Brazil

Norway is a major donor of the Amazon Fund, the Brazilian Development Bank’s fund that receives donations from governments, multilateral institutions, big NGOs and companies to fund forest conservation projects with the alleged aim of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases resulting from deforestation. The contribution of donors is recognised with diplomas that are nominal, non-transferable and do not imply equity rights or carbon credits to offset.

On 15 July we received a message from the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS) expressing that “the article ‘Brazil: Juma REDD test case in the Amazon’, published at the WRM monthly bulletin issue 155, presents various inaccuracies regarding both information and overall understanding of the Bolsa Floresta Program, as well as the Juma REDD Project. Therefore, the Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS) sent clarifications to WRM in order to be published at the WRM’s website.”

Reaching the 32 Quilombola communities in the Sapê do Norte region of the state of Espírito Santo, located in the municipalities of São Mateus and Conceição da Barra, can be extremely challenging. On the vast plain that comprises this northern edge of the state, where the monotonous and homogenous landscape is comprised almost entirely of eucalyptus trees, there are very few landmarks to point the way.

By José Heder Benatti. This paper is a preliminary legal reflection on the role of common property in the Brazilian Amazon. It suggests the integration of two distinct normative scopes of the society, the legal right and consuetudinary law, with the objective to argue that the legal instruments of the Brazilian society can be used to protect the cultural and natural patrimony.

At present, the initiative for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is rather a collection of proposals and some pilot schemes. However, it is being strongly pushed and at a remarkable speed inside as well as outside the United Nations process, with the aim of including carbon forest in the array of mechanisms for carbon permits and carbon offsets.

On 19 and 20 March this year, peasant, indigenous and quilombola* communities and movements from the States of Espirito Santo and Bahia who are fighting to get back their territory invaded by monoculture eucalyptus plantation companies, paid a visit to Raiz and Vereda Funda in the locality of Rio Pardo in the north of Minas Gerais, in solidarity and to exchange experiences with these two communities struggling to regain their traditional territory. 

On 16 March 2010, Henrique de Souza Pereira, 24-years old, was killed by a team of guards of the private ‘security’ company hired by Fibria, former Aracruz Celulose and partner of Stora Enso in the Veracel Celulose company.

The building of hydroelectric dams in Brazil has been marked by a lack of respect for the environment and society and more so by a lack of respect for the affected communities that see how their lives are radically changed and how they are annulled in the name of “capitalist society development.”  In Brazil, over 2,000 dams have been built, resulting in the eviction of over 1 million people from their lands. There are federal government projects foreseeing the construction of 1,443 more dams over the next 20 years.

What is happiness? We can find many answers and we may even consider that being happy is a strictly personal matter. However, at least two aspects of happiness are universal: we all want it and it would be hard to find someone who could declare him/herself happy when confronting hunger, homelessness or when lacking access to the knowledge constructed and accumulated by humanity.  

Plantar S.A. Reflorestamentos, a pig-iron and plantation company operating in Brazil, in the state of Minas Gerais, has been trying hard to get money through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

As experts like geographer Carlos Walter Porto-Gonçalves have repeatedly stressed, economic models based on monoculture plantation activities will always be incompatible with a healthy, balanced environment. Any industrial-scale monoculture activity, and especially plantations of millions of cloned eucalyptus trees, cannot contribute to the goal of so-called sustainable development.

In mid-July the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) Executive Board accepted a new methodology proposed as part of the controversial Plantar project in Minas Gerais, Brazil (see background on Plantar on WRM bulletins 84,http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/84/Plantar.html, 70 and 72).