Brazil´s Agriculture Minister Defends Not Using G7 Funds: “The Forest Regenerates Itself.”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Agriculture Minister Tereza Cristina said yesterday that the funds promised by the G7, the world’s most industrialized group of countries, should not be used for the reforestation of the Amazon.

According to the minister, a legislator from the ruralist parliamentary bloc, allowing the forest to regenerate itself is sufficient.

“I think that reforestation is not the case. Sixty-six percent of Brazil’s native vegetation is preserved. It is enough to let the forest regenerate itself in some places where it is required.”

“We have many cases where land grabbers have illegally cleared many areas in the past, and the forest is now regenerated,” said Tereza Cristina after meeting with Japan’s Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Takamori Yoshikawa at FIESP, in São Paulo.

Earlier, Tereza Cristina criticized the press for what she termed “hysteria” caused by the fires in the Amazon, which, according to her, are somewhat common.

According to the minister, “twenty million people live in that region. To preserve it, these people need to have the means to do business, to live in a dignified way, to preserve it. With poverty, you can’t preserve anything,” she said.

She added that the ministry would campaign to encourage producers to use alternative methods to burning, in order to open up areas in the Amazon region.

“The Ministry of Agriculture will, once again, campaign for the use of other methodologies, rather than the use of fires, in order to open up these areas. But for that, training and technical assistance are required, and they [producers] need credit to be able to do this more rationally.”

“Land tenure is also crucial to achieving this, which is one of the things we are actively working on. because when you don’t know whose land it is, you don’t even know who to blame because they don’t own that area,” she said.