Brasília, March 15, 2004 (Agência Brasil - ABr - President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is participating today in the launching of an action plan to control the deforestation of the Amazon region, on the eve of the Space Research Institute's (INPE) announcement of the indexes of forest destruction in the 2002/2003 period. Preliminary data released by the Institute, last week, show that the rate of deforestation will once again surpass 25 thousand square kilometers, as it did in the 2001/2002 period (25,476 sq. kms).

Last year, when the 2000/2001 deforestation index was announced, the government decided to install an Interministerial Work Group to discuss proposals that could contribute, in fact, to the prevention of deforestation in the Amazon region. To formulate and orient the proposals, the Group based its efforts on a diagnosis prepared by the Ministry of Environment with information about the economic activities that have been practiced in the Amazon, encouraging deforestation in the region. The diagnosis also presents a panorama of the landholding situation, incentives to productive activities, and infrastructure.

According to the report, 70% of deforestation in the Amazon region in the 2000/2001 period occurred in the states of Mato Grosso, Pará, and Rondônia. Ranching is identified as responsible for around 80% of the entire deforested area in the Amazon region, and large and medium-sized ranchers are considered the chief agents of deforestation for the implantation of pastures.

The advance of soybean plantations is not the only cause behind the current situation of uprooted forests. Fronts of deforestation can also be explained by the illegal extraction of timber, squatting on public lands, the opening of roads, and the creation of settlements. The strategy to control deforestation in the Amazon envisages the adoption of measures such as the creation of incentives for the utilization of areas that have already been cleared.

For rural producers, this measure is considered viable. According to the president of the Environmental Commission of the National Confederation of Agriculture (CNA), Assuero Veronez, the intensive exploitation of areas that have already been cleared, to seek to use them to increase productivity, is important in terms of occupying land and reducing the pressure on the forests. "It is a policy that producers have been awaiting for a long time, but it is not enough." (DAS)