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.