Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/060892/0608330.000

Text File | 1992-09-22 | 9KB | 176 lines

                                                                                ENVIRONMENT, Page 74

SUMMIT TO SAVE THE EARTH

Brazil's Two Faces


Defender of nature or ecological outlaw? The summit's host
country still struggles to chart its future.

By MICHAEL S. SERRILL -- Reported by Ian McCluskey/Rio de Janeiro


    Brazil is the perfect setting for the Earth Summit, which
will bring nearly 100 world leaders and 30,000 other
participants to Rio de Janeiro during the next two weeks. There
is no better showcase of the natural wonders that the summiteers
will pledge to preserve and protect: the country contains the
world's largest tropical rain forest, its biggest river system
and its richest array of plant and animal life. And there is
also no better showplace for the threats that face such natural
wonders: with the world's 10th largest economy, the country is
guilty of all the pollution, deforestation, encroachment on
native populations and grandiose development projects that
typify the global environmental crisis.

    For years Brazilian authorities viewed ecological concerns
with suspicion and scorn, as if they were part of an
international plot to thwart the country's development. All that
was supposed to change with the March 1990 inauguration of
Fernando Collor de Mello, Brazil's first President with a green
heart. Collor named Jose Lutzenberger, one of the world's
foremost champions of rain-forest preservation, head of a new
environment secretariat. The President also vowed to reverse
decades of untrammeled development that destroyed 415,000 sq km
(160,000 sq. mi.) -- an area the size of Iraq -- of the Amazon
rain forest. He blew up airstrips used by gold miners who had
invaded Yanomami Indian lands in the country's far north and
made recognition of native territorial claims a top priority.
The most visible symbol of environmental progress could be seen
by satellite: the rate of destruction of the rain forest dropped
27% from 1989 to 1990, and 20% in 1991.

    Collor proclaimed a "change of mentality" in Brazil, and
his early measures earned international applause. But now he is
under the same fire from environmental critics as his
predecessors. "There has been no forward movement," says Fabio
Feldmann, the leading environmentalist in Brazil's Congress. "On
the contrary, what we have seen is total paralysis."

    Collor's government stands accused of failing to fulfill
some of its most important promises. Many conservation areas
and national parks exist only on paper. Cattle ranchers,
farmers and miners continue to burn, bulldoze and poison the
forests. Brazilian environmental agencies still lack the staff
and equipment they need to protect endangered flora and fauna.
Foreign funds dedicated to Brazilian conservation efforts
languish unused because the Collor government, plagued by
corruption and staff turnover, has failed to develop projects
that would make use of the money.

    Even the slowdown in Amazon destruction, critics say, owes
less to Collor's policies than to a sagging economy. Says
Willem Groenefeld, who runs an environmental institute in the
Amazonian state of Rondonia: "Nobody has any money to cut the
forest down."


    Activists put much of the blame for Brazil's lack of
progress on Lutzenberger, the brilliant but eccentric and
irascible Environment Secretary. Branded a disaster for his lack
of administrative and political skills, he was abruptly fired
by Collor in March. The dismissal came a week after Lutzenberger
urged World Bank officials in New York City not to lend Brazil
money to clean up its environment because the main government
agency that would handle the funds was a "nest of corruption."
Collor sacked the head of that agency at the same time he fired
Lutzenberger.

    The gist of Collor's disagreement with his former
Environment Secretary goes right to the core of the Rio summit
agenda. Lutzenberger refused to endorse Collor's version of
"sustainable development" -- the notion that preservation of
Brazil's rain forests and other natural resources is compatible
with economic growth. The interim Secretary, a nuclear physicist
named Jose Goldemberg, is a strong advocate of this vision of
controlled development.

    Collor argues that "we cannot discuss the environment
issue without taking into account the situation of poverty and
misery in which three-quarters of humanity lives" -- including
the 70% of Brazil's 146 million people who barely earn enough
to feed themselves. Even fervent environmentalists concede the
point. "Brazil is very important to the international community
because of its biological diversity," says Feldmann, "but
within the country, other issues are much more important. It's
hard to relate to sustainable development when you also have
problems of equity and social justice."

    In official meetings leading up to the Earth Summit,
Brazil's representatives argued that the developing world cannot
let environmental concerns get in the way of the need to find
homes and jobs for its citizens. In February, 800
representatives of Brazilian environmental groups, universities
and government agencies signed the Vitoria Declaration, which,
among other things, states that the developed world is
responsible for global warming and that "Third World countries
have the right to increase their consumption of energy to attend
to their development needs."

    Brazil has so far declined to sign any separate U.N.
agreement on protecting forests. The government is also
reluctant to join what it describes as "schemes to transform
forests in developing countries into preserved areas in return
for compensation from the industrialized world." This is an
apparent reference to suggestions that Brazil should receive
relief from its huge foreign debt in return for protecting the
Amazon Basin. While Collor in principle has endorsed
debt-for-nature swaps for small projects, only one deal has been
negotiated.

    Collor's opponents charge that Big Business is the real
force behind the government's policy. "The antiecology lobby is
better organized than we are," says Alfredo Sirkis, head of
Brazil's Green Party. "What does sustainable development mean
in the Amazon? The big polluters are hiding behind these two
words." In fact, a wood-pulp producer in the Amazonian state of
Para has described as "sustainable development" a plan to
clear-cut 5,000 hectares (12,000 acres) of virgin tropical
forest and replant the area with eucalyptus trees.

    Collor's most ambitious achievement has been to reserve
tracts of valuable land for Brazil's 240,000 native people,
whose numbers have dwindled under the assault of economic
progress. In November 1991 the President bucked opposition from
rural politicians and the military to map out a region the size
of Hungary as a homeland for the Yanomami, an ancient tribe now
reduced to fewer than 10,000 people within Brazil. Their lands
along the border with Venezuela were invaded by gold miners,
bringing disease and environmental devastation. Collor argues
that there was a "solid consensus" for the move to protect the
Indians, but opponents are still grumbling. "It shocks and
stupefies me that an area so vast and rich in tin and gold is
handed over to the Yanomami," says Aureo Mello, a senator from
the state of Amazonas.

    Critics on the left charge that Collor has been less
assertive in setting aside lands for other, equally threatened
Indian tribes, such as the Guarani in the south and Sarare in
Mato Grosso. And only now is he honoring a pledge to create
additional extractive reserves: areas where indigenous peoples
and settlers can support themselves through rubber tapping, the
harvesting of fruit and nuts, and other forms of livelihood that
do not harm the environment. Four such reserves were created
before Collor took office; five new ones were set aside by the
President just in time for the Earth Summit.

    The uneven nature of Collor's record reflects the tricky
balancing act between environmental and economic concerns that
is affecting most developing nations. But in Brazil, at least,
there has been a change in tone -- as well as a few experiments
at mixing development with preservation -- that marks a
considerable advance from the past. As the host of the Earth
Summit, Collor proclaims that the gathering will be "the turning
point in mankind's behavior toward the environment." The best
place to look for signs of whether he is right will be in the
land that he leads.