|
About | Contact | Mongabay on Facebook | Mongabay on Twitter | Free newsletter |
|
|
Brazil: 'Soy King', Environment Minister strike deal on Amazon deforestation mongabay.com April 02, 2009
"The goal is not to punish but to prevent destruction of the biome," said Minc, who has publicly clashed with Maggi over deforestation during his first 10 months as Environment Minister. "Mato Grosso will be an example for other states." Minc added that landowners who refused to participate and continue to be in violation of the legal reserve law would "experience the heavy hand of Police, Army, Ibama and the environmental crimes law." Minc believes up to 90 percent of the state's 140,000 landowners would likely accept the deal, which applies to holdings established before February 2008. Governor Maggi, one of Brazil's most powerful politicians and a frequent target for environmentalists for his large soy holdings and support of agricultural expansion, said the deal was not a pardon. He added that agricultural growth could continue in the state without the need to clear additional forest through conversion of low-intensity pasture to other crops and intensifying cattle production. Mato Grosso has some 26 million head of cattle across 24 million hectares of pasture.
The governors of the Amazon states said they want to develop a consensus on REDD — a proposed mechanism for compensating tropical countries for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation — to present at the next U.N. climate conference, meeting in Copenhagen in December. Michael Jenkins, president of the Katoomba Group, said during opening remarks that the ecosystem services market (including payments for carbon, water and biodiversity) could be a path for Brazil to become a global superpower. In a later presentation, Marcus Frank, an analyst at McKinsey & Company - Brazil, estimated that Brazil could earn tens of billions of dollars per year from ecosystem services in coming decades, turning it into the "Saudi Arabia of biomass". Excellent writeup from the Katoomba Group's Ecosystem Marketplace: Historic Agreement at Katoomba Meeting.
Tags: payments for ecosystem services environmental services environment forests green amazon brazil deforestation water rainforests amazon soy soy cattle ranching south america latin america politics environmental politics climate change politics rainforest agriculture agriculture farming Environmental Law law ecological services redd avoided deforestation Environmental news index | RSS | News Feed | Twitter | Home Advertisements:
|
|
|
DON'T LIKE ADS? Become a mongabay supporter WEEKLY NEWSLETTER RECENT FEATURES
POPULAR PAGES Photos
CALENDARS 
BOOKS BY MONGABAY AUTHORS
FREE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 
HIGH RESOLUTION PHOTOS / PRINTS 
|
| | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Copyright mongabay 2010 Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated from mongabay.com operations (server, data transfer, travel) are mitigated through an association with Anthrotect, an organization working with Afro-indigenous and Embera communities to protect forests in Colombia's Darien region. Anthrotect is protecting the habitat of mongabay's mascot: the scale-crested pygmy tyrant. |
