VZCZCXRO5540
RR RUEHAST RUEHHM RUEHLN RUEHMA RUEHPB RUEHPOD RUEHTM RUEHTRO
DE RUEHBR #0399/01 0902014
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 312014Z MAR 09
FM AMEMBASSY BRASILIA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3945
INFO RUEHSO/AMCONSUL SAO PAULO 3799
RUEHRI/AMCONSUL RIO DE JANEIRO 7500
RUEHRG/AMCONSUL RECIFE 9305
RUEHZN/ENVIRONMENT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BRASILIA 000399 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR H, OES/EGC, WHA/BSC, F 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: OREP SENV EAID EAGR KGHG BR
SUBJECT: SENATOR CORKER LOOKS INTO CHALLENGES OF DEFORESTATION IN 
BRAZIL 
 
BRASILIA 00000399  001.2 OF 003 
 
 
(U) THIS CABLE IS SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED AND NOT FOR INTERNET 
DISTRIBUTION. 
 
¶1.  (SBU) SUMMARY.  Senator Robert Corker visited the State of 
Amazonas on March 20-21 and learned about the extensive 
deforestation problem in Brazil and efforts to address it.  Governor 
Eduardo Braga explained his state's innovative program to pay forest 
dwellers a monthly payment to protect the forest, and the Senator 
visited one of the sites participating in the program.  In a meeting 
with a rancher (and NGO leader), he heard about the almost 
non-existent enforcement of environmental laws, which was leading to 
lawlessness.  The Senator also heard from leading experts on the 
Amazon about the challenges of developing sustainable economic 
activities for the people living in the forests.  END SUMMARY. 
 
¶2.  (SBU) On March 20-21, Senator Robert Corker visited the State of 
Amazonas to investigate the problem of deforestation in Brazil and 
efforts to control it.  Brazil is a major emitter of greenhouse 
gases, principally due to this massive, ongoing clearing of the 
Amazon forest.  Last year, a massive 11,000 square kilometers were 
cleared.  The State of Amazonas, which is about the size of Alaska, 
contains about half of the remaining Amazon forest in Brazil. 
 
AMAZONAS STATE GOVERNOR BRAGA 
 
¶3.  (SBU) On March 20, Senator Corker met with the State of Amazonas 
Governor Eduardo Braga and his advisors.  Braga stressed the success 
his administration had achieved in creating jobs in Manaus, the 
capital and largest city in the state.  At the same time, the 
Governor stressed, success in accomplishing the goal of preventing 
deforestation would require providing more value to standing forests 
than cutting them down.  Otherwise, the deforestation occurring 
elsewhere would soon overwhelm the State of Amazonas.  In 2008, 
Braga's administration had created the Foundation Sustainable 
Amazonas (FAS), which provided small payments - about USD 20 per 
month - to families living in state reserves for providing 
ecoservices, i.e., protecting the forests.  Braga has attracted 
outside funding for the FAS payment program, called the "Bolsa 
Floresta" or "Forest Subsidy."  A large private Brazilian bank 
(Bradesco), Marriott and Coca-Cola have all made significant 
contributions to FAS.  Braga emphasized that FAS and other programs 
based on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation 
(REDD) were critical to preserving the Amazon. 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Braga commented that it was perverse that the Clean 
Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol provided 
credits for reforestation of cleared lands, but nothing for the 
preservation of standing forests.  This arrangement created 
incentives for those who had unwisely cleared their forests and 
excluded those who had been good stewards of the forests.  Braga was 
seeking to correct the incentives through his own REDD-program, 
i.e., FAS.  He noted that he had just two years left in office, and 
he expressed concern that the next governor would likely not be as 
determined to promote forest conservation. 
 
JUMA RESERVE PROJECT 
 
¶5.  (SBU) Senator Corker visited a FAS project at a village called 
Boa Frente in the Juma Reserve, which is a state protected area not 
far from a highway.  The visit illustrated the efforts to improve 
the quality of life of the nearly 100 inhabitants through the Bolsa 
Floresta payments.  Funded in large part from contributins by 
Marriott, the site also included a new schol, learning center, and 
community center.  Villagers receive training in how to increase 
their income through sustainable forest projects, such as harvesting 
acai berries, brazil nuts, and manioc.  In return for the support 
from FAS, the village leaders and villagers recognized that they 
needed to protect their surrounding forest. 
 
THE SYSTEM FOR PROTECTION OF THE AMAZON (SIPAM) 
 
¶6.  (SBU) The Brazilian System for Protection of the Amazon (SIPAM) 
Operations Center in Manaus opened its doors to Senator Corker.  On 
March 20, Director Bruno da Gama Malheiro briefed the Senator on the 
elaborate air space and ground monitoring system in the Amazon, 
which has both national security (called SIVAM) and civilian 
environmental roles.  The network includes three remote-sensing 
planes, five flying radars, and 200 monitoring stations.  SIPAM's 
mission is to collect information that will support the authorities 
in planning and with sustainable development.  This monitoring 
network identifies deforestation sites, illegal trafficking, and 
clandestine landing sites.  SIPAM supplies the information collected 
to the Brazilian environment agency (IBAMA) and state and local 
authorities.  In recent months, SIPAM has been making a concerted 
effort to observe on an hourly basis deforestation in the 36 
 
BRASILIA 00000399  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
municipalities in the Amazon that accounted for over half of 
Brazil's deforestation last year.  He said this gives law 
enforcement authorities real time information on illegal activities 
in these hot spots. 
 
THE VIEW FROM THE GROUND - JOHN CAIN CARTER 
 
¶7.  (SBU) An American rancher, John Cain Carter, from the State of 
Goias, on the southern edge of the Amazon forest, provided the 
Senator with the view from the ground.  At a March 20 meeting, 
Carter described frequent invasions of his ranch and that of his 
neighbors.  Further, the invaders had burned down much of the forest 
on his land.  He opined that many of the state and local authorities 
were in league with the invaders.  The authorities did not come to 
protect his property despite repeated requests for assistance.  Weak 
enforcement meant that almost all the ranchers and farmers in the 
region cleared their land with impunity, not caring about meeting 
the legal requirement to maintain 80 percent of the land as forests. 
 Emphasizing that he is neither a scientist nor an environmentalist, 
Carter said that he was seeing significant changes in the weather 
and rain patterns caused by the massive deforestation of the Amazon. 
 He was seeing far less rain, rains starting later in the year, and 
higher temperatures.  Accordingly, Carter and his fellow ranchers 
and farmers are joining together to help address the problem of 
deforestation which is affecting them.  They formed a group called 
Alianca da Terra (the Land Alliance), and this group works to 
convince producers to bring their properties into compliance with 
the forest reserve requirements and to develop markets for their 
legal products.  Carter emphasized that the ranchers and farmers 
need to be at the center of solving this problem, rather than having 
programs being forced top down on them from the capital. 
 
AMAZON SCIENTISTS 
 
¶8.  (SBU) On March 21, several researchers briefed Senator Corker on 
the challenges regarding deforestation and climate change. 
Highlights from these meetings included: 
 
- Dr. Philip Fearnside of the National Institute for Amazon Research 
(INPA).  He saw difficulties in trying to compare the value of 
carbon credits for conserving standing forests and those for 
reforesting previously cleared lands.  In particular, it is hard to 
include a time value element accurately, he commented.  Namely, how 
much value should be given each year for maintaining a standing 
forest.  He thought the United Nations was trying to side-step the 
time value issue.  Overall, Fearnside opined that if the sole goal 
is to reduce the world's greenhouse gas emissions (without regard to 
other important goals, such as energy independence), the most 
effective way would be to allow 100% of a country's emissions 
reductions targets to be available for credits anywhere in the 
world.  He emphasized that a carbon credit system would need to have 
accurate and reliable information about the amounts of carbon 
emissions reduced.  Otherwise, the system could be gamed and real 
reductions in emissions might not accrue. 
 
- Dr. Edson Barcelos of the Institute for Development in the Amazon 
(IDAM).  He argued that it is critical to develop for the rural 
population in the Amazon economic activities that are sustainable 
and do not require clearing the forest.  He said that his group IDAM 
was working on developing activities for those living in the Amazon, 
such as fish farming, cultivating acai, and marketing nuts and other 
forest products.  The goal is to give value to a standing forest. 
 
- Dr. Charles Clement of INPA.  While agreeing that reducing 
deforestation depended on increasing the value of the standing 
forest, Clement thought that current programs were unlikely to work. 
 He thought that the demand for forest products was limited and 
urging forest residents to increase production would lead to excess 
supply and lower prices.  Also, most of those living in the forest 
were too far from markets to become significant suppliers.  On the 
other hand, the FAS program of monthly payments was just welfare and 
monthly amounts would have to be increased to meet growing 
expectations and demands of forest dwellers.  The underlying 
problem, according to Clement, is that there is both an increasing 
population and growing demand for goods per person in the Amazon. 
Right now, the only way to meet this rising demand is through 
cutting down the forest.  Clement suggested one of the best ways to 
deal with this growing demand and protect the forest is increasing 
rural education.  He saw a strong link between greater education and 
leaving the forest for the city.  Thus, more education would lead to 
draining young people from the rural areas. 
 
- Dr. Mario Cohn Haft of INPA - The Amazon Forest is "the Michael 
Jordan of the world's forests."  It is a magnitude richer in 
biodiversity than any other.  For example, the Amazon is home to 
 
BRASILIA 00000399  003.2 OF 003 
 
 
over 3,000 of the world's known 10,000 bird species.  Given this 
rich biodiversity, independent of climate change benefits, the 
Amazon Forest merits preserving, he commented. 
 
¶9.  (SBU) This cable was cleared with CODEL Corker. 
 
SOBEL