Brazil has unveiled its plan to encourage farmers in the Amazon region to develop sustainable sources of income and turn their backs on the illegal logging that is ravaging the rainforest.
The Sustainable Amazon Plan includes £300m in low-interest loans that will be made available to farmers.
Some 40,000 families who were formerly involved in logging will also get social security and unemployment benefits.
The loans will be offered at 4% annual interest, well below Brazil's benchmark 11.75% rate, said the environment minister, Marina Silva.
The lush Amazon rainforest covers 1.6m square miles, an area larger than western Europe, and most of the rainforest is in Brazil. About 20% of the original forest has been razed by ranchers, loggers and developers.
"The Amazon belongs to humanity and produces benefits for the entire planet, but it's Brazil that cares for the Amazon, Brazil that decides what to do with the Amazon," Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said yesterday.
A recent surge in illegal deforestation threatens to reverse three years of improvement, leading the government to boost efforts to combat illegal logging. The plan is an attempt to reconcile economic development with conservation.
"We are reaffirming the concept that the Amazon is not only a mass of trees, but also of the more than 24 million Brazilians who live there," said the national integration minister, Geddel Vieira Lima, who is responsible with coordinating rural development.
The plan also aims to improve Amazon highways and river transport, expand ports and broaden access to electricity, Lula said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/10/forests.brazil
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