In the steps of the slave traders

A wooden sailing ship is taking adventurers along the Brazilian coast, writes Mike Heard.

Intrepid travellers get the opportunity next year to explore the coast of Brazil in a wooden sailing ship.

A 40-metre vessel, built in the Amazon jungle, sails between Rio de Janeiro and the Unesco World Heritage town of Paraty, about 200 kilometres to the south.

En route, passengers can go ashore to swim and snorkel, explore villages and towns and hike through rainforests filled with monkeys and armadillos.

Paraty is noted for its well-preserved 17th-century colonial homes.

A former port for the shipment of gold and diamonds to Europe, it was also the centre of an area producing sugar-cane liquor and at one time had 250 distilleries for a population of only 16,000. The end of the slave trade in 1888 saw the population drop to about 600.

Tourism revived Paraty's fortunes in the mid-1970s when a highway linking it with Rio de Janeiro was completed.

The two-masted sailing ship, Tocorime Pamatojari (Adventurous Spirit), sleeps up to 16 passengers and has five crew.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/travel/activities--interests/cruising/in-the-steps-of-the-slave-traders/2008/10/15/1223750091984.html

After Acai, What Is Amazon's Next "Cinderella Fruit"?

Once obscure Amazon fruits like açaí are riding health claims to supermarket success. Could a scaly palm fruit with three times the vitamin A of carrots be the rainforest's next popular export?

In the rainforests of Peru's remote Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve, mothers don't make kids eat their carrots. Instead, kids munch on aguaje, a crisp, neon yellow palm fruit covered in maroon scales. It tastes a bit like a carrot, but packs three times the vitamin A punch.

Aguaje is just one of more than a hundred wild and domesticated fruits available to people each year in this 8,000-square-mile chunk of protected Amazon wetland at the confluence of two rivers in northeastern Peru.

And with so much variety and abundance, it's not surprising that these fruits form the centerpiece of the local diet. The reserve's 100,000 residents depend on them for many nutrients—like vitamins, protein, and oils—that the rest of us normally get from a variety of other foods, including vegetables and nuts.

Money Trees?

Fruits also serve as an important source of income for the residents—especially aguaje. It generates $4.6 million every year in the markets of Iquitos, the nearest city—more than any other indigenous fruit from the Peruvian Amazon.

While U.S. farmers markets might sell a dozen or two different kinds of fruit in any given week, the Iquitos market boasts nearly 200, with varied tastes, colors, shapes, and textures: spiky yellow rinds, crunchy seeds, and orange pulp.

But outside the Amazon region, their popularity is limited. Although the Amazon has occasionally yielded commercially valuable fruits, such as the antioxidant-rich açaí added to gourmet juices and the caffeine-charged guarana used in energy drinks, international markets have yet to plumb most of the bounty of indigenous fruits growing in lush forests along rivers.

Beyond Peru and parts of Brazil, the aguaje's supercarrot possibilities remain largely unknown.

Could that change? One expert thinks it's possible. Outside the Amazon, few know more about this region's wild and cultivated fruits than Nigel Smith. The Venezuelan-born geographer, a professor at the University of Florida, has devoted much of his four-decade career to the Amazon region.

In recent years he's examined just about every aspect of the obscure fruits that blanket Peru's rich floodplain forests: how, where, and why they're grown; who consumes them; their nutritional and cultural value; and, of course, how they taste. (The sweet, "sublime" pulp of wild macambillo, a dull orange fruit, is his favorite.)

Whether it's the aguaje or a tangy-sweet relative of the cacao called the cupuaçu or macambo seeds, a crunchy new alternative to peanuts, Smith has studied them all with an eye toward promoting conservation, boosting sustainable farming in a threatened region, and supporting local residents' livelihoods.

The Land Squeeze

The past three decades have seen unprecedented human migration into the Pacaya- Samiria reserve, part of an area Smith calls the "epicenter of wild-fruit consumption in the Amazon."

Other pressures, like hunting, logging, and unsustainable fishing, are on the rise as well. As these pressures grow, Smith believes small farmers hold a key to managing and protecting the region.

With support from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, the MacArthur Foundation and the Moore Foundation, he and his team, including Peruvian botanist Rodolfo Vazquez, spent six months in Pacaya-Samiria over several years documenting 148 different fruit species. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

They studied how small landowners in a dozen communities use and depend on these fruits, many of which large-scale farmers ignore.

"I'm interested in landscapes where individual landowners are in control," Smith says. "I think that's the great frontier for Amazon conservation."

Over the years, he notes, small-scale farmers have helped shape the forests where they pick and cultivate fruits by "rearranging the biological furniture" in ways that encourage biodiversity.

These farmers "have retained a biologically diverse landscape that benefits not only wildlife but also their own livelihoods," Smith adds.

Crop Insurance

One way Pacaya-Samiria residents have accomplished that is by domesticating potentially valuable wild fruit species, including macambo seeds and vitamin A-rich sapote.

They often plant and grow several at once in diverse forested plots, a strategy known as agroforestry. The combination of crops, both annual and perennial, helps the farmers avert risk.

Should one crop succumb to inclement weather, disease, or a pest outbreak, the other crops would likely survive, ensuring that the farmers have both food and income.

But Amazon experts agree that more needs to be done.

So far the Peruvian Amazon has been spared much of the deforestation caused by the timber trade and cattle ranching in Brazil, yet Smith warns that the "floodplains are going to come under increasing development pressure in the next few decades."

Overharvesting of fruits would threaten trees. And logging is of enormous concern throughout the entire Amazon region, says Douglas C. Daly, an expert on Amazonian botany at the New York Botanical Garden.

That's one reason Smith's work is important. "If we can educate people about the wealth of diversity, as opposed to just the wealth of timber, we can change things," Daly says.

Finding the Next "Cinderella Fruit"

This is where native fruits may come in. Some of the Amazon's little-known produce has the flavor, the nutrition, or the novelty to tempt commercial producers abroad, and Smith hopes that growing international awareness of the dietary importance of fruit could help create a new hit.

His knowledge is helping at least one entrepreneur take steps to market bottled water flavored with Amazon fruits. Jeff Moats, CEO of the Equa Water Corporation in Naples, Florida, plans to begin building a factory next year in Brazil's Amazon region to process fruits local residents can grow sustainably within forests.

But competition from carbonated soft drinks, a $40-billion industry in the U.S. alone, presents a formidable obstacle to anyone wanting to sell Amazon fruit juices. Entrepreneurs "cannot match the marketing muscle and advertising dollars of the major soda producers," Smith says.

Beyond this, fruit supplies can be erratic, and the Amazon region is still struggling with the basic issues of hygiene, infrastructure, and quality control.

So what are the chances you'll someday see vitamin-rich aguaje in your supermarket's produce section alongside carrots, tomatoes, and apples?

It's hard to predict, but Smith is encouraged by the example of the once obscure açaí, which was enjoyed in Brazil long before becoming a hit in eco- and nutrition-savvy foreign markets.

He also notes the success in Japan of the camu camu, a sour maroon berry with 30 times the vitamin C of oranges. The aguaje might become what he calls a "Cinderella fruit" since it fits some of the criteria that have made these other two fruits successful: It's already popular and abundant locally, easily incorporated into products like juice, and relatively simple to transport.

"The production of fruit is vital to the life of an Amazonian person and is of enormous nutritional importance," emphasizes Walter Wust, a Peruvian forester and environmental journalist who helped Smith document the Pacaya-Samiria fruits.

If Smith has his way, more of that bounty will someday nourish the rest of the world as well.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/92827098.html

Looking for Brazil's Moon Under Water

In 1946 George Orwell wrote an article in which he described his favorite pub which was called The Moon Under Water. After outlining all the features that made it perfect (including, believe it or not, that it sold loose tobacco as well as cigarettes) he ended by revealing that it did not actually exist as it was too perfect.

Well, smoky English pubs are not my scene but finding an idyllic hidey hole by the sea has been a dream since I first visited Brazil more than 20 years ago. About two years ago I finally found a place which matches a lot of my desires and I have just booked my fourth stay there for the upcoming holidays.

The place is not in some distant, isolated spot but only about 100 miles from São Paulo and is fairly well known. It is next to a small town which is barely touched by commercialism. My fear is that this will change and it will become more popular, condominiums will start being built, fancy restaurants and nightclubs will spring up, and the whole relaxed atmosphere will disappear. It will become like Ubatuba or Boiçucanga, admittedly great places but too much like São Paulo sur mer for my liking.

Like these two places, "my" beach is also on the northern coast somewhere between Santos and Rio de Janeiro. The main road bypasses it, thanks to some mangrove swamps, and the beach itself is basically a crescent-shaped cove about a half a mile long bordered on one side by the mouth of a small river backed by a steep hill and on the other side by a rocky crag.

Looking inland you see the dense Atlantic rainforest rising up into the Serra do Mar mountains which are often shrouded in an ethereal mist as if to remind you that you are in the middle of the steamy tropics. Some scattered islands a mile or so offshore complete the idyllic location and view.

It is a typical Brazilian beach in miniature, marked by the habits and schedules which define beach life here. The kids paddle on one stretch while the surfers have their favorite spot where they can flirt with the girls, the footballers appear at the same time every afternoon to play on "their" stretch and people are always strolling along the water, the joggers early in the morning and the young lovers in the evening.

There are a couple of stalls you can get a caipirinha and plate of shrimps. It is spoiled to an extent by hustlers trying to sell you things you don't want and by the noise of water skiers and motorboats but overall these are a minor inconvenience. Another big plus is that the place is safe. Outside the tourist season, it is empty and even when it gets busy there is usually enough space to stretch out far from others or hop over to one of the islands.

The mangrove swamps restrict building and there are only a couple of houses with direct access to the beach. There are some older buildings on the hills, one of which is a bar which provides a pleasant resting spot after climbing the crag and scrambling around on the huge basalt rocks marking the natural frontier with the neighboring beach.

This geographical location gives you the feeling that you are completely cut off even though the main road is only a few hundred yards away. In fact, the beaches on either side run alongside the road for miles and miles. This means that if you feel like a change you just need to cross over and will find yourself back in "civilization".

The town consists of older houses where the local people, known as caiçaras, live in and more recently built weekend getaways belonging to Paulistanos. The locals are the descendants of the mixture of Indians, Africans and Portuguese who lived here for hundreds of years before the racial mixture of São Paulo was transformed by the arrival of millions of immigrants from Europe, the Middle East and Japan about a century ago.

You occasionally even see full-blooded Indians, a very rare sight indeed in the city of São Paulo. The locals are small subsistence farmers, fishermen, laborers and many now make their living from the tourist trade. Some of their homes are little more than shacks and, despite the holiday atmosphere, there is still quite a lot of poverty.

There are a couple of good pousadas and houses with rooms to let but no hotels. There is no supermarket or bank, not even an ATM, and only a few shops and restaurants. The eating places serve up simple fish dishes, rice, potatoes, beans and salads. There is also a pizzeria and ice cream parlor and a couple of small bars used by the locals.

Oddly enough, there is no Catholic church but there is a small evangelical church which highlights how these Protestant groups are making inroads into the Catholic Church's traditional strongholds.

That's about it in a nutshell. If you live in São Paulo and are familiar with the area you may even know the place. I have tried not to exaggerate the attraction of the place and realize that this is not everyone's idea of a beach retreat. For some, it would still be too built-up and touristy while for others it would be too quiet.

However, it is perfect for someone who needs to be close to the city and it is less than 30 minutes from the more sophisticated resorts. For this reason, the price of houses and land are high. I was told that a modest house in a prime location was sold recently for about 3 million Brazilian reais (US$ 1.3 million). At first I was skeptical but later when I started checking out prices for myself I changed my mind.

I have visited beaches all over Brazil in these two decades and have had mixed experiences. However, in closing, I would like to share two special memories from opposite perspectives.

Once I visited a place where an acquaintance was building a house. It was in an isolated spot on the border of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro states near Angra dos Reis which could only be accessed by boat and we had to wade out to sea, balancing supplies on our heads. A local woman cooked the main meal for a group of us one hot night between Christmas and New Year - rice and fish, washed down by bottles of beer.

We slept - or tried to sleep - on the ground listening to the surf and covering our heads with blankets to keep the mosquitoes out. I hated every minute at the time but in retrospect, it has become a favorite memory.

Another time I stayed in a small resort about 20 miles north of Salvador in Bahia in the home of a kindly Brazilian doctor who loaned me his place for a week. One beautiful night I walked through the palms to the strand and there I really did see the moon under water as the sea reflected a great silver orb high in the heavens shining out of a cloudless sky down on Brazil, bestowing God's blessing on this wonderful land.

John Fitzpatrick is a Scottish writer and consultant with long experience of Brazil. He is based in São Paulo and runs his own company Celtic Comunicações. He can be contacted at jf@celt.com.br.YouThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it can read more by him at his site www.brazilpoliticalcomment.com.br.

Brazil has superpower visions

Giant offshore discovery could transform nation, but hurdles loom

Four miles under the ocean's surface off Brazil's lush coast lie billions of barrels of recently discovered light crude — a treasure that could transform the country into an oil superpower.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called it "a gift from God" and pledged to end chronic poverty and narrow the country's broad gap between the rich and the poor.

But before rhetoric becomes reality, Brazil must first get to the underwater reserves, among the world's deepest, and then manage a massive influx of wealth — a formidable task that has left other national economies awash in corruption and even greater gaps between the rich and poor.

Spending the proceeds

Jockeying for a cut of the proceeds has already begun.

Military officials are calling for increased military spending, stressing the need for a nuclear submarine program and new fighter jet fleet to protect the oil from rivals.

The nine fields discovered in the last year are thought to hold 50 billion to 80 billion barrels of light crude — more than four times Brazil's current proven reserves. With the find, Brazil could supply all of its own needs for nearly a century or become one of the world's top oil exporters.

Even getting to that point will test the state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro, which has decades of experience in deep-water drilling.

The oil fields will be the most complicated and costly it has ever developed. Analysts say the project will require at least a $600 billion investment over 30 years.

The deep-water reservoirs lie some 185 miles offshore in the Atlantic, more than a mile below the ocean's surface and under another 2.5 miles of earth and corrosive salt. The salt beds can break loose and shear off piping, making it one of the toughest substances to drill.

Given those conditions, rough ocean currents and floating rigs, the technology required to tap Brazil's so-called "pre-salt" oil is on par with that needed to land a man on the moon, said Eric Smith a drilling expert at the Entergy-Tulane Energy Institute at Tulane University in New Orleans.

"If you were doing this with a drill from atop the Empire State building, about 1,000 feet up, you'd be trying to hit a target on 34th Street the size of a quarter," Smith said.

"Then you've got to go down an equivalent distance to reach the oil, and it might not be on 34th Street, it might be on 42nd Street."

Murky view

Petrobras will use seismic imaging to map the reserves, but even that will not provide a clear view under the salt, which blurs images, said Judson Jacobs, director of upstream technology at Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Cambridge, Mass.

Drilled wells must also withstand crushing pressure of extreme depths, Jacobs said.

But there are logistical problems beyond engineering.

The recent record prices for oil have led to global shortages of drilling equipment just when Brazil needs it most. The country will have to rent 138 drilling platforms — or build them for as much as $1.7 billion each — and find at least 200 ships to transport oil and gas over the next 30 years, a mid-September study by Brazil's national development bank found.

The financial spillover could begin with Brazil's dormant shipping industry and create tens of thousands of jobs, Silva has said.

Silva appointed a Cabinet-level committee to draft plans for restructuring the oil industry to accommodate rapid growth. That committee is expected to recommend a new state-owned oil company negotiate contracts for the pre-salt finds.

Still, some consider that a return to nationalism — and an unfair rebuff of Petrobras shareholders, whose capital largely financed the most recent discoveries and who expect returns.

Petrobras will have to work with private partners, more likely through production-sharing deals than the current concession contracts it now favors, said Christopher Garman, head of Latin America research for the New York-based Eurasia Group consulting firm.

Fears of nationalism

Garman called fears of nationalism that once dominated Brazil's energy industry a bit overblown. Laws passed in 1997 broke the government's monopoly over Petrobras, allowing foreign investors to buy stakes in 60 percent of the company. About a million Brazilian citizens hold shares, too.

Brazilian officials insist any new oil company would not actually drill, but negotiate production-sharing agreements between Petrobras and private partners, which already include Royal Dutch Shell, BG Group, and a division of Galp Energia, Portugal's biggest energy company. Petrobras, the dominant player in Brazil's energy sector, would retain its leadership position.

If oil hovers around $100 a barrel, the pre-salt fields would yield at least $5 trillion, doubling the oil sector's share of Brazil's economy to 20 percent, according to Garman. It would also triple currency reserves to $600 billion, the president of Brazil's central bank said.

Taxes and royalties from Petrobras were $34 billion, or about 4 percent of government income in 2007.

Bad examples

How the money is spent will have serious ramifications. A deluge of oil money has fueled labor abuses and economic imbalances that hit the poor hardest in many nations, such as Nigeria. It has also triggered rapid inflation and even overvalued local currencies, like the Netherlands saw in the 1960s. In those and other cases, the result was slashed exports and unemployment.

Silva has suggested Brazil might invest a good portion of its oil revenue, as Norway has done, rather than pump it into the economy. Treasury officials in May unveiled plans to funnel pre-salt income into a sovereign investment fund, which could ultimately hold between $10 billion and $20 billion.

But with 57 million Brazilians living in poverty, the government may spend much of its oil money to help the poor and boost education — though no new programs have been outlined.

During a visit to an offshore oil platform, Silva promised that oil income would be "a direct bridge between nature's riches and the eradication of poverty."

"We will transform a perishable wealth, like oil and gas, into a source of permanent wealth for the Brazilian people," he said, clad in a Petrobras hard hat after dipping his fingers into some of the first crude pumped from the pre-salt area last month.

"God has given Brazil one more chance," he said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/6052572.html

Contemporary Efforts To Address The Amazon Paradox

Contemporary Brazilian Government Efforts to Address the Amazon Paradox

Criticism of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva's handling of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest by many foreign observers does not consider the severity of Brazil's need to develop the region's economy. There is, however, considerable substance to critics' arguments that his administration repeatedly favors an infrastructural and economic development strategy over a conservationist policy. Nonetheless, the Brazilian president is confronted with a difficult set of circumstances made evident by the bitter debates within Lula's administration, which came to a head with the May 13 resignation of the dejected Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva.

Although it is difficult to anticipate how Brasília's current measures will affect deforestation in the Amazon, the most important ecological initiative of Lula's six-year tenure thus far has been the Plan for a Sustainable Amazon (PAS). The document was originally signed in 2004 and later enhanced in 2007, but its implementation only began this year. It is characteristically more pro-economic development than pro-environmental preservation. However, the PAS and related initiatives such as the 2004 Plan of Action for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon (PPCDAM) could potentially slow deforestation by designating new areas as nature reserves, combating illegal logging and farming, and eradicating falsified land deeds throughout the region. Overall, Brasília deserves some applause for developing a policy that responds to the international outcry against deforestation. Unfortunately, the needs of a growing economy and agricultural sector, in concert with high commodity prices, conflicts markedly with environmental groups' unwavering commitment to preserving the region crucial to the survival of mankind.

Marina Silva's Departure and Carlos Minc's Inauguration

For some critics, Minister Silva's resignation, coupled with new reports of increasing rates of deforestation, signify a lack of progress in the Brazilian government's modest crusade to conserve the Amazon. Silva had been considered the essential spokesperson within Lula's administration for the environmental movement. Her six-year tenure as Minister of the Environment was littered with tough battles against powerful agribusiness and development interests that ultimately would destroy the Amazon, the area where she was raised as the daughter of rubber-tappers.

To understand Silva's ouster, one must take into account the way Brazilian politics function. The country's political system is a complex, relational game of corporatism at every level and Lula's cabinet is no exception. The enormous executive branch currently contains more than 35 ministries--and is known for its non-stop inter-ministry feuding. These ministries, when not given the leeway to work autonomously, fight for the ear of the president on nearly every issue. When dealing with a controversial issue like Amazon conservation, it is easy to see how Silva was overwhelmed by other ministers' promotion of development and business in the region.

Sergio Leitão of Greenpeace-Brazil said, "The Minister is leaving because the pressure on her for taking the measures she took against deforestation has become unbearable." However, Silva's replacement, Carlos Minc, says he will continue Silva's battles by pursuing strict policies for the conservation of the Amazon. These will include new efforts to seize crops and livestock from illegally cleared Amazonian forests, and banning the sale of soybeans grown on such illegal lands.

While these measures are stringent, Minc will have to contend with the same powerful agribusiness interests and other infrastructural development plans that frustrated Silva. Reportedly, she was outraged by various schemes to construct hydroelectric dams throughout the Amazon watershed, including a planned dam on the Rio Madeira, a massive Amazon tributary. Minc is likely to enter into conflict with Roberto Mangabeira Unger, head of Brazil's newest cabinet post, the Strategy and Coordination Ministry. Unger, a former Harvard professor, is the minister in charge of coordinating the PAS--a position which has given him the Herculean, and perhaps contradictory, task of developing the economy and infrastructure of the Amazon region while conserving the rainforest.

In 2004 the Brazilian federal government inaugurated the PAS, hoping to collaborate with state and local governments as well as the private sector. Some key objectives for the plan were (as translated from Portuguese): "to implement a new model of development in the Brazilian Amazon, focusing on the appreciation of (or valuing of) the potential of its enormous natural and socio-cultural patrimony, increasing the viability of dynamic and innovative economic activities with insertion [of these activities] in regional, national and international markets, and the sustainable use of natural resources with the maintenance of ecological equilibrium."

Minister Unger will have the most influence in Lula's cabinet when it comes to Amazon policy. Unger trusts that economic development of the Amazon is possible while simultaneously conserving the resources of the forest. His characteristically equivocal statements are tantamount to the ambiguities of the former mission statement of the PAS, although it predated his tenure as minister. In an interview published by the BBC on May 15, Unger stressed the Brazilian government's focus on creating economic opportunities for the 25 million Brazilians living in the Amazon region. Unger believes the people living in the Amazon need to be given an organized economic option, otherwise they will create economic opportunity in a disorganized manner, leading to further deforestation. There are two poles of thought toward Amazon conservation: one advocates that the entire forest go untouched and become a "park," while the other views the entire region as open to "disorganized low-intensity ranching." Between these two extremes lies a "coherent and effective economic strategy," presumably the government's prevailing strategy as incorporated into the PAS. He says the government will maintain its "fundamental commitment" to three objectives: "sustainable preservation, defense and development."

His promotion of the PAS is based on the envisaged large-scale development of roads, waterways, and dams, which would provide better trade options for Brazilians in the region. However, the question remains: how can integration and development of the economy of the Amazon occur without significant deforestation? The government is taking measures to fight deforestation through the PPCDAM and projects such as Carlos Minc's "pirate beef" operation [described below in "Recent Progress in the Conservation Struggle"]. Additionally, one of the themes of the PAS (as translated from Portuguese) is "organization to combat deforestation in the Amazon region [and to combat the use of] falsified land title documents." But will the implemented measures be sufficient? Though its proponents say there is a desperate need to integrate the Amazon into the national and international economy, the development of transportation infrastructure in the region (for example, the plan to pave the Amazon-crossing highway from Cuiabá to Santarém) will inevitably lead to deforestation and environmental degradation in spite of the government's artful strategy not to acknowledge this. The building of roads and waterways through the Amazon will provide greater access to the interior of the forest for people who wish to illegally clear lands. The Amazon is so enormous, occupying nearly half of Brazil, that to sufficiently police its thoroughfares, the government would need a substantial force and huge amount of funding.

Overall, a stalwart environmentalist might say that the gains in recent Brazilian federal government policy (PAS and PPCDAM) regarding Amazon conservation do not in any way counter the negative aspects of PAS-related development projects that will inevitably cause deforestation and environmental decline. However, Minister Unger says these projects are necessary to provide economic opportunity in the region, and the rhetoric of the PAS claims innovative technology will be used to conduct such projects with minimal environmental impact. Still, environmentalists correctly argue that any such development is detrimental. Also, it remains to be seen whether the highest degree of technology used for projects will, in fact, have a low environmental impact. Will such technology be available to the projects? And will, as is often the case, technology be sacrificed for cost-efficiency?

Recalling the history of Brazilian government culture in the 1970s and 1980s, one encounters a Brazilian model of "development" that was environmentally devastating. Governor Blairo Maggi (a controversial figure at the forefront of debate on the Amazon paradox) noted in a speech in Washington on June 10, 2008 that government programs at the time promoted exploitation with no regard to environmental cost. Maggi added, however, that attitudes have changed including his. The lack of past awareness of the environmental impact of development in the 1970s and 1980s was reminiscent of similar ignorance in U.S. history in various eras of frontier life when people falsely sensed that they lived in a land of endless bounty.

PAS Conservation Efforts and Other Recent Progress in the Conservation Struggle

PAS cannot be criticized without noting its important steps towards conservation. Recently, social programs have been developed within the PAS to assist those who formerly made a living by clearing the forest. As part of the PAS, the government is creating incentives for those engaged in illegal logging to change their economic livelihood. Forty thousand families that previously generated income from logging will be given social security and unemployment benefits. The government also announced its intentions to allocate a total of ₤300m in loans to farmers so as to encourage forest-clearers to cease their illegal activity and engage in sustainable farming.

The Brazilian government is also making conservation efforts outside of PAS that deserve praise. On June 4, Minc announced that he is implementing new measures in a program called the "Pirate Beef" operation. This is a plan to seize cattle, grain, and produce ranched or farmed on illegally cleared Amazon lands and donate it to the government's Zero Hunger program. The plan will be carried out by officers from the Brazilian government's institute for the environment with help from the Federal Police. In recent years the two organizations have increasingly cooperated to fight illegal logging and charcoal production.

Current Status of Amazon Deforestation

Several studies have shown a recent increase in the per annum rate of deforestation of the Amazon after several years of lowering rates. A Deter (translated as detection of deforestation in real time) report states that after three years of decline, rates of deforestation are set to rise this year. It cites a loss of 1,123 square kilometers in April of 2008. Several reports found 7,000 square kilometers of new agricultural lands which had been converted in the second half of 2007. This is a significant increase from the deforestation rate for the year August 2006-August 2007, which reflected a total loss of 11,224 square km. The activist environmental group Greenpeace also said that deforestation was set to worsen this year. Another Deter study found that between May 2007 and April 2008, the Amazon lost 9,495 square kilometers of forest cover, an area six times the size of the city of São Paulo. Specialists noted that when these statistics were being collected, the worst was yet to come as forest clearing is at its greatest tempo during the dry "burning-season" months from June to September.

The Paradox Remains

Saving the Amazon Rainforest while simultaneously developing the region's economy remains a paradox. International policymakers as well as environmentalists dealing with Brazil must, of course, respect the nation's sovereignty when promoting rational policy initiatives. Many Brazilians have found rhetoric by such persons offensive. Statements such as Al Gore's famous 1989 claim that "(c)ontrary to what Brazilians think, the Amazon is not their property, it belongs to all of us," or recent criticisms in both U.S. and British news sources that fault Brasília could be counter-effective, no matter how accurate such hortative statements may be. The Lula administration already seeks to strengthen Brazil's international profile for positive images and to continue its regional influence, while at the same time decreasing its reliance on the United States. Such criticism could make Lula and future administrations develop a penchant to distance themselves from these critics, even if it means making misguided policy decisions that favor short-run economic solutions at the price of lasting environmental preservation.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0807/S00290.htm

Biofuels and the Global Food Crisis - Who Is to Blame?

U.S.-Brazil tension, a relatively recent development, resurfaced during the UN World Food Summit in Rome on June 3-5, encouraging the booming Brazilian sugar-based ethanol market to increase its new development projects. This rift represents a de facto counter move against the far less-efficient U.S. model predicated on corn-based ethanol production. Following the summit, Brazilian officials began a weeklong tour, stopping in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, during which they discussed a set of commercial agreements that will boost multilateral cooperation with several African countries. The trade agreements, projected to begin in 2009, include an expansion in ethanol investment, urbanism, air and sea transport, and cooperation in professional training between the two regions.

In a statement that appeared in Brazzil magazine, Brazilian Secretary of Development Ivan Ramalho remarked that he hoped the meetings would enhance trade with other countries in order to diminish Brazil’s over-reliance on the U.S. market. Brazil’s recent trade initiatives with other developing countries have emerged largely due to the reluctance of some developed nations to lower trade subsidies. This impedes Brazil’s ability to trade, adding significantly to the current debate over rising food prices. In an official statement released after the first set of meetings, Michel Alaby, Secretary General of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, called for solidarity among countries suffering from rising food prices and demanded that developed countries, especially the U.S. and Europe, eliminate international trade barriers in the agricultural sector (Brazzil Magazine). With the emerging agreements, Brazilian officials hope to call attention to the U.S.’ highly inefficient corn-based ethanol production at the height of a snowballing food crisis. The government aspires to be a strong actor in the midst of the food crisis and plans to show the rest of the world the benefits of Brazil’s efficient sugar ethanol market, while it professes to be executing projects stalling the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

The Ramifications of American Subsidies and the Growing World Food Crisis

On June 16, following petitions from the Brazilian government, the World Trade Organization (WTO) condemned the U.S. for its agricultural subsidies that unfairly favor domestic producers. The WTO largely blamed Washington’s practices for the world food crisis that may leave an additional 100 million people hungry by the end of 2008. The WTO criticized U.S. actions as “an attempt to disrespect international commercial regulation with subsidies that drastically reduced domestic prices and could have been seriously damaging for developing nations like Brazil” (New York Times).

During the Food Summit, which was hosted by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), U.S. representatives argued in favor of their protectionist policies, claiming that biofuels are environmentally safer than petroleum, and also benefit farmers, entrepreneurs, and consumers. Under pressure from formidable agricultural lobby groups, the U.S. Congress recently placed a 54-cent per gallon tariff on sugar-based ethanol, hoping to encourage domestic ethanol production. As a result of the tariff, U.S. ethanol production increases and Brazilian ethanol exports fell significantly in 2007. Efforts to remove the tariffs have faced strong resistance from both corn and sugar lobbyists, impeding any kind of remedial actions on surging grain prices. As economist C. Ford Runge, a commodity and trade specialist at the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy, confirms, “If you want to take some of the pressure off the U.S. market, the obvious thing to do is lower that tariff and let some Brazilian ethanol come in.” Supporters of this policy believe that increasing Brazilian ethanol production would push down overall energy costs.

Since the Summit, the UN has called on the international community to increase its assistance to developing countries severely affected by the current food crisis. UN officials have planned visits to several African countries to discuss possible food security solutions. In addition, the FAO published several reports criticizing the U.S. and Europe for unnecessarily subsidizing crops and inadvertently driving up food prices while shifting food production in less-developed countries where small farmers cannot effectively compete. The Guardian noted from the reports that the U.S. government is currently spending $7 billion annually on subsidies, while the European Union spends around ∈43 billion ($67.5 billion) (BBC News). A striking example can be seen in France, where the average French cow receives more financial support than half the world’s population earns daily. With rich countries dominating global trade that greatly affects ethanol, FAO General Director Jacques Diouf says that funding for agricultural programs in developing countries increasingly suffers with agricultural aid to poor countries having dropped 56 percent from 1980 to 2005. “Now more than ever private decisions being made about food production into ethanol are affecting all parts of the globe, with little response from the leaders that could do the most,” Diouf observed.

One main concern over how biofuel policy disrupts the market is the current excessive power that interest groups have in the debate on subsidies in developed nations (Runge). Instead of catering to special interests, U.S. politicians would be well advised to cooperate with other countries. While the UN works diligently to halt the growing food shortage, world leaders refuse to amend restrictions on food exports. This negligence is inexcusable on both economic and humanitarian grounds.

Not All Ethanol is The Same

In defense of sugar-based ethanol, President Lula stated that the U.S. misguidedly produces corn for ethanol instead of other agricultural products, while keeping subsidies high to benefit U.S. multinational companies. Lula argues that this is another case where the U.S. keeps developing countries from playing an influential role in the world economy. He claimed, “I am sorry to see that many of those who blame ethanol, including from sugarcane, for the high price of food are the same ones who for decades have maintained protectionist policies to the detriment of farmers in poor countries and of consumers in the entire world.”

In comparison with corn-based ethanol, sugar-based ethanol is more efficient, cheaper to produce, and uses less valuable land. According to the World Bank’s, Biofuels: the Promises and the Risks, the U.S. ethanol industry currently uses 10 million hectares, while Brazil only uses 3.6 million of such terrain and produces eight to ten times more energy than that produced from corn. Brazil does not subsidize sugar, which helps sustain global sugar prices. Whereas corn prices have surged 65 percent in the last five years, which many argue is the result of U.S. subsidies. Brazilian ethanol also yields 8.3 times more energy than the fossil fuels used to produce it, while corn ethanol yields only 1.5 times the energy it consumes.

Environmental Concerns and Lula’s Response

Further ethanol controversy surrounds environmentalist concerns that Brazil’s sugar industry is permanently destroying large areas of the Amazon rainforest. The industry has forced small farmers to sell their land at low prices and work for large multi-national companies, under poor conditions and scant pay. In addition, Brazil’s ethanol production has pushed soybean cultivation and cattle ranching into the Amazon area, making room for sugarcane production in the southeastern part of the country. This region, once home to coffee and fruit plantations, was originally part of the Southeastern portion of the Amazon rainforest, of which only 7 percent remains today. Another environmental concern regarding sugar cane cultivation involves the burning of the old cane to get rid of dry leaves and dispensable biomass. This hazardous practice creates health problems for local populations, and spreads the fires into some of the remaining Amazon rainforests.

President Lula has increasingly displayed support to protect the Amazon from ongoing destruction. On June 19, the government extended its two-year ban on the sale of soy from the deforested land in Amazonia until July 2009. Additionally, officials from the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources have already begun bans on beef and timber from illegal Amazon lands (Mercopress). This recent commitment could signify the government’s sincerity regarding prevention of deforestation and “its commitment to a policy of environmental registration and licensing for land in Amazonia (Brazzil Magazine). New policies also present Brazil as environmentally conscious to international groups such as Greenpeace, who have in the past heavily criticized the country’s lack of effort in sustaining the Amazon’s integrity. Greenpeace director Paulo Adario applauded Lula, stating, “Today’s decision is important because it proves that it’s possible to guarantee food production without cutting down one more hectare of Amazon forest.” Also, in an attempt to speed the recovery of Amazonian pastures and degraded soils, the government will offer soft loans, ample credit for small farmers, and an insurance system designed to reduce the risks of climate change. With the appointment of strong conservationists such as the Minister of Environment, Carlos Minc, a UN awarded defender of the environment, the Lula administration is taking urgent steps to enhance agricultural production and increase Amazonian protection. If action indeed follows such rhetoric, Brazilian planners could be on the verge of helping the country become a world player in trade while it attempts to keep domestic prices low.

The Future of Brazilian Ethanol

Currently, Brazil produces 5.8 billion gallons of ethanol annually, but exports only 960 million gallons. Yet the energy giant is capable of providing the world with 52 billion gallons a year if, through new foreign investment, the government can put in an additional $9.5 billion for financing pipelines, terminals and new plants, offsetting the international dependence on OPEC (U.S. Energy Information Administration). As ethanol increasingly becomes a fixture in the global energy debate, these new steps could mark significant progress in fighting the global food crisis, while drawing increasing international scrutiny to the irresponsible, self-interested subsidy initiatives stealthily exhibited by the U.S., Europe, and Japan.

http://www.coha.org/2008/07/biofuels-and-the-global-food-crisis-who-is-to-blame/

Book Review: Primal wonderland fated to exploitation

Publication of John Hemming's history of the Amazon has coincided with the release of photographs by Brazil's indigenous affairs department of a rainforest tribe uncontacted by outsiders and with the resignation of the country's environment minister amid strains over development policies.

Tree of Rivers highlights themes that have long shaped the fate of the Amazon rainforest and river system - the irresistible desire to explore a wilderness, and the strains generated by the compulsion to exploit its natural riches.

As a breathtaking reminder of its size, Hemming points out that there may still be 40 to 50 uncontacted tribes. That is plausible because, even after decades of destruction, the Amazon forests with those of the adjacent Orinoco and Guianas extend to nearly 2m square miles.

The river system discharges a fifth of the water that flows into the oceans from all the rivers on the planet.

A consummate explorer and former head of the UK Royal Geographical Society, Hemming has done much to nurture an interest in Brazil's indigenous peoples.

But his book is much more than a thrilling account of the derring-do - and foolhardiness - of determined explorers.

It is an economic history of a region coveted - despite the relative poverty of much of its soil - by outsiders for its capacity to yield in abundance all the factors of production: land, labour and capital.

Tree of Rivers traces journeys by explorers, adventurers, slavers, biologists, soldiers, rebels and opportunists up and down the Amazon river and its tributaries since the first incursion in 1500 by a Spaniard, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón.

It stops along the way at moorings that permit forays into the dark stories of unspeakable cruelty that have been played out beneath the forest canopy.

Thinking he had sailed up the Ganges, for example, Yáñez provided an ominous portent - seizing 36 indigenous men as slaves.

The author describes with moving authority the decimation of indigenous peoples by the outsiders through murderous enslavement, overwork and imported diseases and avarice.

Just as it was the territory's fate to be squabbled over by Spain and Portugal, it was also its lot to be plundered.

In subsequent centuries, a long list of real, or imagined, tradeable goods would lure outsiders: gold, slaves, turtle meat, spices, quinine, cacao, rubber, hardwoods and, most recently, land for colonists, cattle ranchers and soya producers. Even scientific missions often had a commercial imperative.

The 19th-century rubber boom is, perhaps, the most well-known period in this story but, today, land for ranches and farming is the new commodity driving development - and deforestation.

The Amazon has also been a fertile source of dreams - it germinated tales of El Dorado and of what Hemming calls the "legendary tribe of sexually liberated women" after whom the river itself is named; it fuelled the radical ideas of the Enlightenment and of the noble savage; it nourished bizarre racist theories, then buried their inventors; it legitimised the colonising zeal of General Emílio Médici as a "land without people for a people without land"; and, today, it ventilates green politics everywhere as the "lungs of the world", a vast carbon sink essential for the survival of the planet.

It provided a ready supply of souls for theocratically inclined Jesuits, and was a haven for runaway slaves, esoteric cults and all the most significant South American guerrilla movements.

While there will always be optimism that a middle way between extraction and conservation can be found, it is a measure of how so much, yet so little, has changed since the 15th century that the story Hemming tells is one pregnant with the inevitable conflict between wonder at the discovery of new worlds, and our capacity to ruin them.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6b0b8bd6-4c88-11dd-96bb-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1