After Pledging Preservation, Brazilian State Grants over 500 Deforestation Requests

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Tocantins Nature Institute (Naturatins) published a series of “Extracts of Authorizations for Forest Exploration” from the official State Gazette on Friday, August 2nd. Altogether, there are 557 of such authorizations.

They enable the applicant to deforest specific areas to develop the land. The publication came only hours after Governor Mauro Carlesse had signed a compromise on environmental preservation.

The government of Tocantins reported that the published authorizations are related to applications that had previously been approved.

The document signed by Carlesse, the “Carta de Palmas,” was the result of a meeting held in Palmas, the state capital, among governors of the states that make up the Legal Amazon area.

The document states that “The governors firmly express their concern over the advance of illegal deforestation in the Legal Amazon and ratify the institutional compromise of seeking real mechanisms to ensure the region’s sustainable development”.

The extracts can be found from page 37 to 93 of the Gazette. They include the name of who submitted the application, the location and the size of the area that is to be deforested. In some cases, the authorization is to remove less than ten hectares of vegetation, in others more than 900. One hectare is roughly equivalent to a football field.

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