Legislators Move to Reduce Environmental Reserve Area in Roraima and Amapá States

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A lobby promoted by the Roraima and Amapá benches in the National Congress has succeeded in putting to a vote a presidential Provisional Measure that could reduce the areas of compulsory preservation, known as legal reserves, on rural properties in both States.

The protected areas would be reduced from 80 to 50 percent of the total land. The change, according to rural producers, is needed to increase production. However, according to environmentalists and lawyers, if implemented it would increase deforestation in the Amazon region, which is already growing, and could set a precedent for other Amazonia states to request the reduction of their own preserved areas.

The measure, named MP 901/2019, should be put to a vote in the Chamber in coming weeks and then will be sent to the Senate.

The alteration of the legal reserves area of the two states was inserted into the text of MP 001 as signed by President Bolsonaro, which was intended to formalize the donation of federal government land to the twostates. It did not specifically address the reduction of the reserve area, although Bolsonaro’s government favored this.

This reserve is the technical name for the area where the native forest must be preserved in ranches and farms, established by the 2012 Forestry Code. In practice, introducing changes to a Code in a Provisional Measure that deals with land issues is regarded as a kind of legislative smuggling, because it introduces a new proposition in a bill that deals with another, different topic.

The issue is causing an intense clash between environmentalists and farmers. On the one hand, there are those who say the measure will encourage unrestrained deforestation in a period of successive record hikes. Last year, deforestation in the Amazon grew 30 percent. On the other hand, there are those who say that without an extension of the area to be used for business activities, it will be difficult for the states to develop.

“A risky change through legislative smuggling could result in severe damage not only to the environment, with the growth of deforestation in the Amazon, but also to the country’s image and economic relations,” criticizes attorney Maurício Guetta, of the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA).

The president of the Environmentalist Parliamentary Front, federal deputy Rodrigo Agostinho (PSB – SP), says he will try to prevent these amendments from prospering. “Since the late 1990s they have been trying to change this legal reserve area in the Amazon. It is something that conservative sectors have been trying to do”.

The proposal’s rapporteur, rural producer and federal deputy Édio Lopes (PR – SP), says that these changes must be made to help the local economy. “We are not asking for the end of the world, we are not preaching the apocalypse, chaos. We are preaching the constitutional right of these states to survive economically,” he said.

According to calculations by supporters of this change, the areas of potential rural exploitation in Roraima and Amapá represent, respectively, two and ten percent of their extension. All supporters criticize the number of indigenous lands and conservation units, which are more than 50 in both states. “We only want to survive economically,” complained Senator Mecias de Jesus (Republicanos – RR).

Under current legislation, reducing the area from 80 to 50 percent is allowed, as long as there is a defined ecological economic zoning throughout the State, and that 65 percent of the territory is made up of environmental conservation units or indigenous lands. “We struggle to achieve this zoning because the Indians do not let us”, complained the bill’s Rapporteur Lopes.

One of the flaws identified by experts in the measure’s new wording is when it no longer deals with biomes, to debate the preservation of areas in particular States. National legislation provides that in the Amazon biome two out of every ten hectares of land may be exploited, the other eight must be preserved.

In the scrubland (cerrado) the legal reserve reaches 35 percent and 20 percent in all other biomes. “The Provisional Measure provides benefits for only two States, in a localized way and not for the biome, which could generate legal insecurity”, ponders attorney Marcos Tiraboschi, who works with environmental law.

In his opinion, the other eight states with an Amazonian biome may also request localized changes. “Suddenly, Mato Grosso will ask, ‘why can’t I reduce my legal reserve area?'”, says Tiraboschi.

In addition to trying to reduce the farms’ protected areas, the legislators from the rural caucus are also trying to donate 4,745 hectares of their National Forest, out of a total of 169,628 hectares, to the federal government for land reform. “This is a change to benefit miners. They say it will benefit settlements, but that’s a lie. It’s absurd to reduce a protected area,” said deputy Agostinho. Deputy Lopes denied that there was such a plan.

The Provisional Measure was scheduled for its first reading in the Chamber this week but a group of legislators asked Chamber President Rodrigo Maia to defer the date, and they were accommodated. The reading is expected to take place in two weeks and the vote will follow.