Brazil proposes shrinking Amazon forest after highway protests

World
Europe

Brazil's Environmental Ministry has sent Congress a bill on Friday to reduce the size of the National Forest of Jamanxim, a move environmentalists said would speed deforestation of the area.

The government proposed the bill as a compromise measure after local residents, who see the Amazon as a source of livelihood, blocked a key grains exporting highway in response to President Michel Temer's veto of similar legislation to reduce its protected area.

The new bill, if approved, would create a new protection area (APA) near the town of Novo Progresso, which is on the edge of the forest around 790 miles (1,270 km) northwest of the capital Brasilia. The measure would convert 27 percent of the national forest into an APA, the ministry said.

An aerial view of the cleared land in the municipality of Novo Progresso, Pará State, northern Brazil, Nov. 11, 2016. /VCG Photo

Environmentalists denounced the measure as an official stimulus to land-grabbing, which in turn leads to illegal logging, clear-cutting and mining in one of the hotspots of deforestation of the Amazon biome.

"The bill is seen as an amnesty for illegal occupation of the conservancy unit," said Observatório do Clima, adding the government "yielded to pressure" from the rural lobby.

Brazil's President Michel Temer reacts during a ceremony at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, July 13, 2017. /VCG Photo

The bill followed blockades this month of the BR-163 highway, which runs next to the 1.3-million-hectare national forest. The highway links grain producing regions in Mato Grosso state to waterways connected to key Northern ports.

Protesters suspended the blockades, which began on July 3, after Temer sent the bill to Congress, according to a statement from the Sociedade Civil Organizada group on Friday.

Earlier in the day, Brazil's federal highway police said the road was cleared after almost two weeks of protests.

A military policeman walks past trunks of trees recently cut illegally from the Amazon rainforest, inside Jamanxim National Park near the city of Novo Progresso, June 21, 2013. /VCG Photo

Carlos Xavier, president of a group in Pará lobbying to reduce the size of the Jamanxim forest, said the APA would bring economic progress to the region.

The BR-163 protests were preventing trucks from unloading grains at the riverside hub of Miritituba, the departure point for barges carrying crops to the Northern ports before hitting export markets.

Brazilian private ports association ATP said this week it expected 47 million US dollars in losses this month as a result of the protests.

(Source: Reuters)

15916km