Posted this a few days back, but not much response. No surprise there.
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No matter that the Brazilian government last year suspended the permits required to chop down trees in this part of the jungle, making timber harvesting illegal for all but a handful of the loggers. No matter either that most of the valuable tropical hardwoods being felled with chainsaws and tractors stand on public lands that, at least in theory, are off limits even to the few timber merchants who still have licenses. "It goes on all night long, with the traffic so intense some nights, 30 or 40 trucks thundering through, that people can't even sleep," said Milton Fernandes Coutinho, president of the local farmworkers' association, which represents peasant settlers living along the roads used by the loggers. "We've complained over and over again to the government, but nobody does anything to stop them."
Brazilian government statistics suggest that widespread flouting of the law is also occurring elsewhere in the Amazon. Despite regulations that are more rigorous, at least on paper, and repeated pledges by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to crack down on those pillaging the world's largest tropical rain forest, shipments of wood from the region are booming as never before. According to government figures, Brazilian timber exports from the Amazon increased in value nearly 50 percent in 2004 over the previous year, to just under $1 billion. In the first half of this year, when the rainy season traditionally slows down activities, exports rose an additional 20 percent in value. Over all, nearly 40 percent of the wood cut in the Amazon is now being shipped overseas, compared with only 14 percent in 1999. Brazil's main markets are the United States, which accounts for one-third of all timber shipments abroad, followed by China, at 14 percent and growing rapidly, and European countries, which collectively account for 40 percent.
"The problem, though, is that the government's own figures indicate that about 60 percent of those exports are illegal," said Paulo Adario, who directs the Amazon campaign of the environmental group Greenpeace. "So you have to ask yourself: how is it possible that even with logging permits suspended since July 2004, wood exports are continuing to rise so frighteningly?" Advocates for peasant settlers, including labor unions and Roman Catholic Church officials, answer by pointing to the traditional reluctance of the federal government's environmental and forestry agency, known as Ibama, to act against loggers and sawmill owners. The agency is chronically short of staff and money, its employees are often threatened, and neither the army nor the police are willing to provide protection to inspectors on official missions.
"You can have a thousand laws on paper, but they don't mean anything unless the authorities enforce them," said Erwin Krautler, the Roman Catholic bishop of the Xingu region. Ibama officials, however, argue that they are enforcing the law more aggressively now and have begun making progress. They note that seizures of illegally cut wood are up, that the volume of timber harvested has begun to drop sharply, and that for the first time ever, a timber merchant was recently jailed for logging on public land. "As regards issues of monitoring and enforcement, you have to look at the Amazon in a broad context," João Paulo Capobianco, the agency's director of forests, said in a telephone interview from Brasília. "Even if we were to shut off all of the exits, there would still be some places where timber would still leave illegally. But there is no doubt that our performance this year has infinitely improved compared to previous years." In this jungle region, however, timber trucks still roam freely and unchecked on the rutted dirt roads, with no sign of inspectors. One afternoon in September, for example, a truck loaded down with logs and workers roared into town to drop off the laborers at their homes.
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x33176
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