Brazil to privatize large blocks of Amazon rainforest for logging

www.mongabay.com
October 12, 2010

Brazil will auction large blocks of the Amazon rainforest to private timber companies as part of an effort to reduce demand for illegal logging, reports Reuters. The government will grant 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of logging concessions by the end of the year, according to Antonio Carlos Hummel, head of Brazil’s National Forestry Service. Within four to five years, 11 million hectares will be auctioned. Hummel told Reuters the privatization of Amazon forests would help meet demand for timber products that is currently filled by illicit logging. Most of Brazil’s Amazon timber is consumed domestically, rather than exported. While the Brazilian government currently has a timber tracking system, it has been abused. In 2008 authorities arrested more than 200 people involved in a scam that modified records to increase timber allocations for logging and charcoal companies. Hummel told Reuters that the new plan will include audits by non-government organizations to ensure that companies aren’t harvesting forests beyond their capacity to regenerate. Daniel Nepstad, an Amazon scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, said while the track record of private forest concessions in the tropics has been “dismal” in the past, he is guardedly optimistic about the proposal. “Forest policies that feature logging concessions to private companies on publicly-owned lands have had a dismal history in most of the world’s tropical nations, plagued by graft, crony-ism, and royalties that miss the mark,” Nepstad told mongabay.com. “But if any country can make this work, Brazil can.” …