The passing of Marina

The sudden resignation of Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva this week left the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva badly wrong-footed. Lula himself faced the embarrassment of having to respond to the announcement during a press conference with the visiting German chancellor Angela Merkel, and the process of naming a successor was messy and confused, with the result that the new environment minister Carlos Minc appeared to be the president’s second choice.

The prominent coverage given to the resignation, not just in Brazil but around the world, is testament to the influence and respect Marina Silva has earned during her period in office. Yet in a sense, the real surprise was not that she left the government, but that she remained inside it for so long.

At one level, Silva has been at the core of Lula’s administration. Their political association goes back more than thirty years, and when the new president took office in 2003, hers was one of the first ministerial appointments to be announced. It was a highly symbolic choice -- the charismatic leader of the rubber-tappers association from the remote Amazonian state of Acre, and former close associate of the assassinated activist and environmental martyr Chico Mendes. For the green movement, it seemed a dream come true. A child of the struggle against destruction of the rainforest was now in charge of government policies to protect it.

What was more, Marina Silva took with her into the environment ministry (Ministério do Meio Ambiente, or MMA) a group of advisers drawn from green NGOs, including a former director of Greenpeace in Brazil. On the sidelines for so long, Brazilian environmentalists now even seemed to have their own headquarters in the heart of power, one of the brutalist 1960s blocks that house the ministries marching up Brasilia’s esplanade towards the presidential palace, the Planalto.

It did not take long, however, for tensions to emerge between Silva and other members of the Lula administration. Despite his obvious affection and respect for Silva and the struggle she represents, Lula is anything but green. The former metalworkers’ union leader takes what might be termed an old-Left view of development – progress for him and the majority of his colleagues is grounded in industry, jobs and infrastructure. If trees and rivers get in the way of roads and dams, the “tree-huggers” are cast as the enemies of development.

So Marina Silva’s MMA has been in a constant series of battles with other, more powerful ministries such as Mines and Energy, and Agriculture. From the start, the ambitious multi-ministerial plan to combat deforestation in the Amazon has been caught in the contradiction of government incentives for an expanding export-based agricultural commodities sector, and a programme of roadbuilding and new hydro-electric dams in the region.

At times, Silva has had to ride out public and somewhat humiliating defeats, for example in the government decision to accept the legalization of commercial growing of genetically-modified crops. This was one of several points at which she was widely expected to resign – but she took the view that it was better to fight battles inside government so long as she could still have a significant influence.

Equally, Marina Silva was frequently among the names listed by the media as likely casualties of government reshuffles, most notably when Lula began his second four-year term at the beginning of 2007. The complaints against her ministry were growing louder from industrial lobbies that saw the environmental licensing system as a major constraint holding back big developments – a serious charge from the point of view of a president grounding his second mandate on a “Programme of Accelerated Growth” in which environmental concerns are often portrayed as an inconvenient handicap.

Yet Lula kept his environment minister on, probably because in the end it was better for him to have her there than outside the government, despite the complaints. It brings to mind the words of the late US President Lyndon Johnson with regard to the FBI chief J Edgar Hoover – “I’d rather have him inside the tent spitting out than outside the tent spitting in.” Actually he did not use the word “spitting”.

So long as Marina Silva was inside the government tent, criticism of the Lula administration’s environmental policy was always going to be muted, because green groups felt they had a powerful ally with unquestioned integrity doing her best to fight their battles from within. Lula knew this, and even if her presence could be inconvenient at times, it was a price well worth paying if she could deflect the full force of that criticism, especially on the international scene where she commanded such obvious respect.

In recent months, however, Silva’s position looked increasingly uncomfortable as Lula seemed at times to be undermining her position in public. This was clearly the case following the publication in January of the alarming satellite data indicating a sharp upturn in Amazon deforestation in the final months of 2007. While Marina Silva headed the press conference announcing the figures and blamed the expansion of cattle and soya production, Lula appeared to side with his political ally Blairo Maggi, governor of the state of Mato Grosso and big-time soya producer. Maggi accused the government space research institute INPE of lying about the data – and while Lula did not go that far, he did attack critics for jumping to conclusions about the figures, and called on NGOs to “go back and plant trees in their own countries.”

Even though the government has announced significant action this year to act against deforestation, Marina Silva has seemed increasingly marginalized. This was painfully the case last week when she was passed over for overall control of the government’s Sustainable Amazon Programme – with the coordination instead being given to the minister of strategic affairs Mangabeira Unger. Significantly, this programme puts the fight against illegal deforestation and protection of biodiversity behind guaranteeing national sovereignty and territorial integrity in its list of priorities.

With her departure, Marina Silva could make president Lula’s life very difficult, if she so chose. With a platform in the Senate, and a formidable reputation both inside Brazil and abroad, any direct criticisms she makes will be widely heard and respected. And from now on, the environmental movement will not pull any punches.

In fact, her first public statements following her resignation were measured and fell short of open criticism, speaking only of a sense of “stagnation” in her ability to influence things, and wishing well to her successor. But in a sense, she did not need to attack government policy, since the very act of her resignation had been so widely interpreted as a blow to the credibility of Lula’s environmental policies.

The new minister Carlos Minc, until now environment secretary for the state of Rio de Janeiro, has fine credentials as far as the green movement is concerned – he was, for example, among the founders of the Green Party in Brazil. However, he suffers from one major disadvantage. He is not, and never will be, Marina Silva.

This article was first published in O Eco.

Ports, parrots and Indians

It is a classic tale of David and Goliath. A handful of Tupi-Guarani Indians, backed up by ornithologists concerned about some rare parrots, taking on Brazil’s richest man and his plan to construct the biggest port in Latin America.

That, in caricature, is the battle currently under way over proposals by the mining and logistics entrepreneur Eike Batista and his LLX company to build a R$6bn (US$3.6bn) mega-port, known as Porto Brasil, on the Atlantic coast South of São Paulo.

The battle also represents an important test of the seriousness with which the Brazilian decision-making process, in all its complexity at local, state and federal levels, values what remains of the unique coastal ecosystems that have felt the onslaught of 500 years of development since the arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil.

First, a bit of background. The proposal is for a massive container port to take pressure off the one at Santos, currently Latin America’s busiest. The huge queues of trucks which build up at Santos and at the next major port to the South at Paranaguá, are seen as damaging bottlenecks to Brazil’s trading infrastructure, which will become increasingly serious as the country’s economy grows.

Porto Brasil would include an offshore island with 11 berths capable of loading deep-draught vessels, the largest of which are currently unable to access Brazilian ports. Onshore, the main loading area of six square kilometers would handle up to four million standard freight containers (TEUs) a year. Behind the port itself, a 13 sq km industrial zone would house auto and electronics factories, food processing units and other “high value-added” industries, according to the publicity of the port’s proponents.

Looking at the location of the proposed port on Google Earth (see illustrations) helps to illustrate both the attractions of the Porto Brasil project and the reason it is causing such controversy. It would fill in the only remaining patch of green along the continuous strip of beachfront urban sprawl, stretching for some 100km from Santos to the mountains of the Jureia-Itatins protected area, one of the most important remaining sanctuaries of the Atlantic Forest.

Apart from its proximity to the economic powerhouse of South-East Brazil and its agricultural hinterland, the port and its promised jobs (30,000 during construction, 5,000 permanent) holds obvious appeal to a region which depends for its income on the seasonal disgorging of the mega-city of São Paulo, 700m up on the plateau, to its nearest coastline during the summer holiday periods.

The municipality of Peruibe, within whose boundaries the port is planned, has grown rapidly in recent years largely through development of holiday homes and gated communities which remain empty for much of the year.

The mayor of Peruibe’s special adviser, Sílvio Siqueira Junior, explains, “We have a serious problem in Peruibe today, which is that it survives on the season, the veraneio (summer vacations). In practice, we’ve got the period from December to February, when the place is crowded with tourists – and for the rest of the year, traders have to survive on the business they do during that season.

“We believe that an enterprise on this scale will make a whole series of other businesses possible, which at the moment are unviable in Peruibe and the surrounding region.”

Siqueira admits, however, that “there are more questions than answers” surrounding the detailed proposals for the port, not least of which is the environmental impact it would have.

That little patch of green, as it appears from a satellite photo, is in fact highly significant in the mosaic of varied and contrasting habitats which are collectively referred to as the Atlantic Forest (or Mata Atlântica in Portuguese), the ecosystem that once stretched in a continuous swathe along the entire Eastern coast of Brazil, and inland as far as Paraguay and Northern Argentina – but which has lost at least 93% of its original extent.

One of the reasons that the region holds an exceptional variety of plant and animal species (it is classed as a Biodiversity Hotspot by Conservation International) is that the landscape rises rapidly from sea level to the mountain range known as the Serra do Mar, giving rise to an inter-connected series of habitat-types, each with its own unique set of species.

Among the most threatened of these habitats is the restinga , the term used for the forest growing in the white sands of the coastal plain, often in a very narrow strip between the tidal zone and higher ground. Plants in these areas have evolved specific survival strategies to deal with low levels of nutrients and soil moisture, and they have their own characteristic flora such as ground-growing bromeliads and stunted trees.

By their nature, restinga forests tend to be in the way of coastal developments seeking flat land near a beach, and the zone proposed for Porto Brasil is one of the very few places where there is a continuous undeveloped area linking the mountains to the ocean.

Its importance has been emphasized recently by the discovery of a colony of an endangered parrot species, the Red-tailed Parrot (Amazonas brasiliensis), whose entire global range consists of a small strip of coastline barely 200km in length, and which has suffered badly from habitat loss and capture for the pet trade.

The colony of around 150 individual parrots is thought to be the northernmost outpost of the species, and at least one of its “dormitories” – the collective roosts where the birds gather at dusk for mutual protection – is in the very area that would form part of the industrial zone in the current plans for the port.

The presence of the parrots, together with several other species unique to the coastal lowlands of the Atlantic Forest, has led the respected international NGO Birdlife International to include this location in its global network of Important Bird Areas (IBAs), places deemed to be priorities for conservation.

The ornithologist and bird guide Bruno Lima, who regularly brings foreign birdwatchers to this site, comments, “If we lose it, we lose it forever. It’s the last great important area on the São Paulo coast. People love this area, they come here to see the birds and nature.

“We really need this area, it’s very important. More than we know.”

The company wishing to develop the port, LLX, insists that it places a high priority on environmental responsibility, and that before the project goes ahead there will be a full assessment of the flora and fauna, impacts on the coastal ecosystem and other requirements of the public authorities that would license the project.

Those studies have yet to be carried out, but in the meantime a more immediate obstacle needs to be overcome by the port developers. Around 50 families of Tupi-Guarani Indians currently occupy parts of the area proposed for the port, among the very few indigenous people still claiming rights to Brazil’s coastline from which they were displaced by the European settlers from the 16th century.

The company claims these Indians are effectively squatters who only arrived on the land eight years ago, and they have offered alternative homes to the families on a nearby estate – together with other incentives such as a 4 x 4 Mitsubishi vehicle for the use of the community. The issue has split the families, with the majority accepting these terms and a smaller group determined to stay.

The local office of the federal indigenous affairs agency Funai has compared these tactics with those of the Portuguese 500 years ago, offering trinkets like mirrors and hairbrushes to the original inhabitants of Brazil in return for land. The agency is attempting to get the land officially demarcated as Indian territory – if this is approved by the government in Brasilia, it will be virtually impossible for the port to proceed. A public meeting on the proposal was suspended in March when federal prosecutors gained a court injunction claiming it was premature to proceed with formal consultations on the port while the question of the Indians was unresolved.

So it is still not clear whether the environmental importance of the site will be fully put to the test. Another obstacle has arisen with proposals from the São Paulo state government to create a new marine environmental protection zone along this coast – while mainly directed at control of commercial fishing, it could complicate the licensing of the port.

If the port developers get past these other hurdles, the municipality of Peruibe would still need to change its own local zoning plan, which currently prohibits development on the restinga forest. That in turn will give rise to a fierce local debate about what type of development is appropriate for the region.

According to Plínio Melo from the NGO Mongue, which campaigns for conservation of coastal habitats and traditional communities in the area, Peruibe should concentrate on its unique assets.

“Metal-works, cement plants, the auto industry, you can find those anywhere in the world,” says Melo. “But only we have this preserved Atlantic Forest, no one else has got it any more. So any type of investment should be based on that regional vocation – in other words, environmental and ecological tourism.”

This article first appeared on the O Eco website. Copyright Tim Hirsch, 2008. All rights reserved.