Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
January 27, 1998

Data Show Recent Burning of Amazon Is Worst Ever
By Diana Jean Schemo

Dateline: Rio de Janeiro

Recent destruction of the Amazon rain forest is the worst ever recorded, surpassing even the years of deforestation that set off an international outcry to save the forests, according to data issued by the Brazilian Government today.

The figures show that deforestation nearly tripled between the 1990-91 and 1994-95 burning seasons. Some 11,196 square miles of Amazon rain forest were destroyed in the 1994-95 burning season, the figures show, or an area larger than New Jersey. In contrast, on the eve of the 1992 Earth Summit here, deforestation had dipped to 4,247 square miles.

The release of the figures was delayed while Brazil attended the world conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan, last month and while it petitioned the world's seven richest industrial nations to step up environmental aid at a meeting in Manaus, Brazil, in late October.

The Brazilian Amazon, roughly the size of Western Europe, contains the world's largest collection of plant and animal species -- many of which have yet to be studied for their potential medicinal, nutritional or ecological value -- as well as 20 percent of the world's fresh water supply.

The figures issued today show that 6,950 square miles of the Amazon were destroyed from 1995 to 1996, less than in the previous year, but sharply up from the average annual levels in the rest of the decade.

"It shows the situation was not under control as the Government kept insisting over the last two years," said Garo Batmanian, head of the Brazilian office of the World Wildlife Fund. "We're destroying our biodiversity. Humanity is becoming poorer." Earlier this month, a separate study issued by a Congressional commission showed that 22,393 square miles of the Amazon were being destroyed each year through deforestation -- which shows up on satellite images -- as well as through logging, ground fires and thinning of previously virgin forest, which may occur undetected by satellites beneath the forest canopy.

The Woods Hole Research Institute, studying the same phenomenon, concluded last year that the Amazon is reaching an unprecedented level of dryness, raising the threat that rain forest could catch fire and burn out of control.

The last time Government officials released deforestation figures, two years ago, they showed a 34 percent increase over the 1990-91 period. And as they did then, officials today announced a series of proposals.

These included steps to regulate forest burnings and logging concessions, to appropriate large landholdings, and to coordinate policies between the Government's land reform and environmental agencies.

But many of the measures, Mr. Batmanian said, lacked the money or the legislation to be effective, and represented a "wish list" more than a plan of action. On Tuesday, the Brazilian Congress is scheduled to vote on a bill that would establish criminal penalties for some acts of environmental harm and to grant the federal environmental agency legal authority to enforce environmental statutes. The bill has languished in Congress for seven years.

Without such authority, the agency charged with protecting the environment is largely ignored by the people and industries it is supposed to regulate. According to Government figures, it collects only 6 percent of the fines it levies.

While the bill, which is expected to pass, is critical to establishing an environmental policy, under pressure from the industrialists' lobby the Government watered down stiff penalties that originally included possible prison time.

"Clearly it's a long overdue step for the Brazilian Government to give its environmental agency statutory authority, but the way they're doing it -- loosening the laws, giving away the farm to the special interests -- is going to make it very difficult for Brazil to effectively prosecute multinational companies logging illegally," said Stephan Schwartzman, senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit group based in Washington. Environmentalists here have long contended that destruction of the rain forest is linked more closely to the state of the economy than to any Government environmental policy.

The data issued today showed deforestation breaking all previous records as the Government's economic stabilization plan got under way, in late 1994, when the price of land fell and it became more profitable to farm and ranch land than to hold it idle as an investment. As the plan took hold in 1996, the rate of deforestation dropped somewhat, but still remained high.

"It's clear from the amount of increase, and the fluctuations in it, that Government environmental policy has had precious little influence on this process in the 1990's," said Mr. Schwartzman. Figures from 1978 to 1988, which caused a global protest, put the average annual destruction at 8,158 square miles.

The Government added to the controversy today by contending that a large share of the deforestation was a result of agrarian reform that turned over more land to smallholders. It based the claim on data showing that most of the deforestation was a result of fires of less than 247 acres in size. According to the Congressional report released earlier this month, the Government has settled landless peasants on 18,146 square miles of virgin rainforest.

But Marcio Nogueira Barbosa, director of the Brazilian Space Agency, said the satellite images do not show any link between agrarian reform and deforestation. New settlers, he said, account for no more than 10 percent of the deforestation totals.

The Space Agency issued partial data for 1997 projecting a sharp drop in deforestation, back to 1992 levels, based on a survey through August of areas where deforestation has occured in the past. Environmentalists rejected the figures as untrustworthy, though Mr. Barbosa contended they were correct within a five percent margin of error. "The fact that it's in a descent is no reason for celebration," he said.

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