Environmental Law: changes will be for worse

Brazil’s current Forest Code came into effect on September 15 1965 through Law 4.777 with a goal to be a legal instrument to avoid the loss of biodiversity, erosion and soil impoverishment, as well as the buildup of sediment on river beds and other bodies of water. A small group of people, although powerful in economic terms, claims that the Forest Code is outdated, and that it is stalling the country’s growth, aside from compromising food production as it reduces areas destined to farming and livestock breeding. However, the abovementioned reasons have no scientific foundation.

The first claim that says the code is outdated is incorrect, for although it was created in 1965, the Forest Code underwent several revisions and provisional measures that gradually adapted its original model to current conditions. The second statement is also untrue, because the groups that are discontent with the current Forest Code are, in their majority, major land owners, farming and livestock breeding business tycoons, producers of commodities mainly intended for export. The greater part of the production derived from agribusiness, which holds 75% of the country’s lands, consists only of raw materials for export, while family farming, which accounts for the remaining 25% of the land area, produces around 77% of our food (MDA – Ministry for Agrarian Development).

The allegation that environmental legislation compromises the production of food due to the reduction of areas destined for farming and livestock breeding is easily demolished by data supplied by researcher Gerd Sparovek from the renowned Superior School of Agriculture of the University of São Paulo (ESALQ). In his work, Gerd shows that currently there are more than 100 million hectares of degraded pasture lands in the country that could be recovered and turned into productive areas. This is an immense amount of land when compared to the 67 million hectares taken up by agriculture. Aside from the current 211 million hectares used for livestock breeding in an extremely low model of productivity which produces only 1.1 animals per hectare.

Today, we have innumerable scientific works showing that productivity in the farming and livestock breeding sector can easily be doubled without felling a single tree, while respecting the current legislation of Brazil’s Forest Code. Bill 1.876/99 was devised to meet the interests of this aforementioned minority who own the largest fraction of lands in our country and also have the largest environmental passive. Never was our scientific community invited to take part in building a new proposal.

On the other hand, research has shown that our survival depends on a set of benefits derived from ecosystem-related services. These services are the benefits that people receive from ecosystems and forests are extremely important, since they supply us with several services such as rainfall, water purifying, preservation of hydric resources, as a source of nourishment, resins, pharmacologic products, the production of oxygen, the recycling of nutrients, among many others. These services are compromised when forest areas are replaced by other uses of the soil (Millennium, 2006).

Bill 1.876/99 removes the environmental function of preserving Permanent Protection Areas (APPs). As the name itself says, APP areas must be preserved and not merely conserved as these changes propose. The proposal also removes from the APP category hilltops, hills, mountains, mountain ranges and areas above 1,800 m. Every day we receive several news messages through our several means of communication, containing tragic reports on the loss of hundreds of lives due to the irregular occupation of hillside areas. Even laymen on this subject know of the importance of preserving these areas. We don’t need scientific data to understand the importance of preserving APPs, all one has to do is watch our country’s daily newscasts.

Another APP category which is being seriously threatened or, in other words, will practically cease to exist are riverine jungles, located on river banks. The current code in effect defines such areas as APPs, defining them as the river’s larger bed or, in other words, the river bed during the rainy seasons. Bill 1.876/99, on the contrary, proposes that riverbanks are those confined to the lesser bed.

Let us imagine as an example the Uatumã River, which Professor Fernando Jardim mentioned in a recent debate at the Rural Federal University of the Amazon (UFRA), which evidences during the dry season a width of 100 m, while during the flooded season it reaches out to 5,000 m. The approval of Bill 1.876/99 means that the new APP area calculated as from the river’s lesser bed (during the dry season) would be restricted to a mere 200 m. In this manner, the 500 meters of its riverbank strip which today is considered an APP could be completely deforested, and that 4,800 m, or 96% of the river’s channel, would be free for any kind of use. Aside from the disappearance of the APPs themselves, the riverbed can also be used.

If we accept the changes proposed, we may tomorrow be building our homes or even planting soy, sugarcane or tobacco, among many other plantations within riverbeds. And when it overflows, its waters will sweep our homes and plantations away, and who will be to blame? Was it just punishment from God above?

As several works have already demonstrated, riverine jungles are an ecosystem of major importance for the maintenance of the aquatic life of rivers. It works as a filter retaining sediments, pesticides and fertilizers that come from altered areas, whether from urban or rural occupation. As we eliminate such forests, we are also threatening fish species, a source of protein of extreme importance for traditional riparian communities, indigenous people and peasants, who, in many cases, are the communities with the greatest lack of food and that depend on rivers for their subsistence.

Another major threat is related to the Legal Reserve (RL), which the present Forest Code characterizes as necessary for the sustainable use of natural resources and for the conservation and rehabilitation of ecologic processes towards the conservation of biodiversity. The sustainable use in the referred code allows the use and handling of Legal Reserve areas. Through Bill 1.876/99, the Legal Reserve will be used specially for economic reasons, leaving conservation on the side as an auxiliary function. It will also allow that, in case of the absence of a Legal Reserve in a property, it can be conducted by means of an environmental compensation of the area under a regime of environmental servitude in another hydrographic basin or, in other words, we can deforest in Paragominas (PA) and compensate those damages in Xapuri (AC).

In speaking of a Legal Reserve, we must not forget that the forest is responsible for most of the rains, since through evapotranspiration it releases humidity into the atmosphere. According to Antônio Nobre, researcher of the National Institute for Research of the Amazon (INPA), “The Amazon Rainforest is an impressive hydrologic pump, which releases 20 billion tons of water into the atmosphere on a daily basis, ensuring that an area responsible for 70% of South-American GNP is properly irrigated.” In 1985, researcher Eneas Salati already pointed out that, in the Amazon, at least 50% of the rains come from humidity that the forest itself produces. Aside from climate temperature regulation, humidity and rainfall, forests are extremely important in maintaining the carbon stocks stored in the living biomass.

In the process of slashing and burning the vegetation, large amounts of carbon are released into the atmosphere. Currently, of the 7.6 billion tons of carbon released every year into the atmosphere, the burning of tropical forests is still behind 1.6 billion tons. In this scenario, Brazil is considered one of the countries which contribute the most towards this type of emission especially due to the deforesting of the Amazonian biome. According to estimates from the Weather Observatory, if these alterations to the Forest Code are approved, we will be legalizing emissions around 25 billion tons of CO2, in other words, an emission which is 13 times above those recorded in 2007. How can we fulfill the international agreements signed, in which Brazil committed itself to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, if we are approving a legislation that stimulates and legalizes the deforestation of millions of hectares of native vegetation?

The liberation of millions of hectares of native vegetation for deforestation will raise the concentrations of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere even further, and the effects on the climate can be even more severe. Speaking of climate changes, we should mention a study conducted by researches of the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) (Pellegrino, G. Q., Assad, E. D.; Marin, F. R.) published in the Multiciência Magazine of Campinas in 2007. According to this study, in a quite optimistic scenario foreseeing just a 3°C increase in temperature, areas used today for agriculture will not be suitable anymore for the same crops and we will face serious risks with regard to our country’s food safety in the following years. Data from this study indicate a reduction in the areas for cultivating beans (11%), rice (18%), coffee (58%), corn (7%) and soy (39%). The only crop which will benefit from this increase in temperature is sugarcane, which may double its production area, in other words, we are reducing the production of food and encouraging the production of ethanol.

Bill 1.876/99 also proposes the exemption and recovery of the legal reserve for properties up to four fiscal modules. A fiscal module is a classification created by the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) which varies within an area from 5 to 110 hectares, depending on the region. The project also foresees that in larger areas, this recovery must be conducted only in areas in excess of four fiscal modules, meaning that a property of 500 ha, where the fiscal module is of 100 ha, located in the Amazonian biome that foresees a legal reserve of 80%, there would be a need to recover only 80 hectares.

Anyone with a minimum of schooling can perform a quick bibliographic revision to verify that today, as we go ahead with deforestation, our productivity in the near future may be hindered due to the scarcity of water. According to José A. Marengo, researcher of CPTEC – INPE, the Amazon Rainforest is capable of generating on a daily basis levels of water vapor derived from the process of evapotranspiration in highly significant quantities, filling the atmosphere with humidity and forming “flying rivers”, which are moved around with the atmosphere’s overall circulation to the Midwest, southeast and southern regions of the country. The Amazon Rainforest is an impressive hydrologic pump that releases 20 billion tons of water into the atmosphere on a daily basis, ensuring that an area responsible for 70% of South-American GNP is properly irrigated, claims Antônio Nobre, researcher for INPA. In a moment in which a major suppression of vegetation in the Amazonian biome is underway, a major part of Brazil will not be benefitted by the humidity supplied by the Amazon.

If Bill 1.876/99 is approved, it will be a backwards step in terms of development, while the international community speaks of sustainability and the reduction of environmental impacts, we are approving a legislation that legalizes exactly the opposite. Aside from favoring a small minority, we will be stimulating emissions of greenhouse gases, climate changes with an increase in temperature, serious interference on the hydrologic cycle with increasingly extreme droughts and floods, elevating sea levels and river salinization, irreversible loss of biodiversity, food insecurity and threats to the poorer populations, since they already live in less favored areas, among several other consequences.

Today we have the technology to increase our productivity with direct planting techniques, farming and forest systems as well as silviculture and pasture systems that, aside from increasing productivity, minimize impacts on hydric resources. We also have efficient techniques to recover degraded areas, so that these can once again be productive. It is high time for society to ponder and discuss issues on how to reconcile economic goals with the environment, production and food sovereignty, agriculture and a democratic access to land and not become hostages of an excluding productivity model which is also predatory with regard to natural resources.

Learn more:

The Forest Code and Science – SBPC
Understand the “new” Forest Code
Article on soil modeling by Gerd Sparovek (Professor at USP, Esalq), Alberto Barretto (Doctorate student at USP, Esalq), Israel Klug (Consultant) and Göran Berndes (Professor at the University of Chalmers, Switzerland)
The View of Brazilian Population on Deforestation, the Forest Code and Vote Intention, a public opinion survey published in April 2009 by the Datafolha Research Institute, by request from the Friends of the Earth – Brazilian Amazon organization
Article about the scientific basis of the current Forest Code by researcher and professor at the University of São Paulo (USP), Jean Paul Meztger
Contributions from the Brazilian Academy of Science (ABC) and from the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (SBPC) towards the debate on the Forest Code
“The Forest Code: how to get out of the deadlock?”, an article published by the Man and Environment of the Amazon Institute (Imazon), written by Paula Ellinger and Paulo Barreto. The Article can also be checked out at Imazon’s recently launched website
The SOS Forests website makes available articles dealing with the Forest Code and the proposal for its alteration
A guidebook prepared by SOS Forests
Via campesina’s position with regard to the report by Aldo Rebelo
“Potential impacts of the proposed alterations for Brazil’s Forest Code on biodiversity and ecosystem-related services”, article written by researchers from several universities in the country
Articles already published by O Eco


Vania Neu is a biologist with a master’s and a doctor’s degree from the University of São Paulo. She is currently a teacher and a researcher of the Rural Federal University of the Amazon, in the department of biogeochemistry with an emphasis on the carbon cycle.