Forest codes and conspiracies

Anyone who follows Brazilian public discussion over a long period will be familiar with the Amazon conspiracy theory. To outsiders it seems bizarre enough to be laughed off. However, its persistence and resonance with a large section of public opinion (and political elites) makes it no laughing matter for those Brazilians earnestly trying to move the country to a new mindset regarding this environmental superpower's unrivalled biological riches. Now a version of the conspiracy - promoted, puzzlingly, by a Communist congressional deputy - is being used to justify a proposed loosening of Brazil's environmental legislation that could, if passed, jeopardise recent advances in the slowing of deforestation and restoration of ultra-diverse ecosystems.

The theory, touted in various forms over many decades, goes roughly like this. International concern and pressure regarding the destruction of the Amazon (and, for that matter, the rights of indigenous groups) is nothing more than a self-interested plot by, principally, Anglo-saxon rich nations aimed at depriving Brazil of its sovereignty over the Amazon territories, preventing the country from developing and getting their greedy hands on the mineral wealth of the region.

Joined together in the service of this well-organised conspiracy (on which books have been written) are alleged to be forces as diverse as international environmental organisations like the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace, the World Trade Organisation, the British Royal Family and the US federal government. It survives even ham-fisted frauds like the myth of a school geography textbook in the United States showing the Brazilian Amazon as a UN-administered international protectorate - the text accompanying the map circulated via email was quite evidently not written by a native English speaker.

Stoked in particular by military figures including senior serving officers, the conspiracy is regularly resuscitated on the internet, newspaper columns and on TV discussion programmes. I am personally often asked about it by well-educated Brazilians, even those inclined towards green views, and it is periodically fuelled by ill-considered if well-meaning comments from European or US politicians describing the Amazon as "belonging to the world" or some-such phrase.

Now, the spectre of international plots to hold back Brazil's development is being raised to support an attempt in Congress to flexibilise the country's Forest Code - introduced in 1965, ironically just one year after the US-backed military coup that kept Brazil's generals in power until the 1980s.

The code, regarded by its supporters as among the most advanced environmental legislation in the world, imposes well-defined restrictions on the rights of landowners to develop crops and other activities on their property. One element, Areas of Permanent Preservation (APP), defines types of landscape on which native vegetation must be maintained: for example riverbanks, freshwater springs, steep slopes and the tops of hills. In addition, the Legal Reserve (Reserva Legal or RL)is a fixed percentage of the area of a property (excluding the APP) that must be preserved. This is set at 80% in the Amazon forest area, 35% in the transition zone between the Amazon and the Cerrado savanna, and 20% in other ecological regions.

The problem, as a trip to any part of rural Brazil (or even a look on Google Earth) will confirm, is that the Forest Code is largely a fiction. This photo I took of bananas marching up steep slopes to the top of the foothills of one of the most important remnants of the Atlantic Forest, the Jureia-Itatins reserve in São Paulo state, is a typical example of how the code is widely flouted with impunity.

Which begs the question of why the ruralistas, as supporters of the powerful agricultural lobby in Congress are known, should now be going to such efforts to weaken an unenforced law. The reason is that executive regulation that would give state agencies the power to punish those breaking the Forest Code will finally come into force next year, after repeatedly receding into the future.

Under the proposals now before Congress, there would effectively be an amnesty for landowners who breached the forest code before 2008. Each of Brazil's 27 state governments would be given flexibility to vary by 50% the minimum margin of forest cover required along riverbanks - which supporters of the code fear would result in an inevitable "race to the bottom" by authorities keen to please their local farming interests. And the requirement for the Legal Reserve would be removed from smaller landowners, which in the case of the Amazon means farms up to 600 hectares (about 1500 acres).

The case for the changes was put to a special commission of the lower house of Congress by its relator, or rapporteur, deputy Aldo Rebelo, of the Brazilian Communist Party, and it is available in full (Portuguese only) on his blog.

The thrust of the 36-page report is that the current code puts some 90% of Brazilian agricultural producers into a position of illegality, and that entire sectors such as wine-growing in the Southern states would be unviable if it were to be strictly enforced, as vines are largely grown on the steep slopes of the region. Moreover, it imposes an unfair disadvantage on Brazilian farmers compared to overseas competitors, where no such code exists to protect forests. All reasonable-sounding stuff, although the claims can be and are disputed by those who support the code, while admitting that some refinements could and should be made.

But what jumps out of the Rebelo report is an extraordinary, rambling diatribe against those who wish to impede "progress" by limiting deforestation, ranging over Malthus, Marx and the director of Avatar, James Cameron. The alleged role of international NGOs in promoting the interests of Brazil's Northern competitors is put explicitly and graphically.

"Looking at the efforts of some foreign non-governmental organisations to oppose the expansion of our agricultural frontier, one must ask oneself ... are they here for our good or our goods?" asks Rebelo.

And after lambasting what he calls the "anthropophobia" of the rainforest campaigners, Rebelo continues:

"Embarrassed by the evidence of their petty ambitions, the rich nations use the long arm of their NGOs, who disembark in Brazil as bearers of good news in defence of nature, but cannot hide the cause they are really espousing: the interests of the nations where they have their headquarters, and from where they receive their abundant funding.

"The pretence of foreign 'indigenist' and environmentalist NGOs at protecting the [Amazon] territory and inhabitants makes a mockery of the Brazilian state and people."

The allegation of connivance between foreign governments and NGOs is made more explicit in the case of the Netherlands, which briefly took control of the North-East Brazilian sugar plantations in the 17th century, and also happens to be the world headquarters of Greenpeace:

"Shorn of its former military and commercial power, today Holland satisfies itself with hosting and financing its paramilitary arms, the inevitable NGOs, which try to fulfil the role of its old armies and trading companies." Entertaining stuff, but remember this is an official document of the Brazilian Congress.

What Rebelo is suggesting, and the same has been claimed by agricultural spokespeople on television and in the press, is that the campaign to maintain and enforce a strong Forest Code in Brazil is being masterminded and controlled by foreign agricultural lobbies, principally in the United States, to stifle competition from Brazilian products such as soya, ethanol and bananas. The idea of activists from Greenpeace and the corn barons of the Midwest holding secret meetings to plot against Brazilian farmers may seem a little fanciful, but this does not deter the conspiracy theorists or the widespread belief in their message.

All of which naturally infuriates the home-grown Brazilian environmental movement that is trying to mobilise public opinion in support of the existing Forest Code, and its effective implementation. In campaign called Exterminadores do Futuro, the name given to the Schwarzenegger Terminator movies in Brazil, the group SOS Mata Atlântica (Save the Atlantic Forest) portrays the ruralistas as chainsaw-wielding vandals intent on destroying what is left of Brazil´s extraordinary biodiversity.

The fear of these groups is that if the Forest Code is weakened, it could reverse recent gains such as the sharp fall in the rate of Amazon deforestation, and serious attempts to restore the Atlantic Forest, a global biodiversity hotspot which has already lost some 93% of its original extent.

The vote on Rebelo's proposed changes was originally scheduled for today, Tuesday 15th June, when Brazil's eyes would have been on matters a little further afield - like its first match in South Africa, against North Korea. Now it has been delayed until next week. Watch this space.


Copyright Tim Hirsch, 2010. All rights Reserved.