ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: Realism Gaining Ground Among Activists

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 15 2005 (IPS) - Dissatisfaction with some government decisions has not stood in the way of a positive evaluation of the second National Conference on the Environment in Brazil by participating environmentalists.

Referring to the conference, Adriana Ramos, coordinator of Socioenvironmental Policy and Law at the non-governmental Socioenvironmental Institute, told IPS that “it is an important process of social participation and of learning for all those involved,” although the results were “fell short of what we had hoped for.”

In ten years’ time – that is, after five more national conferences – this could become “the highest arena of debate on environmental policy” in Brazil, reducing the Ministry and National Council for the Environment to the role of regulatory bodies or entities in charge of implementing the decisions made, said the activist.

One criticism by environmentalists is that the government took decisions that ran counter to the recommendations of the first National Conference on the Environment held two years ago, especially in regard to allowing the planting of transgenic soybeans, and to giving the go-ahead to a project to divert the waters of the Sao Francisco river to the semi-arid Northeast.

However, 70 percent of the proposals approved at the 2003 environment conference have been put into effect, said Environment Minister Marina Silva, who received warm applause at the opening of this year’s conference when she said that environmental policy is the responsibility of all sectors of the government, and should be designed with the participation of society at large.

The second national conference, held in Brasilia Dec. 10-13, drew more than 2,000 participants, 1,500 of whom were delegates representing Brazil’s 27 states and different sectors of society. Approximately 800 resolutions were approved, to go to the Environment Ministry for amendment and ratification.

The preparatory meetings involved 86,000 participants in municipal and state-level gatherings that produced 3,800 proposals. Many of these overlapped, were overly local, or were inappropriate.

This year’s conference made less progress than the first edition in 2003, according to Ramos, because many of the proposals were repetitions of earlier ones or were vague or overly general in nature, reflecting their authors’ ignorance of measures already taken, such as government programmes for environmental education, and the expansion of nature reserves.

Ramos said the shortcomings were not due to the “short” two-year interval between conferences, as was stated by the general coordinator of the conference, Pedro Ivo Batista, but to insufficient preparation, which mainly took place over the last four months rather than beginning immediately after the end of the previous one.

There is a need for ongoing communication on environmental issues, so people can follow what is happening and become aware of the problems and the alternatives, argued Ramos.

She was also critical of the press for failing to report on the environmental aspects of disasters such as the many deaths that have been caused by the collapse of precarious dwellings built on hillsides, and water shortages in the country’s large cities.

The absence of some sectors of the leftist government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from the conferences has also limited their effectiveness by failing to secure commitments from them to put the resolutions into effect, she added.

The most controversial topic remained the diversion of the Sao Francisco river, with environmentalists demanding a clean-up of the river before the diversion of 1.4 percent of its flow, while the government wants to build the canals immediately.

But the activists who took part in the conference backed the government project for the management of public forests, which has faced resistance in the Senate. The new law would yield forested areas in concession to private companies for up to 60 years, for the sustainable exploitation of forest resources.

That is the way to curtail deforestation, by regularising land ownership and curbing the invasion of public land in the Amazon jungle by illegal loggers, said Rubens Palacios Soria, technical adviser to the Amazon Working Group, a network of more than 600 non-governmental organisations and local communities.

The national conferences serve as a learning experience and a “splash of reality” for the environmental and social movements by showing them the difficulties faced by the government in implementing environmental policies in the midst of conflicts of interests among the various sectors of society, the activist told IPS.

Environmental policies are not always supported by the entire government, he pointed out. At times they pit the Environment Ministry and its fight for sustainability and the social inclusion of Amazon peoples against other ministries that defend the agribusiness or export sectors or that advocate the construction of large hydroelectric dams, he added.

According to Soria, the national conferences promoted by the Lula administration are a good thing because social participation helps the relations between the government and civil society mature at a time of tension caused by criticism of the government’s policies and the pace at which it is implementing changes.

Members of the business community who took part in the conference, meanwhile, complained about the scant attention they received from the participating NGOs and social movements, which supplied 50 percent of the delegates, while the business sector provided 30 percent and the government 20 percent.

Although it is true that many people in business ignore environmental issues, some are truly concerned about the environment, and their participation in the process “is vital and interesting,” said Ramos.

The tension is between the environment and traditional models of development, at a time of a new “effervescence” with regard to environmental issues due to the climate change conference held in Montreal over the past two weeks and the biodiversity convention to take place in March in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba, Deputy Minister of the Environment Claudio Langone told IPS.

Particularly in Brazil, the challenge is to incorporate the environmental dimension into investment and development projects, he added.