This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BRASILIA 000598 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O.  12958: N/A 
TAGS: SENV PGOV EAGR ELAB SOCI BR
SUBJECT: NEW ENVIRONMENTAL MEASURES FOR BRAZIL'S AMAZON 
 
REF: A) Brasilia 464, B) Brasilia 437 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary:  On February 17, 2005 Brazil's Minister of 
Environment, Marina Silva, announced a presidential decree 
aimed at combating land grabbing and deforestation in the 
Amazon.  The three-pronged strategy sets up five separate 
forest reserves totaling 12.8 million acres, places a ban on 
logging and development activities in a 20 million acre 
stretch of forest along the BR-163 highway and sends a 
priority bill to the Brazilian Congress to reform land use 
under the Administration of Public Forests.  These measures 
come on the heels of a week of surging violence in the state 
of Para which included the murder of American missionary 
Dorothy Stang (Refs A and B).  Concurrent with these 
environmental initiatives, Vice President, Jose Alencar, has 
ordered around 2000 army personnel to the region to support 
local law enforcement entities.  Despite this, we have seen 
little evidence to date that these measures will be better 
enforced than existing protections. End Summary 
 
¶2. (SBU) Para is, in many ways, akin to the popular image of 
the American "Wild West":  isolated, sparsely populated and 
lawless, with a notable lack of State (federal) presence. 
Filling the power void are the wealthy landowners, who often 
obtained their land illegitimately, and their hired guns. 
Primarily composed of farmers and ranchers (soy and cattle), 
lumber companies or speculators, these individuals are 
continually encroaching on the Amazon in search of quick 
profits.  The result is a swath of human and environmental 
devastation.  Speculators, who obtain illegal land titles 
from corrupt authorities, sell the land to ranchers and 
timber companies, who then turn out the local population 
creating a group of landless peasants.  These peasants along 
with migrant workers, at times held in a state of de facto 
slavery, are used to clear forests for timber or pasture 
land.  These inequities and the ubiquitous greed for more 
land are fostering a social and environmental catastrophe in 
the region. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) While the dilemma of land distribution has long 
been recognized by the GOB, previous attempts to regulate 
and enforce property ownership and land use have been either 
inefficient and/or ineffectual.  The most recent example of 
the federal government trying to assert its authority 
occurred when Incra (National Institute for agrarian reform) 
passed a decree ordering landowners in the northwest of 
Para, claiming to own more than 100 hectares, to provide 
proof of ownership or have their land repossessed.  As the 
deadline approached in January 2005, ranchers and timber 
companies blockaded major land (the BR-163) and water routes 
(the Amazon and Tapajos Rivers), halting traffic and 
commerce. The GOB subsequently retracted the measure, 
proffering victory for the landed elite of the region. 
 
¶4.  Less than three weeks later Dorothy Stang, an 
environmentalist and spokesperson for landless peasants, was 
assassinated.  Her murder is indicative of the struggle in 
Para between peasants and environmentalists and land 
developers which the CPT, a Catholic Church agrarian 
watchdog group, claims has taken 161 lives over the last two 
years. 
 
¶5.  In the wake of the vehement international and domestic 
criticism which has followed the Stang murder, the 
government has acted quickly.  Moving under the assumption 
that the social and environmental degradation are wedded, 
the GOB has addressed the problem by seeking greater control 
over both property rights and land use.  Consequently, the 
Lula administration announced the following measures: 
 
¶6.  In the first, the Executive announced a moratorium on 
all logging and resource development/exploitation in a 
protected forest area along the Western edge of BR-163 which 
connects Santarem to Cuiaba.  This measure will stay in 
effect for six months, until the government has determined 
which activities are legal.  The decree is a psychological 
blow to many of parties that aim to profit, via illegal 
means, from the road being paved. For years, the Mato Grosso 
soy farming lobby has been driving to have the BR-163 paved. 
Their goal is to provide a more cost effective, profitable 
transport route for soy from the south of Para and northern 
Mato Grosso to Amazon river ports.  These interests attained 
their goal in January 2005 when the GOB granted permission 
to have the road paved, despite environmentalist concerns 
that paving the BR-163 would accelerate Amazonian 
destruction and exacerbate land disputes.  The measure 
establishes a federal presence in the region where land 
grabbing has increased with the mere announcement that the 
road would be paved. 
 
¶7. The second part of Lula's new environmental package will 
create an extensive set of forest reserves.  Five in total, 
they include an extractive reserve with more than 800,000 
acres, three sets of national forests covering more than 
3.75 million acres and a ecological station with more than 
8.25 million acres.  There is speculation that two more 
extractive reserves will be created in the coming weeks. 
All told, these new protected areas will place some of the 
Amazon's most disputed, at risk lands under the federal 
government's control. 
 
¶8. Rounding out these initiatives, the GOB is sending a bill 
to Congress with expedited, urgent status, to create new 
rules governing the use and exploitation of public forests. 
If passed, forest exploration in designated production 
forests will be authorized by the GOB, similar to the manner 
in which the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) handles timber sales 
in our national forests.  Concessions will be granted via 
government sponsored auctions.  Those who win the right to 
harvest timber will be required to follow strict forest 
management plans.  Not only will the GOB garner revenues 
which would be reinvested into a fund for forest 
preservation, it will also strengthen its power to authorize 
land use on private lands.  The bill is expected to pass 
through Congress at some point over the next six months.  In 
an effort to counter "grilagem" (illegal land grabbing), the 
bill mandates that private individuals will not have the 
right to buy unclaimed federal land on the Amazon frontier. 
With respect to USG, GOB bilateral relations, an ongoing 
agreement between the USFS and the Environment Ministry's 
National Forest Program which will focus increasingly on the 
exchange of information and experiences in concession-based 
forest management and the establishment of a Brazilian 
Forest Service, lends support to these measures. 
 
¶9.  Concurrent with these measures the federal government 
has sent 2000 army troops to Para, primarily to reinforce 
both state and federal law enforcement entities and their 
operations in the region.  Their manifold duties will 
include helping to combat land disputes, deforestation, 
environmental crimes, gunmen and petty crime/assaults.  From 
the environmental perspective this will be extremely useful 
to an agency like IBAMA (federal conservation agency), which 
has been hampered by its lack of enforcement capacity. 
While generally viewed positively, the action is very 
significant.  Following the collapse of the military 
dictatorship in 1985, the GOB and the Army itself have been 
extremely reluctant to utilize the armed forces in a 
domestic capacity.  In this case, Lula has stated, these 
troops will stay in the region, "until the problem 
(violence) is solved." 
 
¶10. In response to the killing of Dorothy Stang and the 
subsequent troop mobilization and environmental orders, 
certain timber and agribusiness interests have condemned 
these new measures as irrational, emotional and driven by 
non-Brazilian forces.  One environmental engineer noted 
that, in doing this, the president has placed the logger, 
agriculturalist, "grileiro" (land grabber) and assassin in 
the same company.  Simultaneously, other industry 
representatives are praising the measures for attempting to 
increase stability to the region. 
 
¶11.  (SBU)Comment:  In the end, these measures are generally 
being viewed positively, although with a degree of 
skepticism.  Brazil already possesses some of the most 
stringent environmental laws anywhere in the world.  The 
problem is a lack of enforcement and effective management of 
public lands.  There exists a huge divide between 
saying/creating and actually doing.  If the government is 
ready to vigorously implement and enforce these new 
measures, it would help to reduce the violence and 
environmental degradation in the region. It would be the 
first step in reasserting the GOB's authority, which Marina 
Silva noted, has been absent in the Amazon for more than a 
century. 
 
DANILOVICH