judge adalberto carim antonio, environmental and agrarian issues court state of amazonas, brazil 1
TRANSCRIPT
Judge Adalberto Carim Antonio, Environmental and Agrarian Issues Court State of Amazonas, Brazil
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X - Ray of the Brazilian Environmental x Farming Situation
The Amazon rainforest is one of the most biodiverse regions on the surface of the earth. It is home to practically 10% of the world’s mammals and an amazing15% of the world’s known land-based plant species, with as many as 300 species of tree in a 10.000 m2 area.The region is also home to about 220,000 people from 180 different indigenous nations who live deep in the rainforest, along with many more traditional forest dependent communities. The rainforest provides these people with everything from food and shelter to tools and medicines, and plays a crucial role in the spiritual life of indigenous peoples.
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What’s the Amazon jungle worth?
The contemporary state of knowledge regarding the value of the Amazon rainforest is very controversial. Many researchers have tried to estimate the correct numbers, but it is just a scientific conjecture. The forest still hides many secrets from the cure of many diseases yet to be found in the incredible variety of plants to the possibilities of eco-tourism; biological resources including bio-prospecting; hydropower production, and changes in rainfall patterns.
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Deforestation of the Amazon leads to effects that can scarcely be expressed in monetary terms.
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Timber Conventionally most of people and that includes the governors, authorities, see the jungle as an important provisioning service for the production of timber. Based on a survey of sawmills, in 2004 the Brazilian timber sector harvested 24.5 million m3 of round wood, the equivalent of about 6.2 million trees, Compared to 28.3 million m3 in 1998. This reduction is ascribed to increased controls on illegal logging, the cancellation of hundreds of forest management permits due to a worsening of the land tenure crisis, and improved efficiency in wood processing (Lentini et al., 2005).
TRADITIONAL PERSPECTIVE
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Ecosystem services provided by Amazon forests ( well known until the present moment)
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Water cyclingWater is one of the main features of the Amazonian landscape. The Amazon and its affluents form the largest river system of the world, with catchment areas covering more than six million square kilometres (Junk & Furch, 1985; Neill et al., 2006). The total river system, located in seven countries, is 3300 km long. About 15% of all fresh water on earth transported by rivers to the oceans passes through the Amazon river (Salati & Vose, 1984, Neill et al., 2006, D’Almeida et al., 2007). This volume of water equals that of the earth’s next six largest rivers together (Pekárova et al., 2003; Neill et al., 2006).
Soil formation
More than 75% of the Amazonian forest is underlain by oxisols, ultisols and alfisoils, old infertile loamy and clayey soils. The soils on floodplains are considerably richer in nutrients as they are fed by river sediments.
Climate regulation
The sheer size of the system means that the energy and moisture cycles in the Amazon region play an important role in the regulation of climate at different scales. About 1350 to 1570 mm of rainfall per year, corresponding to 63–73% of the annual rainfall, evaporates or transpires in the Amazon (Costa & Foley, 1999; Marengo & Nobre, 2001; Malhi et al., 2008).
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Biodiversity conservation
Biodiversity conservation is an important ecosystem service that supports many of the functions of tropical rainforests (e.g. Costanza et al., 1997; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). Tropical rainforests form a major source of biological diversity (Figure 2). More than half of the world’s species occur in tropical rain forests, even though rain forests occupy only 7% of the total land area worldwide (Whitmore, 1998).
Nutrient retention
The relatively poor soil of the Amazon has a closed nutrient cycle. Nutrients added to the soil by litter decomposition and rainfall are directly taken up gain by shallow rooted tree species. Disturbance of the natural vegetation can imply a significant loss of nutrients from the system, as a result of soil erosion, for example. The replacement method can be used to assess the value of e.g. nutrient losses resulting from soil erosion. Uhl et al. (1993) estimated the value of nutrients removed by forest clearance at US$ 3480 per ha according to the market prices of NPK fertilizers.
Hydrological services
Globally, about 16 million has of arable land are lost as a result of soil degradation and erosion each year. Soil erosion is one of the most serious threats to the sustainability of agriculture, silviculture and forestry in the Amazon (Smith et al., 1991). Various studies have shown that natural ecosystems are more efficient in controlling erosion than systems that remove the understorey or litter layer, as in forest plantations or overgrazed pastures (e.g. Wiersum, 1984; Bruijnzeel, 2004).
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PollinationPollination is a basic ecosystem service with an estimated global economic value between € 90 billion (Constanza et al., 1997) and € 160 billion (Kearns et al., 1998). Recently Gallai et al. (2008) calculated that the global economic value of pollination services provided by insects (mainly bees) in 2005 for the main crops (fruits, vegetables, and stimulants) was € 153 billion (~US$ 200 billion).
Carbon sequestration
Tropical forests play an important role in the world’s carbon balance. The Amazon basin plays an important role in the global carbon exchange because it stores large amounts of carbon in biomass, both above ground and in the soil . The Amazon forest vegetation in Brazil alone contains 70 Pg of carbon (C), which is between 10% and 15% of all terrestrial carbon (Keller et al,1997; Houghton et al. 2001).
Disease regulationRainforests moderate the risk of infectious diseases by regulating the populations of disease organisms (viruses, bacteria and parasites), their hosts, or the intermediate disease vectors (e.g. rodents and insects). Changes in the environment (natural or human-induced) also affect the ecological balance and context in which disease hosts or vectors and parasites breed, develop, and transmit diseases (Patz et al., 2000). There is growing evidence that deforestation (or more general environmental changes and ecological disturbances) results in an increased spread and/or incidence of human infectious diseases (e.g. Vittor et al., 2006).
Non-timber forest products Another important service provided by the Amazon is the supply of non-timber forest products (NTFP).These products provide the people inhabiting the forest with both a means for living as well as a cash income. Moreover, some of these products, such as palm heart and natural rubber, have been marketed uccessfully.Because of their commercial and private use, the value of this service cannot easily be calculated. The data collected on NTFPs by the Brazilian Institute for Statistics and Geography (IBGE) are considered sound (FAO, 1999; Viana et al., 2002), but at the least they ignore the subsistence use of the products.The most important forest products commercially traded in Brazil are food, oil products, fibres, rubber, aromatics and medicines, gums, and tannins. In 2005 the commercial value of NTFP products from the Brazilian Amazon was almost US$ 100 million.
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Cultural services
Cultural services are the non-material benefits people obtain from ecosystems through spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, reflection, recreation and aesthetic experiences (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). These include non-use values, such as the awareness of the value of ecosystems for future generations and the ecosystems’ intrinsic value. As many different indigenous societies and communities live in the Amazon region, many different types of values are attached to the forest and its components.
Recreation and ecotourism
Tourism is one of the largest industries and employers in the world. It currently accounts for 10.7% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and employs 260 million people. In some places, rainforest visits have become a major tourist attraction. Based on the principle that biodiversity must pay for itself by generating economic benefits, community-based ecotourism has become a popular tool for biodiversity conservation (Kiss, 2004
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We all amazonian ( Amazonenses) know, it does not matter if we are judges or not the importance of the forest in foot as relevant economical assets for the growth of the industrial production of the state amid the world turbulence. While almost all of the states of the brasilian federation exhibit fall in their industrial production, consequence of the international financial crisis that eventually arrived to Brazil, Amazonas sustains the national leadership, with an expansion of more than 16% of it’s industry in the third quarter of this year, in relation to the previous quarter“.The good acting of the amazonense economy is directly linked to the absence of pressure on the largest tropical forest of the world, thanks to the industrial activity of ZFM( Free Zone and Industrial Pole of Manaus).
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The intrinsic values to the forest, are clearly demonstrated on the mineral wealth of the area,.The existent biodiversity in the forest has an incalculable economical value. If it was possible to give its exact extension we would have the value of many pre-salt", wich is the largest Brazilian reservation of petroleum, discovery under the layer of salt in the ocean.The occurrence of minerals of great economical and technological relevance to the international market, as cassiterita, bauxite, uranium, caolin, gold, iron and niobium. This last one, a noble ore used in the preparation of leagues with the iron for the construction of bridges ,locomotives and spaceships. Only the nióbio reservations, of 82 million tons, located in the Hill of Six Ponds and in São Gabriel of the Waterfalls, would be enough to assist the world demand in the next 400 years and they would be worth about of U $ 1, trillion"..
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The Brazilian Paradox
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The timber sector in the Amazon is paradoxical.On the one hand, it is economically competitive and an important generator of jobs and income opportunities to a significant portion of the Amazon population. On the other hand, the migratory nature of the timber industry and the low adoption of Forest management reveal some of the crucial problems plaguing this sector.
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Brazil is considered to be a global commodity powerhouse and a major producer of soy, corn, sugar, coffee, oranges, cotton and beef. The rate of deforestation has slowed in recent years because of tougher law enforcement and the use of satellite imagery to track areas with the most troubling rates of clearcutting.
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Growth , Grow and Grow
The global economic downturn of 2008, the increase in the value of the Brazilian real (the local currency) against the dollar, as well as competition from China all meant that manufactured goods with a large or even moderate technological content became less competitive in world markets. On the other hand, strong demand for foodstuffs and Brazil's natural advantage in the sector served to increase the country's export of agricultural produce. Brazil remains an highly industrialized country, but has in the short space of five years, gone back to being principally a producer and exporter of agricultural products.
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Brazil is exporting more and more agricultural products: soya beans and beef in particular, but also corn, rice and sugar. Taken together, these exports represent half of Brazil's total today. The increase in the export of commodities brings both a higher degree of economic dependency and a threat to the Amazon rainforest.
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It is possible to affirm that the rise in 'primary' exports has an extremely negative effect from an environmental point of view. From about three million km² of forest in Brazil, already 750,000 km², have been lost to agriculture.
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Three quarters of this agricultural land consists of fazendas ( farms), which are huge ranches that belong to individual landowners. These powerful businesspeople place enormous pressure on government officials to secure more and more grazing land. In so doing, they appropriate to themselves vast tracts of public land and sometimes resort to illegal methods. The remainder of the deforestation comes from family farming, which is still growing as rural populations continue to increase. Hundreds of thousands of families, sometimes with government support, have already received parcels of forest to turn into farmland. The vast majority of these family farmers have also moved into raising cattle on a large scale.
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Agribusiness is going to Devour the Amazon?
Brazil has become the world's second-largest exporter of soya beans, which, like corn, is mainly intended as animal feed in Europe and China. It's cheaper to expand agricultural production of these types of crops through deforestation than through intensive farming. And the farmers can also sell the wood from the trees they cut in the forest, which is a very valuable commodity. The government increased controls from the year 2000 onwards to scale down deforestation from around 20,000 to just 6,000 km² per year, but the threat of an increase in world demand is always just over the horizon.
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In the north region of Brazil (where is the largest portion of the amazon forest) Cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. This has been the case since at least the 1970s: government figures attributed 38 percent of deforestation from 1966-1975 to large-scale cattle ranching. However, today the situation may be even worse. According to the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), "between 1990 and 2001 the percentage of Europe's processed meat imports that came from Brazil rose from 40 to 74 percent" and by 2005 "for the first time ever, the growth in Brazilian cattle production—80 percent of which was in the Amazon—was largely export driven."
Clearing for Cattle Pasture
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Beef continues to be the largest driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The research shows that more than 38,600 square miles has been cleared for pasture since 1996, bringing the total area occupied by cattle ranches in the Brazilian Amazon to 214,000 square miles, an area larger than France. Between 1990 and 2003 the bovine herd more than doubled, from 26.6 million to 64 million head of cattle in the Brazilian Amazon.
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2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions or 30 percent of the carbon associated with deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon between 2000 and 2010 was effectively exported in the form of beef products and soy, finds a new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The research underscores the rising role that global trade plays in driving tropical deforestation.
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29 percent of emissions from deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon were due to soybean production and 71 percent were due to cattle ranching over the past decade.
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The Impacts of deforestation in the Amazon
It is impossible to draw a comprehensive list of everything we stand to lose from deforestation. But here are some of the main aspects:
Loss of biodiversity: Species lose their habitat, or can no longer subsist in the small fragments of forests that are left. Populations dwindle, and eventually some can become extinct. Because of the high degree of endemism, or presence of species that are only found within a specific geographical range, even localized deforestation can result in loss of species.
Habitat degradation: New highways that provide access to settlers and loggers into the heart of the Amazon Basin are causing widespread fragmentation of rainforests. These fragmented landscapes are affected in species structure, composition and microclimate, and are more vulnerable to droughts and fires - alterations that negatively affect a wide variety of animal species.
Modified global climate: The forests’ ability to absorb the pollutant carbon dioxide (CO2) is reduced. At the same time, there is an increased presence of CO2 released from the burning trees.
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Loss of water cycling: Deforestation reduces the critical water cycling services provided by trees. In Brazil, some of the water vapour that emanates from forests will be transported by wind to its Central-South region, where most of the country's agriculture is located. Brazil's annual harvest has a gross value of about US$65 billion, and the dependence of even a small fraction of this on rainfall from Amazonian water vapour corresponds to a substantial value for the country. When rainfall reduction is added to the natural variability that characterizes rainfall in the region, the resulting droughts may lead to major environmental impacts. Fires already occur in areas disturbed by logging.Social impacts: With reduced forests, people are less able to benefit from the natural resources these ecosystems provide. This can lead to increased poverty and in cases, people may need to move in order to find forests which can sustain them.
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Brief Aspects of the New Forestal Code
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NEW PROVISIONSThe new law ( Código Florestal Brasileiro) carries over from previous legislation a requirement to maintain forest cover on 80 percent of rural properties in the Amazon, 35 percent in the central savanna region and 20 percent in other areas of the country.
The key change is that farmers can now include river margins and steep hillsides when accounting for the total area of woodlands they are preserving.
But such land, crucial to preserve watersheds and prevent erosion of woodland, was already mandatory, so the new law effectively reduces the total amount of land growers have to preserve compared with the old statute.
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Farmers who have cleared land in excess of the new limits will have to replant them. Brazil's environment ministry said that could result in the reforestation of a total land area of about 30 million hectares (74 million acres), about the size of Italy.It remains unclear, however, whether the government will be able to successfully enforce the reforestation requirement or any of the other new provisions.
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The Role of the judiciary in The Forest Farming Destruction
Business
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(1) Judicial Functions:
Firstly, when a dispute is brought before a court, it is the responsibility of the court to 'determine the facts' involved. The usual manner in which the courts determine the facts is through evidence given by the contestants. Once the facts have been established, the court proceeds to decide what law is applicable to a particular controversy or circumstance. Herein the judiciary becomes the interpreter of laws, which is the prime function of the judiciary. So the major task of the judiciary is to 'determine' the facts of laws and to apply them to particular circumstance.
(2) Law-making Functions:
Secondly, the judiciary while interpreting the existing laws also performs the role of lawmaker. It may sound surprising, but 'judge-made' laws are common to all systems of jurisprudence. Such occasions arise when the provisions of the existing laws may be ambiguous, or sometimes two or more laws of a particular government appear to be in conflict under a given circumstance.
(3) Guardianship of the Constitution:
Thirdly, in federal States like Brazik, the U.S.A. and India, the judiciary is the guardian of the Constitution. In federal States conflict in jurisdiction and authority frequently occurs, as there are several law making and executive authorities, each showing its power to the Constitution. In the circumstances, the judiciary becomes the umpire and regulates the legal actions of the States and Central governments.
Protector of the Fundamental Rights:
Fifthly, the judiciaries also act as the defenders of the individual's right. Such role of the judiciary is important as it prevents the individual's rights from being violated. An individual need not wait until harm is done to him. If he had, sufficient reasons to believe that attempts would be made to violate his 'rights' he could approach the courts for protection.
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The role of the judiciary in modern society is theoretically no different than ever - to assist in delivering justice. The day-to-day role of the judiciary is to apply the law to factual situations and provide a just resolution for the parties as well as for society. To that truth has been added the massification of the conflicts involving environmental problems, consumer matters, that demands from the judges a new perspective. Such cases that go beyond trivial day-to-day determinations are mainly the ones that endanger and affect the humanity as one whole victim of ecological crimes .Perhaps is time to admit that Justice is actually different at least in some ways in this “modern society” versus nature and quality of life.
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The application of the Environmental Crimes Law( Law 9.605/98) has not been effective for the protection of most of the Amazonian forests. The reasons include the lack of integration between the institutions responsible for punishments.
In the Brazilian Reality
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The application of penalties unrelated to environmental damage, weakening the fight against the illegal logging of forests and disfavoring the repair of environmental damage.
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To reverse this situation there is one clear way :
1. integrate the actions of the authorities involved in applying the law and invest part of the fines in environmental funds for the repair of damages and in inspection and control.
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2- Install Especialized Environmental Courts in the most environmental vulnerable areas.The Judge must be prepared to face complex environmental matters. Such situation requires that magistrates take courses on Environmental Law or related to the multidisciplinary aspects of environmental impact.
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Socialize the problem with the population.In Brazil the Constitution devotes one full chapter to the environmental protection.In the Article 225 that is an Inquestionable mention of the duty of the Public Power and the civil society to protect the Environment for the present and future generations.
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CHAPTER VIEnvironment
Article 225 -All have the right to an ecologically balanced environment, which is an asset of common use and essential to a healthy quality of life, and both the Government and the community shall have the duty to defend and preserve it for present and future generations.Paragraph 1.in order to ensure the effectiveness of this right, it is incumbent upon the Government to:I– preserve and restore the essential ecological processes and provide for the ecological treatment of species and ecosystems;II -– preserve the diversity and integrity of the genetic patrimony of the country and to control entities engaged in research and manipulation of genetic material;III – define, in all units of the Federation, territorial spaces and their components which are to receive special protection, any alterations and suppressions being allowed only by means of law, and any use which may harm the integrity of the attributes which justify their protection being forbidden;IV – demand, in the manner prescribed by law, for the installation of works and activities which may potentially cause significant degradation of the environment, a prior environmental impact study, which shall be made public;V-– control the production, sale and use of techniques, method ontrol the production, sale and use of techniques, methods or substances which represent a risk to life, the quality of life and the environment;VI- – promote environment education in all school levels and public awareness of the need to preserve the environment;
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Much environmental information is diffused to the public. Thousands of environmental comic books, socializing the law, democratizing the meaning of every environmental legal texts in Brazil have been freely distributed to the population of Amazonas and to rest of the country. That is an easy way of transmitting to civil society important informations about the environmental law in Brasil and also how to develop ecocitizenship. The very value of the Amazon forest, I’t’s services are popularized in this recently printed work .
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Right now, many people in rainforest nations face a terrible choice. In the absence of incentives for their protection, forests are worth more dead than alive. Now Judiciary plays the vital role in the protection of environment. I believe that one of the main goals of the Amazonian environmental court is to foster an ethic of “green justice” in the people of the state of Amazonas. Additionally, the court represents a commitment by the judiciary to publicly assume the responsibility for environmental protection provided for in the constitution. I hope that by setting this example, the other states of Brazil will begin to address environmental issues in their respective jurisdictions. Already, several Brazilian cities and states have started adopting a similar notion of “green justice.”
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