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Temer Accused of Backtracking on Rainforest Veto to Gain Votes

07/24/2017 - 10h10

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JOE LEAHY
"FINANCIAL TIMES"

Protected forests in Brazil the size of Portugal are under threat from a push to shrink conservation areas, the WWF environmental group has said.

According to activist, the government is planning to redraw the borders of the Jamanxim national forest in the Amazon, by introducing a bill to congress just weeks after similar legislation was vetoed by Michel Temer, president.

"Brazil is facing an unprecedented offensive against its protected areas," said Marco Lentini, in charge of forests at WWF-Brazil.

Critics said Mr Temer was swapping trees for votes by agreeing to back demands from the powerful rural lobby to make it easier to operate in protected areas as he battles corruption charges.

The president faces a vote in congress on August 2 over whether he should be tried in the supreme court for allegedly discussing bribes with a businessman, Joesley Batista, the former chairman of JBS, the world's largest meatpacker.

Analysts said Mr Temer needed all the support he could get to survive the vote and pass an economic reform programme on which he had staked his political future.

The ranching lobby, known as the ruralistas, has 230 members in the 513-seat lower house of congress, making it an indispensable potential ally. "This is a currency of exchange," said Jaime Gesisky, a specialist in public policy at WWF-Brazil.

Concern over the future of Brazil's protected areas comes amid a rapid reduction in the number of trees in the Amazon. Last year the National Institute for Space Research reported a 29 per cent increase in deforestation since 2015.

Mr Lentini said the latest efforts to lift environmental protection threatened conservation reserves with a loss of 10 per cent by area, or about 80,000 square kilometres.

Last month Norway delivered a rebuke to Brazil as it cut back on aid linked to conservation.

Two decrees vetoed by Mr Temer last month would have reduced the national forests by 600,000 hectares (6,000 sq km), not only in Jamanxim, in the northern Amazonian state of Pará, but also in an area of rare protected trees in the southern state of Santa Catarina.

But immediately after the veto, José Sarney Filho, environment minister, reassured landowners in the Jamanxim area, saying in a video that he would launch a bill in congress to achieve the same ends.

If implemented, the bill, presented to congress last week for urgent consideration, will reduce the Jamanxim national forest by 27 per cent.

The government has said the move is needed to solve land disputes and reduce uncertainty for farmers who were in the region before it became a national park in 2006.

An earlier decree, Medida Provisória 759, allowed for the easier resolution of land title disputes. But according to activists, the latest proposal is aimed at smoothing the way for land-grabbing ranchers in the Amazon.

Brasília has said the law will enable people in precarious living conditions without title to their land, whether in urban or rural areas, to resolve their situation. "The truth is that the environmental impact won't be big," said Covatti Filho, a ruralista lawmaker from Rio Grande do Sul.

But environmentalists said the bill, if passed, would set a worrying precedent for Brazil's national parks.

Ranchers and land-grabbers would invade public land and protected forests in the expectation that eventually land use rules would be changed in their favour, said Nurit Bensusan of the Instituto Socioambiental, a non-governmental environmental organisation.

"Where one cow can pass, the whole herd will go," he said. Additional reporting by Andres Schipani in Mococa, Brazil

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2017

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