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Brazil Set to Increase Amazon Deforestation After Years of Decline

For as long as I can remember -- thanks to haunting National Geographic spreads and the like -- there's been a small, gnawing bit of worry about the rapid pace of deforestation of the world's rainforests. Sure, it's one thing to try to make smart...

For as long as I can remember — thanks to haunting National Geographic spreads and the like — there’s been a small, gnawing bit of worry about the rapid pace of deforestation of the world’s rainforests. Sure, it’s one thing to try to make smart purchases and send some donations here and there, but when we’re talking about some of the most beautiful and most important places on Earth, those feel like pithy gestures.

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And then there’s the whole fact that, as a citizen of a country with a pretty terrible environmental track record, who am I to comment on what Brazil does with their own resources? That argument, which I heard more than a couple times when I lived down there, is apparently coming to the forefront again: Brazil, after years of declining deforestation, now faces a swing in the other direction thanks to the passage of a bill by the National Congress that radically reshapes the country’s ‘forest code.’ The bundle of regulations that make up the code set standards, for example, on how much of a landowner’s property must be preserved as native flora, ranging from around 20 percent on the coast to as much as 80 percent in the vulnerable Amazon Basin.

Jeff Tollefson, writing in Nature, breaks down what may prove to be a huge reversal in Brazil’s forest policy:

Although the code has been on the books since 1965, enforcement increased in the past decade under Rousseff's predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. That enforcement, combined with broader agricultural trends and mounting public pressure, has helped Brazil to reduce deforestation to its lowest level in more than 20 years (see 'Turning the tide'). "Brazil has justifiably held up its record on deforestation in the Amazon in recent years," says Steve Schwartzman, director of tropical forest policy at the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington DC. "But the changes proposed in what passed the House are fully capable of reversing that trend." The legislation has been working its way through the National Congress since 2010, motivated by a rural backlash against the crackdown on deforestation. The Brazilian Confederation for Agriculture and Livestock, one of the main business groups supporting the bill, argues that the forest code has become too burdensome. Pointing out that around 28% of the country's 851 million hectares is dedicated to agriculture whereas 61% is forest, the organization says that by approving the law, Brazil's Congress has chosen "the path of sustainable agricultural production".

Tollefson notes that fortuitous timing has left a ray of hope for environmentalists: Rio de Janeiro is playing host to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) next month, which should put pressure on Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff to veto some of the more extreme elements of the bill, at the very least. But until the bill turns into law, there’s a more pressing issue: as BRIC countries continue to grow at a rapid pace, there’s going to be more pressure to develop as many native resources as possible. In the case of the Amazon, which is incredibly important as a world biodiversity sink and is also revered worldwide, international advocacy may help stave off its destruction. But, as this bill shows, its impossible to tell how long that willingness to work with outside pressures will last.

Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @drderekmead.

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