Satellite-verified incentives to help save the rainforests
Foster Brown and Tom Stone have shown (in 'Cultural Survival' magazine, 13/1/89, p. 35) that one way to keep abreast with the fine details of tropical rainforest clearance is through satellite photographs, which are relatively inexpensive (from $3 to $50 plus per photo) and which often offer the only up-to-date visual evidence of the dramatic changes in land use in Amazonia. They have distributed satellite images widely in Rondonia, providing them to rural extension agents, state environmental officials and local community organisers. But the Institute for Social Inventions is exploring whether such photos could have preventative and verification roles in stopping the annual burning (which now threatens the rainforests' role as the planet's air conditioner). For instance:
'Corruption would be largely avoided if annual satellite photos were used to decide the payments. Both the government and the governors would then have an incentive to police their areas, and to invest in firefighting and other measures'
(1) Could both the central Brazilian government and the governors of the relevant provinces be promised (by the West) money each year, the sum total being reduced in proportion to the amount of forest felling or burning in the previous year - with the proportions verified by satellite photos? According to the Ecologist magazine, the financier Sir James Goldsmith has suggested something similar - the payment of a sizeable annual rent by the industrialised world in return for protected forests; but to rely solely on the central Brazilian government to stop the burning of the rainforests is likely to prove inadequate. Amongst those others who need to be pressured are the provincial governors. Corruption would be largely avoided if annual satellite photos were used to decide the payments. Both the government and the governors would then have an incentive to police their areas, and to invest in firefighting and other measures.
(2) Could the individual owners of the rainforest enter into ecological farming agreements whereby they are paid an amount each year for say the next 25 years; the agreement to include a minimum 10% annual reforestation of any already cleared area, and a reduction in payment proportional to any further felling or burning? This would be very complex to administer, but again the proportions could be verified by satellite photos - which with the manoeuvrable satellites could readily produce comparable images each year. Such agreements with landowners would need backing up by agricultural extension services and support so as to enable settlers to stabilise their agricultural practices through agroforestry schemes for partial reforestation.
'The Union of Indian Nations needs to be supplied with the help of an international lawyer to draw up an application to the United Nations and the International Court for recognition as a nation'
(3) Similar ecological agreements could be made with the 180 Amazon tribes forming the Union of Indian Nations. A further proposal here is that the Union of Indian Nations be supplied with the help of an international lawyer to draw up an application to the United Nations and the International Court for recognition as a nation or nations, perhaps to form part of a wider Brazilian confederation. In international law they would have a very reasonable cause of action, if a referendum were to show a majority in favour of independence, as they have a historical claim to the territory and they have not been recognised as Brazilians in the past. Brazil might conceivably acquiesce in return for debt relief.
Their chances of being recognised as an autonomous state are slight, it must be admitted, at least for the near future. But just the moves towards seeking independence, with Indian leaders in person presenting applications to the United Nations and with lawyers approaching the International Courts, and with requests for a UN peace-keeping observer force, etc, would provide continuous opportunities for the world media to grasp. It would help reduce the maltreatment of the Indians and the encroachment on their lands by making it that much more difficult for the Brazilian government or others, constantly under the spotlight of the world media and under pressure from world financial bodies, to act against the Indians or not to be seen to be defending their interests. (The less they defend them, the more the Indians have justification for seeking their own machinery of government.)
Such a claim for independence might at least help promote a compromise, whereby the Brazilian government gives more autonomy to the Indians and enforces more land rights for them than it had previously intended. And it would help change the image of the Indians from that of noble but primitive savages in the forest to that of international statesmen and diplomats. It could also help develop their own feelings of unity and self-esteem.
- Foster Brown and Tom Stone are researchers at the Woods Hole Research Centre, PO Box 296, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 024543, USA (tel 508 540 9900).
- Satellite photos are available from EOSAT (4300 Forbes Boulevard, Lanham, MD 29796, USA, telex 277685 LSAT UR); from SPOT (1897 Preston Drive, Reston, VA 22901, USA, telex 4993073 SICORP); from INPE (Rodovia Presidente Dutra, Km 210, Cachoeira Paulista, SP 12.630 Brazil, telex 391125523 INPE BR); the Russians' Sigma Project military satellites produce much higher resolution images than Spot or Landsat, through Sigma Projects (Independent newspaper report by Mary Fagan, technology correspondent).
- Union of Indian Nations, Sao Paulo (tel and fax combined: 5511 624 246).
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