From the FINANCIAL TIMES:
After a slowdown in deforestation in recent years, the future of the Amazon rainforest – the world’s largest, most of which falls within Brazil’s borders – is once again hanging in the balance. Before the end of this year, the country’s senate is expected to vote on a bill that, in its present form, promises an amnesty to landowners who illegally cleared land before June 2008. In March and April, deforestation rates surged sixfold as the bill made its way through the lower house, apparently in anticipation that this amnesty might be followed by others. Reports of violent conflict over land, an indicator of deforestation in the Amazon, have increased.
At stake for Brazil – the biggest exporter of coffee, orange juice, sugar and beef; the second largest of soyameal; and one of the countries most capable of supplying the increasingly voracious appetites of China and other Asian giants – is its reputation both as an emerging agricultural superpower and as a guardian of the global environment.
The Amazon “is part of Brazil’s status as a rising power along with its agricultural strength”, says João Augusto de Castro Neves, a Washington-based analyst and political editor of The Brazilian Economy magazine. “When you look at China, it has manufacturing; India has information technology. When you think of Brazil, you think of land, agriculture and food production.”
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