Latest news with #desmatamento
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Washington Post
Removal of hundreds of illegal cattle in the Amazon sparks protests and divides residents
BRASILIA, Brazil — The removal of hundreds of cattle raised illegally on public land designated for sustainable forest use in Brazil's Amazon has sparked protests and divided residents, with some seeking to preserve rubber-tapping and Brazil nut harvesting and others wanting to consolidate livestock farming. The removal operation started last week in one of the country's most renowned Amazon conservation units, the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve , named for the famed rubber tapper and environmentalist killed in 1988. Federal agents working with police and military officials seized around 400 heads of cattle from two farmers who had failed to comply with judicial eviction orders. The raids are set to continue in the coming weeks.
Associated Press
3 days ago
- Associated Press
Removal of hundreds of illegal cattle in the Amazon sparks protests and divides residents
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — The removal of hundreds of cattle raised illegally on public land designated for sustainable forest use in Brazil's Amazon has sparked protests and divided residents, with some seeking to preserve rubber-tapping and Brazil nut harvesting and others wanting to consolidate livestock farming. The removal operation started last week in one of the country's most renowned Amazon conservation units, the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, named for the famed rubber tapper and environmentalist killed in 1988. Federal agents working with police and military officials seized around 400 heads of cattle from two farmers who had failed to comply with judicial eviction orders. The raids are set to continue in the coming weeks. But dozens of residents of the reserve protested the action, seeking to create a blockade in the city of Xapuri to prevent the removal of the cattle. The first truckload, carrying 20 head of cattle, had to take an alternate route to avoid confrontation. The protest, which had the support of local politicians, held powerful symbolism because Xapuri is the city where Mendes was gunned down. It also represented a contrast to the 1980s, when rubber tappers fought against cattle ranchers. The cattle removal came in response to a 56% surge in deforestation during the first five months of 2025 compared to the same period last year. The cleared area is nearly five times the size of Central Park in New York City. The reserve holds about 140,000 heads of cattle. 'Monitoring has identified that the environmental crime stems mainly from large-scale cattle ranching, which is illegal as it violates the rules of the protected area,' said a statement from the federal agency Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, known as ICMBio. The Chico Mendes Reserve is one of several Amazon extractive reserves where forest communities can practice low-impact extractive activities with protections against land developers. Rules limit deforestation to small-scale cattle raising and agriculture, and land sales are forbidden. Still, the Chico Mendes Reserve is the most deforested federal conservation unit in Brazil. 'Working to find a solution' The current problems worsened in the four-year term of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro that ran through 2022, when deforestation exploded in the reserve. Bolsonaro defanged environmental protection and said the Amazon had too many protected areas. Some residents of Chico Mendes began selling their land parcels illegally to farmers, who hoped they would eventually be legalized. The strong reaction against the operation led to the creation of a WhatsApp group with around 1,000 members in which some issued threats against Raimundo Mendes de Barros, cousin and political heir of Chico Mendes, who opposes cattle expansion. But historical organizations applauded the cattle removals, including the National Council of Extractivist Populations, which issued a note supporting the operation. Cleisson Monteiro, president of the Association of Residents and Producers of the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve in Xapuri, backed the protests against the cattle removals. He said that while deforestation must be addressed, federal agents sparked anger and fear among families who don't comply with all the reserve's rules. The area where the raids began, known as Seringal Nova Esperanca, 'no longer has a rubber-tapper profile,' Monteiro said. 'The people who live there have a different way of life. They are farmers engaged in small-scale family agriculture, with some cattle ranching for beef and dairy.' Monteiro said that about 140 families live in Nova Esperanca, including his own, all of whom have different degrees of non-compliance with the reserve's rules. He said that, even though only two individuals were targeted, there is concern that the operation could affect other families. 'ICMBio shouldn't have acted at this moment, because we're working to find a solution,' he said. 'The forest can't compete' The reserve is home to around 4,000 families. About 900 families produce rubber for a French shoe company, Veja. The project has proven successful, but the demand is not high enough to absorb the reserve's full production potential. Jeffrey Hoelle, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied the area for two decades, said that cattle farming has been more lucrative for residents than traditional means of harvesting rubber and nuts from the forest. 'Twenty years ago, rubber tappers were just starting to adopt cattle. And over the last couple of decades, it's become increasingly popular,' Hoelle said. 'It's just become more acceptable over time. But essentially, the forest can't compete in terms of economic value with cattle. The extent to which rubber and Brazil nuts can provide for people is really limited compared to cattle, for which, unfortunately, you have to cut down the forest and plant pasture.' ___ The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
The Guardian
22-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Brazil activists decry green rollbacks as senate passes ‘devastation bill'
Environmental activists in Brazil have decried a dramatic rollback of environmental safeguards after the senate approved a bill that would dismantle licensing processes and increase the risk of widespread destruction. The upper house passed the so-called 'devastation bill' with 54 votes to 13 late on Wednesday, paving the way for projects ranging from mining and infrastructure to energy and farming to receive regulatory approval with little to no environmental oversight. The bill now returns to the lower house for final approval. No date has been set for a vote there, but it is expected to pass without resistance in the conservative chamber packed with agribusiness lobby supporters. The initiative proposes overhauling Brazil's rigorous environmental licensing procedures to make the system simpler and more efficient. But it has been condemned by climate activists and policymakers as a historical setback that ignores the reality of the climate crisis and flies in the face of Brazil's commitments to combatting climate change. 'It's like getting rid of the brakes in a moving vehicle,' said Natalie Unterstell, president of the Instituto Talanoa climate policy thinktank. She said the bill jeopardises Brazil's commitments of eradicating deforestation by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050. The proposed legislation would allow some projects to renew permits through a self-declaration process and loosen requirements for high-impact ventures such as mining, allowing potentially harmful developments to move forward without serious considerations of their impacts on things like water reservoirs, deforestation or local communities. 'Most licensing procedures will become a push of a button without an environmental study or environmental impact assessment,' said Suely Araújo, public policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory network of NGOs. The Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), a civil society organisation, said the proposal would dismantle a system of environmental protections that was built over decades, and do away with conditions that require companies to adopt prevention, mitigation and compensation measures, thus increasing the risk of destruction and conflict in rural areas. The ISA calculated that the approval of the law would directly threaten more than 3,000 protected areas, including land occupied by Indigenous people and Afro-descendant quilombola communities, and put 18m hectares (44.5m acres) of forest at risk. 'The bill represents a collapse foretold,' the ISA said. The bill's progress through congress has attracted particular dismay as Brazil is preparing to host the Cop30 climate conference in the Amazon in November. The government has said that it wants this year's summit to be one of action, but this attempt to dismantle environmental protections undermines the country's credibility, said Unterstell. 'It sends the wrong signal at the wrong time,' she said. Environment minister Marina Silva described the approval of the bill as a 'death blow' to Brazil's climate efforts, but other members of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government had previously expressed support for the measure, saying it would help attract investment. Although Lula has been successful in reducing deforestation, which fell by 32% across the country last year according to MapBiomas, he has disappointed the climate movement in other areas, particularly with his stance on oil exploration. One of the amendments introduced by the senate would notably speed up permits for projects deemed a government priority. Pro-oil senators hope this could benefit controversial exploration projects near the mouth of the Amazon river, a new oil frontier where the state-controlled oil company Petrobras has so far been unsuccessful in its endeavour to obtain drilling permits from the environmental watchdog Ibama.
