Reduction in Brazil’s Jamanxim Forest protection benefits recent squatters, study says

Desdemona Despair

By Eduardo Pegurier
20 February 2017

(o Eco) – [Translation by Google.] A new analysis published by the NGO Imazon, based in Belém do Pará, rekindles the accusations against the reduction of the Jamanxim National Forest (Flona), made by the government through a Provisional Measure at the end of December 2016. Created only ten years ago, Flona Jamanxim lost 57% of its original area of ​​1.3 million hectares, almost twice the size of the metropolitan area of ​​São Paulo. Of the total reduction of 743 thousand hectares, 438 thousand were added to the National Park of Rio Novo. Until then, without controversy.

But another 305,000 hectares, a quarter of the old Flona, ​​have become part of a new Environmental Protection Area (APA), the mildest Brazilian protection category, which allows private property – in this case, read legalization of invaded lands within its limits. If other amendments made by parliamentary amendment follow after the edition of the Provisional Measure, Flona Jamanxim may cease to exist.

High rates of deforestation, grilagem [squatters], and violent crimes within the Flona Jamanxim have made it one of the most problematic federal conservation units (UC). Since its inception in 2006, there has been increasing pressure from rural groups to reduce their limits. The allegation was that it was imposed on lands already occupied. Environmentalists feared that the reduction would come, and contended that most of the occupations within the Flona occurred after it was established. In September 2016, four months before the reduction, the Federal Public Ministry sent a letter to the Chico Mendes Institute of Biodiversity (ICMBio) warning that the change could raise levels of deforestation and violence in the region.

The data released by Imazon weaken Flona’s previous occupation and confirm an ICMBio analysis of 2009, which was against the reduction of Flona in addition to a fraction of 70,000 hectares (3% of the original area), and affirmed That two thirds of the occupations occurred after the creation of the protected area.

“If the objective was to reduce the tension in that region, this will not be achieved, because in fact the public power has given way unilaterally. It is a total misunderstanding and we will pay dearly for it,” says João Paulo Capobianco, Ministry of Environment during the management Marina Silva, who was responsible for the BR-163 Sustainable Plan . Capobianco called it a Christmas gift to grileiros the creation of an APA that incorporates a flake of the Jamanxim Flona, ​​a free pass to continue grilling UCs in the Amazon. [more]

Redução de Jamanxim beneficia grileiros recentes, diz estudo