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In this week's News from Brazil:

Distribution of Land in the Amazon Favors Timber Industry
by Rui Kureda

On August 10th, the Brazilian government announced that deforestation in the Amazon Rain forest has dropped for the third year in a row.  Between August of 2005 and July of 2006, 14,000 square kilometers had been cut, representing a 25% reduction from the previous year.  However, a week after the announcement was made, Greenpeace released a report demonstrating irregularities in settlements in the western part of the state of Para.  Apparently, lands designated for settlement are being occupied by lumberjacks who are cutting illegally.  The report went on to demonstrate a partnership between the governmental agency INCRA (The National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform) and the timber industry.  The former (specifically, INCRA's Region 30) designates areas of the forest for settlements, the latter brings infrastructure to the area, and gaining in return the right to cut trees in the settlement.  Since the report, the Federal Public Ministry has discovered 99 irregular settlements, and has requested the settlements to be annulled.  On August 27, the Federal Justice ordered the settlements to be closed. 

The MST (Movement of rural workers Without Land) has for years criticized these settlements.  According to the organization, 60% of the settlements created during President Lula's tenure have been in the Amazon.  "The MST has denounced this policy of colonization projects in the Amazon instead of appropriating land in areas where there is a concentration of encampments, like the South, the Southeast, and the Northeast," said leaders of the movement.

Brasil de Fato followed up on the story by interviewing Mauricio Torres, who is a researcher for the University of Sao Paulo.  He is the author of various studies and publications concerning the land situation in western Para.  Below are excerpts from the interview.

Brasil de Fato (BF):  What is your opinion about agrarian reform in the Amazon Rain forest?

Mauricio Torres:  The rain forest is no place for agrarian reform.  If the locale is already occupied by people of the forest, there should be recognition of their right to the territory.  This is not reform, but rather formalizing an occupation, generally long-standing and legitimate....However, in the western region of the state of Para, travelling along Highway 163, we saw immense areas destroyed by cattle ranching and soy bean production.  These are huge estates where environmental crimes, slave labor, and land frauds are practiced.  They are lands which the federal government bought up for land reform.  Generally, these estates are close to urban centers and roads, having access to the best infrastructures in the region.  They are areas where settlements would not bring any environmental harm, and perhaps even such occupations would bring about land recuperation, like letting greenery grow up near the rivers.

In 2005 and 2006, there was not one case in western Para of the government establishing a settlement on land appropriated from someone who had committed land fraud or had cut the forest illegally....

BF:  What is your opinion about the reaction of the Ministry of Agrarian Development?

Torres:  I was shocked to see the answers the Ministry gave to the denouncements, that they were "retaking land fraud areas and were assuming the responsibility of recuperating extensive land tracts with sustainable planning and socially just occupations."  Maybe they are in the process of retaking lands.  However, as all the agricultural reports of settlements like the Program for Sustainable Development (PDS), Renascer II, the Project of Community Settlement, Bom Sossego I and others show, INCRA has clear knowledge that the area is completely invaded by woodcutters and ranchers, and there are no effective steps being taken to retake these areas.  As far as I know, the only settlement which was retaken was the PDS Santa Clara, and this happened long after its creation....

And one more thing.  We really cannot call giving away government lands "agrarian reform."  In Region 30, the government owns large tracts of land.  The idea of doing agrarian reform on public lands in nothing new.  It is a way to get numbers, but at the same time preserve the large estates and the power structures which govern these estates.  What President Lula, and the others before him, call agrarian reform happens in regions were public lands are available.  For this reason, the Amazon is the perfect target.  So, we see the absurdity of it all:  creating settlements in virgin forests, and not creating settlements on land occupied by those who have committed land fraud and those lands which have already been deforested.

BF:  You said that INCRA has not created any settlements where there is land fraud, but Greenpeace's report says there have been settlements created on areas occupied by woodcutters.

Torres.  They are correct.  There have not been any settlements established on lands where fraud has been committed by ranchers, land speculators or soy farmers.  But they have been established on lands controlled by woodcutters; and at their request, as Greenpeace's report shows.  Let me explain better.  To sell cattle, soy or rice, nobody asks if these products come from land obtained through fraud.  For these products to be transported, they do not have to prove that they come from a farm whose land documents are perfectly legal.  Wood is different.  Today, in order to cut trees in the forest, it is necessary to prove that the land documents are all in order.  Because of this, tree cutting projects are not approved, and the woodcutter are griping.  Here, almost no one has proper land title.

So, what was the solution they found to regularize the land so that they could get licensing to cut trees?  Create land reform settlements.  And the newspapers show how truly devoted the timber industry is to land reform....

BF:But with the creation of the settlement, the woodcutter does not surrender control of the settlement to the settlers?  How does this appropriation of the settlement by the lumberjacks work?

Torres:  First you must understand how these settlements are established.  They are PDS, and what does that mean?  On this type of settlement, one may only deforest 20% of the total area for purposes of agriculture .  The remaining part of the area may not be deforested by clear cutting, but may be cut through "sustainable management" by the association of the settlers.  In principle, the idea is good.  The problem is the way in which the woodcutters use the PDS to their advantage.  As the Greenpeace report shows, the woodcutters themselves build the associations and through them solicit for the creation of a settlement in virgin forests already controlled by the woodcutters.  The local newspapers publish the woodcutters' offer to donate immense areas of land to INCRA to create a PDS.  Once the settlement is created, this "association" of settlers ask for approval of their plans for sustainable tree management, which in reality, will be carried out by the woodcutters.

The possibility of the woodcutter losing control of the settlement is remote.  For one thing, we saw in these recent denouncements various settlements created in 2006 and even in 2005 which did not have one single settler living on the settlement, but were full of lumberjacks.  And there is another thing.  A debt to the woodcutter is often created on these settlements, and this is the fault of INCRA.  The documents presented by Greenpeace show that INCRA, obsessed to show numbers, creates more settlements than it can implement, and therefore gives in to the woodcutters' scheme; namely, that they do the work that INCRA itself should do (like demarcation of the land).  The payment for these services is clear:  wood, which should belong to the settlers, now in the hand of the lumberjacks....

Source:  Brasil de Fato, August 30 - September 5, 2007

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