Brazil's Amazon Plan Sounds Bold, But Doubts Abound

Raymond Colitt and Stuart Grudgings, Yahoo News 3 Dec 08;

BRASILIA/RIO DE JANEIRO - With its bold pledge to halve the rate of Amazon deforestation, Brazil wants to boost its international environmental credentials. But it may lack the conviction and resources to reach its goal.

The plan, announced Monday ahead of a major United Nations climate conference in Poland, is the first time Brazil has adopted a target for deforestation after years of putting the onus on rich nations to help stop global warming.

Environmentalists stress that is an important step forward from a few years ago when Brazil would barely discuss Amazon deforestation with other countries.

But while the target of halving the current rate of destruction by 2018 looks good on paper, critics say the plan lacks details and contains ambiguous language that gives the government leeway to miss the targets.

As well as strong commitment from a government that has often been reluctant to take on farming and development interests, success appears to depend on continued foreign donations to a fund that far has only received pledges from Norway.

"It's important that they have an actual goal, but it's going to come down as always to whether there's sustained political will," said Tom Lovejoy, biodiversity chair at the Heinz Center for science and the environment in Washington.

It is unclear whether President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former union leader often more concerned with jobs than trees, will put up the political capital the plan needs as he faces growing fallout from the global financial crisis.

Under the plan, which calls for a reduction in deforestation to an annual 2,260 square miles by 2018, Lula is not obliged to make any deforestation cuts in his two remaining years in office.

"They are setting targets for the next government. I'm not sure how convinced Lula is of this," said Rubens Born, executive director with Vitae Civilis, a group defending the environment and peace.

"SCHIZOPHRENIC"

Environmentalists are increasingly worried about a "tipping point" that could have a drastic impact on the regional climate and agriculture. It refers to a time when the forest's own destruction disrupts the cycle of rainfall and triggers irreversible desertification.

"Ten years is a long time out there and a lot of deforestation will have occurred by then and I really do worry about thresholds being passed," Lovejoy said.

Alarmed by a spike in deforestation last year, Brazil has made some progress in cracking down on illegal loggers, launching several high-profile operations this year to confiscate timber, beef and soy from illegally cleared areas.

It also cut credits to proprietors without proper land titles, increasingly uses satellite surveillance technology and plans to create a 3,000-strong environmental police force.

Still, the vastness of the Amazon means that enforcement is only part of the solution. Environmentalists say the only long-term option is to change the economics of deforestation by encouraging sustainable industries such as latex and nuts.

The government's plan calls for a massive increase in planting sugarcane and other biofuel crops, which critics say push farmers and ranchers deeper into the Amazon.

It also calls for more hydroelectric plants, which have attracted settlers and land speculators.

"The Brazilian government is schizophrenic. It wants conservation but then promotes such projects," said Claudio Maretti, head of regional conservation programs at WWF-Brasil.

The plan's financing is also uncertain, depending on the "availability" of domestic and international funds, according to the official document.

Norway this year pledged $1 billion over seven years to a new Amazon Fund aimed at improving conservation and alternative economic activities, provided Brazil reduces deforestation.

"It is absurd. Brazil should be interested in reducing deforestation with or without external funds," said Maretti.

(Editing by Todd Benson and Cynthia Osterman)

Brazil falls short with forest emission reduction ambitions
WWF 3 Dec 08;

Brasilia, Brail: Brazil's revised National Climate Change Plan, which for the first time defines goals for reducing massive emissions from deforestation in the Amazon, is commendable but still short on ambition and detail, WWF-Brazil said today.

The revised plan was released to coincide with the Conference of Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in Poznan, Poland which is to put key processes in place to achieve an international climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol by the next COP meeting in Copenhagen in December next year.

Under the revised plan, the Brazilian government establishes a goal of reducing the annual rate of deforestation by 40 per cent from average 1996-2005 levels during 2006-09, with reductions of a further 30 per cent in each of the subsequent four-year periods. The aim is to achieve a total decrease of over 70% by 2014-2017.

Achieving these goals would avoid 4.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions during 2006-2017, a figure greater than the annual emissions of the European Union.

“This goal is reasonably ambitious,” says Carlos Alberto de Mattos Scaramuzza, Conservation Director at WWF-Brazil. “To achieve it, next year deforestation will have to drop 23% in relation to this year.”

In Brazil, land use and land use change represent 75% of greenhouse gas emissions, the vast majority originating from deforestation in the Amazon region. Hence reducing deforestation in the Amazon is a critical component of any strategy aimed at lowering Brazil´s greenhouse gas emissions.

Under the scenario defined in the plan, the average area of Amazon forest cleared each year would be 5,742 km2 by 2014-17.

“That´s bigger than the US state of Rhode Island,” says Scaramuzza. “The CO2 released from clearing this area of Amazon forest would be roughly equivalent to the current annual emissions of Canada.”

Together with eight other environmental NGOs, WWF-Brazil has proposed zero deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon by 2015. According to Scaramuzza: “This goal is achievable if key actors—ranging from indigenous peoples to ranchers—are compensated for conserving the forest and thereby avoiding deforestation.”

In August the government of Norway pledged US$1 billion toward a newly established Amazon Fund. This voluntary contribution complements the ongoing climate negotiations, which are contemplating payments for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). Yet environmental NGOs such as WWF-Brazil have expressed concerns about the effectiveness of the Amazon Fund.

“This fund appears to be geared primarily to supporting government command-and-control programmes,” says WWF-Brazil’s CEO Denise Hamú. “To achieve more ambitious reductions in deforestation, it will be effective mechanisms to compensate the key actors on the ground who determine the fate of the forest.”

As part of its long-term conservation strategy for the Amazon, WWF-Brazil supports a wide range of initiatives aimed at protecting natural ecosystems and managing natural resources.

WWF-Brazil assists the Brazilian government´s ambitious Amazon Protected Area (ARPA) programme, which aims to consolidate a total of 600,000 km2 in new and existing protected areas in the region by 2012. A recent study found that the protected areas established or planned for establishment in 2008 under the program would result in a total reduction of 5.1 gigatons of CO2 emissions by 2050, which is roughly equivalent to 14% of global CO2e emissions per year, or 70% of the emissions targeted for reduction under the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.