A remote Amazon logging town has become the turbulent starting point for a major crackdown by Brazilian government authorities, aimed at preventing a new wave of deforestation.
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Sawmill workers have been queuing for food handouts in Tailândia, after logging operations were halted by the arrival of hundreds of police and troops, in an operation codenamed Arc of Fire.
With the seizure of more than 500 truckloads of illegally-felled timber, this is just the beginning of an anti-deforestation drive which is anticipated to last several months.
It follows the release of new figures in January revealing that rainforest loss in the Brazilian Amazon had accelerated in late 2007, following three years of declining figures.
The challenge of controlling illegal activity in the region has been further revealed in a new report, showing that an area of the Amazon more than six times the size of the UK is covered by questionable land claims - in other words, nobody knows to whom it belongs.
The swoop on Tailândia began last week, with the confiscation by federal environment agency officials of around 13,000 cubic metres of timber, worth about £1.5m, said to have been felled illegally.
The action brought hundreds of local people onto the streets in protest, as the town is virtually entirely dependent for employment on around 90 timber companies operating in the area. At one point, several officials were held hostage and the main highway through the town blockaded.
The arrival of around 200 heavily-armed police and special troops this week has enabled the enforcement effort to continue unimpeded, with officials engaged in a complex paper trail to determine just how much of the wood is illegal.
The vast majority was destined for the internal Brazilian market, with less than 20 per cent of wood from the Amazon going for export.
Tailândia lies in a notoriously lawless part of the state of Pará in the Eastern Amazon, and has a population of 67,000. It grew up around the activities of loggers some 40 years ago, and is estimated to have lost about 60 per cent of its original forest cover.
The wood is used not just for timber, but also for charcoal made in hundreds of small kilns to supply the iron and steelmaking industry.
With some 6,000 local people already facing unemployment as a result of the crackdown, the authorities face a major challenge finding alternative jobs for a town that largely owes its existence to illegal exploitation of the rainforest.
However, Tailândia is being used as a demonstration by the government that it is serious about clamping down on deforestation in areas that have been virtually abandoned by the state.
Operation Arc of Fire is set to progress through the other 35 municipalities identified by the government as the problem areas for deforestation, and where special measures have been introduced to try to bring illegal activity under control.
One key step is a requirement for all large landowners in these areas to re-register their properties, in an attempt to end the endemic problem of fraudulent property claims that are often used to justify clearing rainforest for cattle pasture.
But the scale of the problem is revealed in a new report published by a respected Brazilian research organisation, the Institute for Man and the Environment in the Amazon (Imazon).
It estimates that despite three recent attempts to regularise land holdings in the Amazon, some 1.5 million square kilometres, or more than six times the land area of the UK, is under uncertain ownership.
"The federal government still does not know who owns a large part of the Amazon," the report concludes.
The lead author of the report, Paulo Barreto of Imazon, said the ability of ranchers to move freely into public forest land using false property claims made it cheaper for them to deforest new areas for grazing, rather than increase productivity in already-cleared areas.
"Without clear identification of who is owner of the land, the government has difficulty applying penalties against those who carry out illegal deforestation," said Mr Barreto.
Another measure announced this week as part of the crackdown following the deforestation upturn is a new rule designed to deny finance to those destroying the forest. From July, all banks operating in the Amazon will be forced to demand documents showing that land is legally held and that environmental laws have been followed, before offering credit to farmers and other rural businesses.
The test of whether these measures have been effective will come later this year when the annual deforestation figures, covering the period from August to July, are published. The government is desperately hoping it will show a continued fall from last year's figure of 11,000 square kilometres, the lowest since 1992.
With the January 24th announcement that some 7,000 square kilometres of rainforest had already been lost by December, it is going to be a major challenge to keep Amazon deforestation on a downward trend.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/06/eabrazil106.xml
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