From: Business Day
News Link: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=74229
BRAZILIAN President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva faced a tough, keenly awaited decision this week about land ownership in the Amazon rainforest.
The president had until yesterday to decide whether to veto parts of a bill designed to transfer an area of public land, mostly Amazon rainforest of about 670000km² , into private hands for agriculture development.
His decision will be closely watched by economists keen to improve the country’s productivity and native groups who have fiercely opposed the transfer of what they consider to be ancestral land to developers.
The government originally introduced what is called Provisional Measure 458 as a way of bringing security to small farmers in the region. But critics said the proposal amounted to an amnesty in a land grab by industrialists and farmers, and that the original measure had been altered by Congress in a way that would only serve to encourage deforestation.
The government’s National Institute for Space Research released a report on Wednesday showing that the pace of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon had slowed in May compared to the same month last year. It said 124km² was destroyed in May. The institute relies on data from satellites, and only 38% of the Amazon was visible in May because of cloud cover.
The year before researchers reported the destruction of 1096km² of forest — when 54% of the region was visible. The government says new laws and enforcement have slowed deforestation. Sapa-AP