Brazil’s Minister of Environment, Marina Silva, says that the drop of 30% in Amazon region deforestation reported by the Inpe for the period August 2004 to July 2005 was the result of the government’s action.
The Lula administration launched its Amazon Deforestation Prevention and Combat Action Plan in July 2003. The program is run jointly by 13 ministries under the supervision of the office of the presidential Chief of Staff.
"The reduction was the result of, in the first place, persistence. Persistence in planning, persistence in strategy, persistence in budgetary terms and persistence on the ground where our people did hard work," said the Minister.
The reduction in deforestation reported by the Inpe is the first in nine years. Minister Marina Silva, declared that her goal is to halt the "snowball effect" where forest devastation just keeps growing and make progress toward a balanced environment where people can live and work without wiping out natural resources.
"Our challenge is to coordinate action by the Environmental Protection Institute (Ibama), the Federal Police, the Army and the Land Reform Institute (Incra) toward achieving sustainable development," said the Minister.
Silva went on to say that she considers it essential to approve legislation dealing with the issue, for example, the bill for Public Forest Management, which was passed in the Chamber of Deputies but has been bogged down in the Senate for nine months.
Another law would install Sustainable Forest Districts projects that would create jobs, income and sustainable development of forest resources.
Silva points out that a serious problem is predatory and destructive illegal logging activities which the project would make not only legal but sustainable, for example, in the region of the BR-163, a highway that links Cuiabá in the state of Mato Grosso and Santarém, in Pará state.
ABr