Brazil Environmental Movement Wins Historic Victory for Rainforest

Leaders of Brazil’s Congress last night shelved proposed legislation to increase the area and rate of Amazon forest destruction, handing the ranchers’ and large landowners’ caucus (ruralistas) of the Congress a major, and precedent-setting, defeat.

“Environmental organizations such as the Instituto Socioambiental, parliamentary leader Senator Marina Silva (Worker’s Party - Acre) and Amazon union and grassroots groups struck a chord that echoed in Brazilian public opinion in denouncing the destruction law as irresponsible and contrary to the national interest,” said Steve Schwartzman, a senior scientist with Environmental Defense.

“The ranchers’ caucus is the human face of the inequality, injustice, class privilege, and impunity that have plagued Brazil for 500 years,” said Schwartzman. “The fight over this legislation was really between the 19th century and the 21st century over the future of the Amazon. It’s important that the 21st century won - for now.”

The representatives of the rural oligarchy had pushed a draft law through a joint House/Senate Committee that would have loosened restrictions on Amazon deforestation, and could have caused a 25% increase in annual rates of clearing and burning. Massive email and fax protests to the Brazilian Congress and the President, and broad national media coverage orchestrated by Brazilian environmental and grassroots groups killed the measure before it could come to the House floor. The defeat marks the first time that the Brazilian environmental movement has prevailed over the ranchers’ powerful special interest group.

The latifundistas’ caucus, with some 200 votes in the Congress, represents the rural oligarchy - the 1% of the landowners who control some 50% of Brazil agricultural land (while 50% of the farmers have only 3%). The group has specialized in holding government-sponsored legislation hostage to parochial, pork-barrel concerns considered unseemly even by the standards of the Brazilian Congress. These maneuvers have yielded tens of billions in official debt forgiveness, overwhelmingly for the few, largest debtors, while health care, education, and environment budgets suffered deep cuts. In this case, the group threatened to derail a vote on the minimum wage, considered critical by the government, to keep the government out of the Committee vote.