling foreign exchange reserves, are being offered in
return for austerity measures that will devastate the
Amazon region in particular, the Brazilians say. 

''The impacts of the ill-advised IMF loan package in the Amazon will be
borne by the forest and the people of the Amazon,''
says Claudionor Barbosa da Silva, president of Amazon Working Group
(GTA), a network of more than 350
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the region. 

Spending cuts envisioned in the Brazilian government's deal with the IMF
include a possible 90-percent reduction in Amazon
conservation programmes and a two-thirds decrease for rain forest
protection and efforts to demarcate lands belonging to
indigenous people, he warned. 

''Austerity measures will also force people facing unemployment in the
cities to illegally clear and log the forest and (resort to)
small-scale mining for survival,'' says Euclides Pereira, of the
Coordinating Group of the Indigenous Organisations of the
Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), which represents 56 indigenous groups. 

Brazil is not alone in facing such dire consequences. Russia is
considering cutting Siberian old- growth forests - previously
considered too remote to be commercially viable - to raise
desperately-needed cash, according to Friends of the Earth. 

Indonesia, under IMF pressure to raise revenues, has lifted a ban on log
exports and slashed export taxes from 200 percent to
30 percent. The country reportedly also plans to expand cash-crop
plantations to 3.9 million hectares from 2.4 million hectares. 

Brazil, Russia and Indonesia, all in economic turmoil, are home to 47
percent of the world's remaining ancient forests, according
to the Washington-based World Resources Institute. 

Brazil's setbacks come at a time when the Amazon is in desperate need of
conservation, the advocates say. Some 52 million
hectares - or 12.5 percent - of Amazon jungle was destroyed in the
period 1978-96 alone. 

With 2,700 bird species and more than 2,000 different types of fish, the
Amazon is one of the most biologically diverse areas in
the world - and also one of the most threatened, according to Steven
Schwartzman, senior scientist at the Environmental
Defence Fund, which is hosting the visiting Brazilians. 

Cattle ranches, gold mines and soy plantations are rapidly replacing the
dense tropical forest at an average rate of about 13,000
acres a day - or eight football fields per minute, Schwartzman notes.
''The ecological and social crisis of the Amazon has never
been worse.'' 

The Brazilians, while protesting cuts in environmental programmes, also
say existing measures need to be overhauled. They
highlight a 250-million-dollar pilot project for Amazon conservation
funded by the Group of Seven (G-7) economic powers and
administered by the Brazilian government and World Bank. 

Some of the conservation efforts supported by the project have been
successful, activists concede, but implementation has
slackened since 1995 and much money provided by the donors has yet to be
spent. 

As a consequence, the project is failing in its principal goals:
reducing the rate of deforestation and strengthening the public
sector's capacity to enact and enforce sound environmental policies. 

''Deforestation in the Amazon has not only increased but in 1995 reached
the highest rate yet recorded,'' the Brazilians say in a
written critique presented to the Bank. 

World Bank officials, unavailable for immediate comment on the latest
criticism, previously have said conservation efforts are
plagued by recurring drought exacerbated by the El Nino weather
phenomenon and slow implementation amid technical
problems and political in-fighting among agencies charged with carrying
out the work. 

Environmental officials at the Bank also have voiced concern about the
impact of financial crises on conservation programmes in
Brazil and elsewhere but their worries have taken a back seat in the
global lender's response to economic turmoil. 

Rather, the agency has committed unprecedented sums in support of the
IMF's emergency loan packages. These have
concentrated on macroeconomic stabilisation, financial governance, and
corporate restructuring aimed at soothing panicked
foreign investors. 

Early successes under the Amazon conservation pilot project need to be
revived, argues Jose Juarez Leitao dos Santos,
president of Brazil's National Council of Rubber Tappers. In particular,
he urges that 10 percent of the Brazilian rain forest be
transformed into 'extractive reserves' by the year 2002.. 

These legally-protected areas were first proposed by Chico Mendes, the
rubber tapper, labour organiser and environmentalist
who was assassinated in 1988. 

Extractive reserves seek to resolve the conflict between cattle ranchers
- who want to clear the forest for pasture - and tappers,
who depend on rubber tress for their livelihood. Land is set aside for
management by local communities, who harvest forest
products in ways that do not harm the environment. 

In the past decade, some 20 reserves have been established on three
million hectares, according to Leitao dos Santos. He says
his 10-percent goal will allow rubber tappers to defend about 50 million
hectares while securing land rights and improving the
living conditions of tens of thousands of poor families. 

''Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has committed to
creating new extractive reserves for our people and to
funding price support for the Amazon wild rubber,'' he says. 

''We are here to encourage the World Bank and the Inter-American
Development Bank to help him fulfil these commitments.''
(END/IPS/dk-aa/mk/99)

**************************************************
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Disclaimer: All copyrights belong to original publisher.  
The Amazon Coalition has not verified the accuracy of the forwarded message.  
Forwarding this message does not necessarily connote agreement 
with the positions stated there-in.

Todos los derechos de autor pertenecen al autor originario.
La Coalicion Amazonica no se ha verificado la veracidad de este 
mensaje.  Mandar este mensaje no necesariamente significa que 
la Coalicion Amazonica esta de acuerdo con el contenido.

La Coalicion para los Pueblos Amazonicos y su Medio Ambiente es una 
iniciativa, nacida de la alianza entre los pueblos indigenas y 
tradicionales de la Amazonia, grupos y personas individuales que 
comparten sus preocupaciones por el futuro de la Amazonia y sus 
pueblos.  Las ochenta organizaciones no-gubernamentales del norte 
y del sur activas en la Coalicion creen que el futuro de la Amazonia 
depende de sus pueblos indigenas y tradicionales y el estado de su 
medio ambiente.

The Coalition for Amazonian Peoples and Their Environment is an initiative 
born out of the alliance between indigenous and traditional peoples of the
Amazon and groups and individuals who share their concerns for the future 
of the Amazon and its peoples.  The eighty non-governmental organizations 
from the North and the South active in the Coalition believe that the 
future of the Amazon depends on its indigenous and traditional peoples and 
the state of their environment.