President passes "Provisional Measure 458"

It's been a month of ups and downs for rainforests. Earlier the world's current richest man Carlos Slim gave a big grant to help preserve rainforest lands and habitats.

Now Brazilian President  Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has passed the new law that will see an area of the amazon the size of France passed into the hands of private landowners. Many people both inside and outside the government are worried about this new law. This pressure from both inside and outside government has been credited with many of the most damaging clauses of the law being vetoed and not passed by the President.

Even so many small farmers who have illegally logged and cleared land for farming and cattle will receive their land free of charge and the larger land occupiers will be given upto 20 years to pay for the land. Concerns have been raised not just about the rewarding of those who illegally logged and cleared the land they now occupy but concerns have been raised about the loss of land of indigenous peoples and loss of wildlife habitat.

Many critics are now warning of a return to land speculation within the amazon in the belief that further amnestys may be granted in the future.

On a more positive note the brazillian government has announced the launch of the Green Arch scheme by which it will pay small farmers to reforest their lands in parts of Brazil that are at particular risk from deforestation.  It has also committed to policing the remaining forest and reducing the amount of deforestation by 70% within the next 10 years.

Early figures seem to show that over the last few months deforestation in the Brazillian rainforest is at it's lowest for 20 years, we can only hope that this transfer of lands from public to private sector will not restart the rush for Amazonian land.