In town to brief Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt on the crisis in the
Amazon, grassroots leaders from the Brazilian Amazon today called the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Brazil bailout package an environmental and
social time bomb. The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has arranged the meetings
with Secretary Babbitt and is working with the indigenous and forest people's
groups to create reserves that protect the rainforest.
"The impacts of the ill-advised IMF loan package in the Amazon will be
borne by the forest and the people of the Amazon," said Claudionor Barbosa
da Silva, President of the Amazon Working Group (GTA), a network of Amazon
grassroots groups with over 350 members. The groups meeting with Secretary
Babbitt fear that Brazil's recession and budget cuts for social and
environmental programs will further damage the country's environment, pushing
growing numbers of the urban poor into desperate forest clearing, illegal
logging and mining for survival.
"Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has committed to creating
new 'extractive reserves' for our people and to funding price support for Amazon
wild rubber," said José Juarez Leitão dos Santos, President of the National
Council of Rubber Tappers (CNS). "We are here to encourage the World Bank
and the Inter American Development Bank to help him fulfill these
commitments."
The CNS was founded by slain rubber tapper leader Chico Mendes to push for the
creation of 'extractive reserves,' forest reserves held in trust and managed by
forest people, such as the rubber collectors, who use the Amazon's resources
without destroying them. CNS, GTA, the Coordinating Body of Indigenous
Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), and EDF recently launched an
international campaign for the creation of new reserves in the Amazon, in
recognition of the tenth anniversary of Mendes' assassination.
The groups delivered a document to the World Bank Brazil country director
sharply criticizing the Bank's and the government's administration of the $250
million pilot program for Amazon conservation, funded by the G7 nations, which
the Bank coordinates. The groups also are discussing US support for reorganizing
the program with the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
"The ecological and social crisis of the Amazon has never been
worse," said EDF anthropologist Steve Schwartzman. "But because of the
leadership of Brazilian grassroots organizations, the political conditions for
saving the Amazon have never been better."
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The Environmental Defense Fund, a leading national, NY-based nonprofit
organization, represents 300,000 members. EDF links science, economics, and law
to create innovative, equitable, and economically viable solutions to today's
environmental problems.
The Chico Mendes
Sustainable Rainforest Campaign
