The report 'State of Conflict' focuses on the Brazilian Amazon
state of Pará, where industrial activities are surging ahead
leaving the law behind. It concentrates on the two most aggressive
industrial frontiers in Pará State: the regions of Porto de Moz and
Prainha, and the Middle Land. Logging and cattle ranching are now
the main driving forces behind the illegal assault on land in these
regions.
As with many other areas of the Amazon, environmental problems
in Pará are often associated with social injustice and lack of law
enforcement. Pará has Brazil's highest rate of assassinations
linked to land conflicts, which are hardly ever investigated. As
local communities, who depend on the forest for hunting, fishing
and small-scale farming, are forced off their land, often under the
threat of violence; the gulf between rich and poor in Pará is
widened.
In remote, hard-to-police areas of Pará, deforestation is
frequently driven by the use of slave labour. Workers are lured
into forest areas with false promises of well-paid work, and become
trapped in debt bondage, working under dangerous and inhumane
conditions for little or no pay. Those who try to escape are often
killed.
"To refer to Pará in terms of warfare is no exaggeration: as the
report shows there is a war going on in the forest - a war over
land, over forest resources and over profit at any price," said
Phil Aikman, Greenpeace International Forest Campaigner. "If this
conflict is not stopped, Brazil stands to lose hundreds of
thousands of square kilometres of the Amazon, the lives of many of
its citizens, and any remaining chance for a sustainable
future."
Pará is the largest producer and exporter of wood products in
the Brazilian Amazon and also the site of one-third of the region's
total deforestation. Last year in the Amazon an area the size of
Belgium was deforested. Nearly all timber is illegal. An initial
analysis of the government's own data for 2001 shows 66% of all
timber produced in Pará was illegal, either coming from illegal
deforestation (1) or areas that are protected. According to an
initial assessment carried out by the government's environmental
authorities in Pará, some 88 percent of all Forest Management Plans
have been inappropriately granted on public land in Pará where
logging is not allowed.
Greenpeace believes that the real long-term future of Pará lies
in a new social and economic model of sustainable use of the
forests combined with areas of protection. Logging companies
committed to truly legal, sustainable and certified operations have
a place in this future, but the main effort must be concentrated on
bringing governance and environmental and social justice to the
Amazon. The only way to achieve this is through the strong
commitment of the Brazilian Federal and State governments, backed
by international cooperation, working with local communities.
Next week in Montreal, Canada, governments meet to draft a
programme of work to protect life on earth. Greenpeace urges
governments to put an end to the dramatic loss of plants, animals
and their habitats and stop the uncontrolled industrial destruction
of the world's ancient forests, in Para and elsewhere in the
world.
VVPR info: 'State of Conflict' is available from this websiteLow resolution version (1MB)http://archive.greenpeace.org/docs/stateofconflict_low.pdfHigh resolution version (8MB) - This version can take up to 5 minutes to download.http://archive.greenpeace.org/docs/stateofconflict.pdfKeep up to date with Greenpeace in the Amazon on the newly launched website http://activism.greenpeace.org/amazon/
Notes: 1. In 2001, for example, IBAMA (the Brazilian Environmental Agency) issued authorisation documents for deforestation of 5,342 hectares, but the total deforestation showed by satellite images from INPE (the Brazilian Institute of Space Research) reveals that 523,700 hectares were deforested. In other words, in 2001 just 1% of the total deforestation area was authorized. Previous years' data is similar.