Brazil's Proposed Reform of Forest Code Sparks Environmentalist Outcry

The Brazilian House of Deputies’ decision on May 24 to loosen environmental protections contained in the Forest Code invited plenty of international criticism. Brazil’s Forest Code, established in 1965, requires private landowners to keep 80 percent of protected areas forested, among other provisions. Proponents of reform say it would help small farmers stay in business and stimulate domestic food production, but environmentalists view the proposal as a step backwards in the country’s fight to protect the Amazon rainforest. The bill now goes to the Senate, where it could very well pass, though President Dilma Rousseff has threatened to veto key provisions.

With a vote of 273 to 182, the bill sailed through the House. Championed by Aldo Rebelo of the Communist Party of Brazil (PSdoB, in Portuguese) and the agribusiness lobby, the proposed law would open some areas of environmental protection to farmers by loosening restrictions on the clearing of hilltop and riverbank areas. The law would also provide amnesty to those who illegally cut down forested areas prior to a cutoff date of July 22, 2008, and would give states greater control over designating Permanent Areas of Preservation.

President Dilma Rousseff has reservations about the House vote. She threatened to veto the law if the provision extending such authority to state governments is not removed during Senate debate. Rousseff also says that amnesty sends the wrong message. She may be right. The Brazilian Space Agency (INPE, in Portuguese), which routinely conducts aerial surveys of the Amazon, found a 27 percent rise in deforestation over the last two months. Sources at Brazil’s environmental protection agency (known as IBAMA) attributed the unexpected deforestation bump to the debate over the reform, saying it created the expectation that infractions would be forgiven in the future. The IBAMA says it has issued some 13,000 unpaid fines prior to the amnesty’s July 22, 2008 cutoff date, for a total worth of $1.5 billion. 

Rousseff’s opposition to the law led some to criticize her for siding with international opinion rather than Brazilian agricultural interests. “[T]here are times with the international discourse about the environment winds up contaminating Brazilians, giving the impression that the environment is the most important thing in existence,” Congressman Paulo Piau of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) told A Folha de São Paulo. “It’s very important, but not more important than preserving our farmers in the countryside so they don’t come to the city.” 

It’s not just the international press that criticize the proposed law, however. Homegrown environmentalists also loudly oppose it. Marina Silva, a former environment minister and a 2010 presidential candidate, called the House vote “one of the biggest backward steps I’ve ever seen,” according to O Globo. “I consider it an act of violence against nature,” Alcides Faria of the NGO Ecoa said of the proposed law. Brazil’s scientists aren’t happy with the vote either. The Brazilian Society for Scientific Progress and the Brazilian Sciences Academy criticized the House of Deputies in a joint press release for approving the law without seeking the scientific community’s opinion. According to the statement, Congress did not invite either group to testify during the debates and ignored the groups’ pleas to postpone the vote to allow more time to study the reform’s possible effects. 

Learn more:

• Read the text of the proposed reform of Brazil’s Forest Code.
• Read the text of Brazil’s current Forest Code, passed in 1965.  
• See who voted for and against the measure in Brazil’s House of Deputies.
• Read the joint press statement from the Brazilian Society for Scientific Progress and the Brazilian Sciences Academy criticizing the House for passing the law.
• Congressman Paulo Piau of the PMDB discusses the proposed reform of the Forest Code with A Folha de São Paulo.