Lessons from Brazil in tackling deforestation

Lessons from Brazil in tackling deforestation

Josef Leitmann, Jakarta

Brazil, like Indonesia, is confronted with serious
deforestation of its tropical forests. Through years of debate
and experimentation, the country has now developed several good
practices and an action plan for combating deforestation in the
Amazon that could benefit Indonesia in its journey towards
environmental sustainability.

The Amazon, spanning around 5.1 million kilometers with around
80 percent being actually forest, covers some 60 percent of the
Brazilian territory. Twelve percent of Brazil's 175 million
people lives there. It is the largest rain forest biome in the
world, with 50,000 known species of plants, 3,000 of fish, 2,000
of birds.

The Brazilian Amazon is challenged by a wide range of issues,
namely: The lack of consensus about the rules of the game for
development; the sheer physical size of the region makes it
difficult to provide social services (health and education),
infrastructure and transportation; unclear property rights and
ensuing land use conflicts; unmanaged expansion of cattle
ranching and agriculture.

The major cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is
the unmanaged expansion of cattle ranching and commercial
agriculture, which have rapidly expanded over the last 25 years.
Since 1970, over 90 percent of the additional deforested land has
been converted into pasture.

One long-term study indicates that, if present trends
continue, only 44 percent of the original forest cover will
remain at the beginning of the next century, with pasture and
abandoned pasture becoming the dominant land cover.

Despite the problems and dynamics of deforestation, Brazil has
undertaken several successful experiments to slow and even
reverse environmental degradation. Examples include:

* Giving private landowners responsibilities and incentives --
private landowners in the Amazon are legally required to keep 80
percent of their land as forest. In some states, they can trade
this requirement to allow more productive land to be developed.
Landowners can receive exemption from the rural property tax on
land that they establish as a privately protected area.

* Using high technology for monitoring and control -- the
federal government has invested over US$1 billion to create a
system of real-time satellite surveillance of the Amazon, partly
to monitor illegal logging and forest fires. At least one state
has combined this monitoring with an environmental licensing
system to enforce the legal reserve requirement and fight fires.

* Giving property rights to indigenous forest dwellers -- up
to a quarter of the entire Amazon forest in Brazil is being
demarcated as reserves for indigenous people, often by training
and equipping indigenous groups. They use a variety of
traditional and modern techniques to manage and protect forest
resources.

* Empowering local sustainable management -- forest
communities are empowered through the creation of extractive
reserves where they agree to use resources sustainably in
exchange for property rights and infrastructure, through
financing of demonstration projects that support sustainable
community enterprises, and through soft loans in exchange for
protection of environmental services.

* Building capacity -- environmental agencies in the nine
states that comprise the Amazon have been created and reinforced,
including a) negotiating ecological-economic zoning for critical
areas, and b) hiring and training more than 2,000 environmental
police who engage in education as well as enforcement. At the
same time, a network of 600 NGOs has been created to share
knowledge and lobby for change.

* Sustainable financing parks -- an endowment fund of over
$200 million is being initiated, with support from the Global
Environment Facility, to finance the creation and management of
national parks in the Amazon in perpetuity.

* Supporting well-managed forestry -- funds have been provided
to allow private companies to experiment with sustainable forest
management; a training program and center on sustainable forestry
have been created; and certification for both buyers and sellers
of tropical hardwoods has been initiated.

Many of these innovations were pioneered by the Rain Forest
Pilot Program, a $450 million partnership of the Brazilian
government, society, international donors, and The World Bank

Three recent developments are helping Brazil confront its
deforestation problem.

First, a deforestation action plan, developed by a task force
representing 11 federal ministries, proposes 149 integrated
actions in the areas of: Land use management and tenure;
environmental monitoring and control; support to sustainable
productive activities; and environmentally sustainable
infrastructure. This will involve partnerships between the three
levels of government, civil society and the private sector.

Expected results include: A reduction in the rates of
deforestation and illegal burning; a reduction in land
speculation in sensitive areas; a reduction in illegal logging;
an increase in the prevention and control of fire, pasture
management and sustainable agricultural practices; an increase in
rural properties that respect the legal reserve requirements;
progress towards a more environmentally-sound model of agrarian
reform; creation of additional conservation and indigenous areas
in critical regions; and an increase institutional capacity to
control deforestation and support sustainable production.

Second, the Sustainable Amazon Plan, developed by the
Ministries of Environment and National Integration, proposes
specific strategies for three macro-regions in the Amazon: i) The
densely populated zone --the most deforested areas of the Amazon;
ii) Central Amazon --the area currently under threat from
excessive development; and iii) Western Amazon --virgin areas
that are distant from roads.

Third, an offspring of both the interministerial work group on
deforestation and the Sustainable Amazon process has been the
creation of a group to prepare a land management and sustainable
development plan for the region that will be impacted by the
final paving of the Cuiaba-Santarim highway. The process will
serve as a model for reducing environmental impacts and
increasing the sustainability of other major federal investments
that are anticipated for the Amazon region.

What can Indonesia learn from this story? Obviously, many of
the Brazilian experiences are specific to that country's history,
environmental conditions, culture, and political arrangements.
However, there are some generic lessons: Transferring resources,
rights and responsibilities to local communities has been a key
to success; one size doesn't fit all -- approaches must be
tailored to the degree of political will and technical capability
available; innovative pilots for managing tropical forests can
succeed and be scaled up; and this process can be financed at low
or no-cost with the involvement of international partners. Now,
it will be interesting to see what can be applied here... and
what Indonesia has to teach Brazil!

The writer was the World Bank's sector leader for
environmentally sustainable development in Brazil until July
2004. He is currently the Lead Environmental Specialist at the
World Bank Office in Jakarta.