Brazil declares forest havens after nun's killing

[emad]

Shooting of elderly activist leads to move against 'agrobandits'

Jan Rocha
Saturday February 19, 2005
The Guardian

The Brazilian government has ordered the creation of two vast conservation areas in the Amazon, only days after an elderly American nun who tried to protect the region from soybean farmers and loggers was shot dead.

Environmental groups had been campaigning for years for the biodiversity-rich area - known as Terra do Meio, or Middle Land - to be declared a conservation area. But it has taken last weekend's murder of Dorothy Stang, 74, and the international outcry that followed to make it happen.

Together, the protected areas, in Para state, cover nearly 4m hectares, or almost 10m acres, of forest, in an area coveted by loggers and ranchers.

A further 8m hectares along the unpaved BR163 highway, where illegal logging has already transformed the rainforest landscape, will be "interdicted" for six months, while the government decides how to preserve the area when work starts on hard-surfacing the road.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/brazil/story/0,12462,1417937,00.html

[mike_c]

1. good for Lula and the Brazilian gov't, but enforcement will be key....

I hope they can do it.

[jmcgowanjm]

2. Only hope=peakoil n/t

[Judi Lynn]

3. It's such a familiar pattern, by now, isn't it?

From the article:

Many Brazilian non-government organizations and social movements have increased pressure on the government to take a stand against the "criminal groups" seizing public lands in the Amazon and to put official plans for environmental protection into practice.

The CPT branded the big farmers expanding logging, ranching and soybean projects deeper into the Amazon as "agrobandits" - employing slave labour, illegally exploiting natural resources and falsifying claims to public land.
(snip)

The result of this continuing push into the Amazon has been a steady increase in deforestation. The carbon emissions from forest fires have transformed Brazil - which signed the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas controls, and has traditionally relied on hydroelectric power - into one of the world's top 10 polluters.
(snip)

President Lula da Silva has reacted swiftly to Sister Dorothy's murder, flying in federal troops. However, one local cattle ranchers' leader, Francisco Alberto de Castro, described the elderly nun as an "agitator" who created problems and who was "to blame for her own death".
(snip/)

Sure hope this plan will work. It's time the greedy, murderous right-wing, thieving, utterly destructive scum finally met a barrier somewhere. It would truly be a first, wouldn't it?

[hatrack]

4. Oh lookee! Another Official Government Proclamation!

Yes, and the Brazilian government will stand up to the ranchers, loggers and farmers just like they did last week.

Last week was when they allowed logging to resume, despite decades of theft, fraud, violence and unsustainable clear-cutting. But don't worry - once these "protected" areas are gone, they'll issue a new proclamation for somewhere farther inside the forest.

Lather, rinse, repeat.