The preservation of the Amazon rainforest must be balanced against the need for Brazil's economic development President Lula said in a speech in Peru last weekend.
Speaking just days after the resignation of Brazil's highly respected environment minister, Marina Silva, Lula criticised European countries for "promising help which never arrives" and said that the need to preserve the environment must be balanced against the needs of people who live in the Amazon region to survive.
Lula's remarks will deepen fears that the departure of Marina Silva will accelerate the deforestation of the Amazon, which some argue is now approaching a "tipping point" of destruction where its rain-making capacity could start to fail and affect the regional climate.
When he was first elected president in 2003, Lula promised to take action to defend the Amazon, and the appointment of Marina Silva was intended to send a powerful signal of the government's commitment. Like Chico Mendes, the environmentalist who was murdered by ranchers in 1988, she grew up in the Amazon and was a member of Lula's Brazilian Workers Party (PT). Her family were rubber-tappers and she did not learn to read until she was a teenager. She then went on to university and became Brazil's youngest senator at the age of 36.
Although deforestation of the Amazon fell for the first three years of Lula's period in office there was a sharp increase last year, coinciding with the rise in global food prices.
Silva also became increasingly frustrated after a series of fights with other ministries in which she has found herself increasingly overruled. She lost a battle with the ministry of agriculture over the use of land that has already been cleared in the Amazon for farming. She was overruled in her opposition to the licensing of genetically modified crops and again in her opposition to nuclear power. She has also been marginalised by Dilma Rousseff, Lula's chief of staff, who is leading the government's flagship programme for accelerated growth and by the controversial appointment of Roberto Mangabeira Unger as "minister for long-term planning".
Silva was accused of dragging her feet on granting environmental licences and delaying the construction of power plants at Madeira river, an Amazon river tributary. She was referred to as the "minister for catfish" when she threatened to resign over the issue.
Lula promised last week that the government's environmental policy would not change as a result of Silva's departure. He reminded reporters that she has been a friend and comrade for 30 years and called her the "most qualified person in the world" to do the job. Her replacement Carlos Minc, is a co-founder of the Green party in Brazil.
However, it seems likely that Minc will be prevailed upon to adopt a more "flexible" posture towards hydroelectric and other infrastructure projects. Brazil's current rate of economic growth means that it is heading for a power crisis soon unless ways can be found to increase its electricity production. The loss of Silva is undoubtedly a blow to Brazil's international environmental credentials, but Lula is probably balancing that against the damage that power blackouts could soon do to the government's domestic credibility.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2008/05/the_rainforests_last_chance.html
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