Eu gostaria de ler em Português
December 01, 2011
Forest Code Update
UPDATE: May 10, 2012
In Brazil, attorneys and scientists join calls for President Dilma Rousseff to veto Forest Code
EDF
With the Rio+20 environment and development conference, hosted by Brazil, only weeks away, many in Brazilian government are concerned that weakening the Forest Code would draw international criticism.
Read more...
UPDATE: May 04, 2012
Brazil set to cut forest protection
Nature
News article published at Nature quotes Paulo Moutinho, Executive Director at IPAM, on the national hope on presidential veto to reduce harmful impact of weakened legislation.
UPDATE: April 24, 2012
How to turn something bad into something worse. Much worse
Tasso Azevedo and André Lima* / Planeta Sustentável
The ongoing proposal for alteration in the Forest Code in the Congress, when approved in the Chamber of Deputies was tragic. In the Senate it was enhanced with a few safeguards, but the essence continues with the same central issues:
- widens the possibility of deforestation;
- decreases protection to sensitive areas such as mangroves and riparians;
- amnesties illegal deforestation;
- allows for the consolidation without recovery of degrading areas or, in the few cases that demand recovery, it deals with an area significantly smaller than the area affected illegally.
UPDATE: March 08, 2012
Environmental NGOs Blast Brazil Press For Amazon Re-Mapping
Forbes
Fourteen local and international environmental non-profit groups took Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff to task in São Paulo on Thursday for essentially shuffling Amazon protected areas to make room for dams and forestry.
Local groups like Instituto SocioAmbiental and the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) joined with the usual multinational environmental groups like WWF Brazil in signing off on what they called a “letter to society” about Rousseff’s environmental policies. The five page letter, released to the media on Thursday, said her first year has been “marked by the most significant regression of the social and environmental agenda since the end of the military dictatorship.”
UPDATE: March 07, 2012
Brazil's Rousseff urged to veto new forestry code
France 24
Environmentalists and small farmers marched outside the National Congress Wednesday to urge President Dilma Rousseff to veto changes to the country's forestry code they fear will accelerate deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.
The bill, which is backed by the powerful agribusiness sector, would allow huge areas of the country to be farmed if they were illegally logged before July 2008, and would allow farming along environmentally sensitive riverbanks.
UPDATE: February 08, 2012
Brazil's president and Congress could avoid backslide for Amazon protection
EDF Talks Global Climate (Blog post)
Brazil has made great strides in reducing Amazon deforestation in recent years, bringing rates down about 80% over the last six years. But President Dilma Rousseff is already showing signs of backsliding on her environmental commitments in just her first year in office.
It’s a trend environmental groups have been following since Rousseff was sworn in last January, and one New York Times reporter Alexei Barrionuevo captures well in his recent story, "In Brazil, Fears of a Slide Back for Amazon Protection."
With global emissions from deforestation contributing about 15% of greenhouse gas emissions – as much as all the world’s cars, trucks, ships and airplanes combined – a lot is at stake in next month’s vote on a forest protection law in Brazil’s House of Representatives.
UPDATE: December 07, 2011
Brazilian NGOs joint manifest against the proposed changes in Brazilian Forest Code
The Brazilian commitment to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) announced at COP 15 is threatened by the proposed changes to the Forest Code which was voted in the Senate yesterday (12/06/2011).
The president of Brazil Roussef, Dilma can reject such vetoing the proposed changes and, therefore, reaffirm the Brazilian contribution to the mitigation of climate change. Thus, the Brazilian civil society organizations present at COP17, insist that the president Rousseff veto changes in the Forest Code.
UPDATE: December 01, 2011
Most critical points in the current text of the Brazilian Forest Code:
a) The current proposal still provides amnesty for illegal deforestation and the reduction in the obligation to restore permanent preservation areas (APPs). This amnesty varies from 50 to 100% in riparian zones, revoking the environmental crimes law passed in 1998;
b) The current proposal incentivizes more deforestation in the Amazon. Despite the inclusion of safeguards against new deforestation (suggested by IPAM), the current text includes two loopholes in its failure to establish 2008 as the cutoff for the reduction of legal reserves throughout the Amazon under state Ecological-Economic Zoning (ZEE) plans and in cases where states have more than 65% of Protected Areas and Indigenous Lands. In both cases, new deforestation is encouraged by the permitted reduction in legal reserves;
c) There is pressure to further reduce the safeguards that IPAM was able to help maintain in Federal Bill 30 (2011).
UPDATE: November 30, 2011
1. What is the Forest Code?
-
A 1965 law that establishes minimum levels of forest cover on private land holdings;
-
In the Legal Amazon forest biome:
-
80% of property must be kept in “legal forest reserve”[1];
-
Also, “permanent protection” areas (PPA’s): minimum of 30 meters on either side of streams must be protected; also steep slopes, hilltops.
-
-
In the Legal Amazon cerrado biome:
-
35% legal forest reserve requirement;
-
Same requirements for PPA’s.
-
-
Outside of the Amazon:
-
20% legal forest reserve requirement;
-
Same requirements for PPA’s.
-
2. Why is pressure to change the Forest Code on the part of the rural sector so strong?[2]
-
Large areas of forest (especially in the Amazon) have been occupied and cleared illegally in the past; owners of these lands are seeking to legalize them;
-
Even for lands that were cleared legally in past, it may be difficult to comply with the current Forest Code; mechanisms for facilitating compliance (e.g., tradeable development rights and assistance for restoration) have not been implemented;
-
Outside of the Amazon, there are large areas of riparian zone that must be restored, which can be expensive;
-
-
The prices of commodities are up, and producers want to expand their cropland areas;
-
Enforcement of the Forest Code (especially in the Amazon) has increased in recent years;
-
The market is demanding full compliance with the law (e.g. commodity roundtables such as RTRS (soy) and Bonsucro (sugar cane)) and producers don’t want to be kept out of supply chains because they can’t meet the legal requirements.
3. What does the (primarily) agricultural lobby hope to change?
-
Amnesty for all deforestation prior to July 2008;
-
Shift in responsibility for PPA implementation/definition from federal government to state and local governments;
-
Include PPA forests in the calculation of the Legal Forest Reserve percentage;
-
Reduce the width of the riparian zone buffer to 15-m and eliminate some types of PPA;
-
Amnesty for all deforestation on properties smaller than 100 ha, including in riparian zones.
-
Accepts combination of PPA and legal reserve;
-
Proposes measures for creating positive incentives for forests on private properties;
-
Reduces 80% legal forest reserve requirement in the Amazon to 50% for:
-
Properties that cleared legally (but not beyond 50%) prior to 2001[4];
-
Properties in counties with at least 50% of territory in protected area (including indigenous lands);
-
Properties in areas of federal-approved state land-use zoning plans that are zoned for agricultural production;
-
-
Accepts compensation of legal forest reserve within the same state;
-
Rejects blanket amnesty on deforestation before July 2008;
-
Rejects decentralization of decisions on PPAs.
5. What do IPAM’s analyses demonstrate?
-
With these compromise measures and existing “flexibilization” measures, it is possible to bring most rural properties into compliance with the existing Forest Code;
-
In other words, radical changes in the Forest Code are not needed to create a legal supply chain.
6. How has the Senate responded and what are the next steps?
-
The Senate Environmental Commission incorporated 7 of the 9 proposals made by IPAM into the proposed changes to the Forest Code, as well as a series of other safeguards supported by IPAM, including:
-
No amnesty for deforestation after July 2008 and 20-year term to reforest;
-
Mandatory embargo on the use of areas of PPA and LR cleared illegally after July 2008 and 100% reforestation within 5 years;
-
Mandatory registration in the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) within 4 years throughout Brazil;
-
Ban on authorizations to deforest issued by municipal authorities;
-
Option to employ economic incentives to reduce forest carbon emissions;
-
Development of dedicated program for payments for environmental service provision through voluntary forest conservation on private properties or smallholder agricultural lands;
-
Watershed management committees empowered to define targets for conservation and reforestation for at-risk watersheds.
-
The Senate Plenary will vote on the revised Forest Code proposal. The changes are projected to be approved or vetoed by President Dilma Roussef before the end of 2011.
Visit: www.IPAM.org.br
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] In 1995, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon hit a record high of 29,000 km2 cleared in that year. The federal government responded with widely publicized policy interventions, among the most prominent of which was the increase from 50 to 80% legal reserve in the Amazon region.
[2] Opinion polls indicated that 80% of Brazilians do not want the Forest Code to change, even if this means a reduction in growth of food production (Source: O Instituto de Pesquisa Datafolha, July 2011)
[3] The full set of recommendations and analyses provided by IPAM (in Portuguese) can be downloaded at www.ipam.org.br/download/livro/Codigo-Florestal-Nove-propostas-abrem-caminho-para-consenso/597
[4] The legal reserve requirement in the Legal Amazon was changed from 50 to 80% by provisionary measure in 1996, but only signed into law in 2001.
Contributions to our comments’ section are encouraged to be respectful and civil. Comments with obscene and foul language, harassing, personal data and external links will be excluded. » Read IPAM’s website comments policy
- Tags: Políticas Públicas , Destaques IPAM
More news
