Agro: deforestation is a major challenge for the sector – 07/11/2023 – Market

The Ministry of the Environment estimates that ruralists acting illegally, and causing the bulk of deforestation, are around 2% of the total. But specialists believe that many of the lands devastated by a few end up being bought by farmers, in a kind of “outsourcing” of deforestation.

At the end of May, when she was trying to prevent the emptying of her ministry by Congress, Marina Silva referred to parts of the sector as “ogribusiness”. She pondered that “a good part is already doing the homework, and the part that doesn’t, contaminates everything else”.

“If we were to delimit, we are talking about less than 1% of the universe of rural landowners, at least those registered in the CAR [Cadastro Ambiental Rural]which were responsible for almost 50% of the illegal deforestation mapped in 2022”, says André Lima, extraordinary secretary for Deforestation Control and Territorial Environmental Planning at the Ministry of the Environment.

The CAR is a kind of self-declared CPF of the producers, in which they register how much of their land is being used or preserved, according to the rules of the Forestry Code, among other information.

Lima describes these people as “bad apples”. “It’s that small contingent that still depends on some power, especially in local politics, and obviously this reverberates at other levels, state and federal. And that, directly or indirectly, is involved in illegal deforestation actions, land grabbing. “

He recalls that former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) edited a provisional measure to try to benefit illegal occupants and deforesters of land in the Amazon until December 2018. “The target of our criticism is very much directed at this, at those who still invest in occupying illegally in the Amazon.”

According to the secretary, Bolsonaro also practically paralyzed the checking of CARs (which was the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture during his mandate) and the synergy between the federal and state governments, which is responsible for supervising the veracity of the information.

The intention, according to Lima, is to go back to work on the issue to check the owners’ CARs, and seal them over time, providing security to farmers.

“In the previous administration, the filter for indigenous lands was even turned off, and the comrade could go there and register on top of these lands and issue an active CAR receipt”, he says.

According to him, around 20,000 rural properties overlapped with indigenous lands, which came from the Bolsonaro administration, in a total of more than 7 million hectares (one hectare equals 10,000 m²). Of these, 17 thousand properties were made pending; 943 suspended and 2,500 cancelled.

“But, in general, there is always a clash, and it is historic, between the Agricultural Parliamentary Front and Brazilian forestry legislation. Since 1999 there have been movements that gain size and rhythm and then retreat, depending on the situation. It’s a stretch and a stretch. history,” says Lima.

For federal deputy Pedro Lupion (Progressistas-PR), president of the Agricultural Parliamentary Front —with 302 deputies and 45 senators—, the sector “only works actively to defend its interests”.

“We have always said that we do not support or collaborate with wrongdoing, especially deforestation, illegal mining and land grabbing. Unfortunately, as in every sector, there are people who do it wrong. But we cannot put all of Brazilian agribusiness in the same basket”, he says. .

“When Marina positions herself in relation to us as ‘agribusiness’, the discussion goes to the ideological side, which makes the debate very difficult.”

Lupion claims that, after the GDP results for the first quarter were strongly driven by agribusiness, “President Lula’s behavior changed from water to wine”.

“Unfortunately, when the ideological agenda enters the conversation, they shout from there, we shout from here. That’s normal.” Lupion considers Brazilian environmental legislation “heavy and very restrictive”. “But we are complying.”

Questioned about the changes approved in Congress to remove the CAR from the Environment (now with the Ministry of Management), Lupion says that Marina’s portfolio was passing on CAR information to NGOs to “patrol” the producers.

“We will never allow this to be used against our producers. We had a number [votos] here and we won this battle. It’s a matter of survival, because the Environment is not interested in talking to us,” she says.

Asked about the reasons why the ruralists are not making more efforts to combat and make explicit the illegality of those they consider a minority, Lupion says: “We are trying, every day.”

According to him, making contact with different organizations, with the European Union, mainly, organizing “road shows” with opinion makers and the press “to see the reality of agricultural production in Brazil.”

“Unfortunately, there’s still a long way to go on our part. I joke that we need to ‘cluck’ more to show what we’ve done well,” he says.

According to Nelson Ananias, Sustainability coordinator at the CNA (Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil), one of the main problems in this clash is the slowness of the State in ratifying the CAR of producers.

“These are people who occupy these areas in good faith and who fall within the legislation. But who do not have the opportunity to prove anything due to the State itself not promoting these actions to recognize compliance with the legislation and the measures of the Forest Code” , he says.

The CAR was created along with the new 2012 Forestry Code, but became operational in early 2014. “Of the 6.9 million registrations registered, only 46,915 [0,7%] had the analysis concluded”, says Ananias.

“The producer did his part, offered transparency and did not receive in return the same agility to demonstrate this transparency. With this delay by the State, the producer advances”, he says.

“In most cases, it is not in the APP area [Área de Proteção Permanente] or legal reserve, but where it does not yet have authorization for deletion. There he acts and is thrown into illegality. Something he would be entitled to, but the delay does not allow him to fully exercise this right”.

The most recent MapBiomas Annual Deforestation Report, which consolidates data from the national territory, reveals that, in four years (2019 to 2022), more than 303 thousand deforestation events were reported, totaling 6.6 million hectares, the equivalent of one and a half times the area of ​​the state of Rio de Janeiro.

According to Tasso Azevedo, coordinator of MapBiomas, in the period at least one deforestation was detected in 212,884 CARs, which represents 3.1% of the total.

“It is possible to clearly say that 95.7% of deforestation was driven by agriculture. Regardless of who deforested, the land ends up serving the activity. There is even ‘outsourcing’. Someone deforests and someone else later buys the land” , he says.

Azevedo says that, in 98% of the cases, there is at least one incidence of illegality, such as suppression in an indigenous area or APP.

According to him, the main action against illegalities that the government has been adopting is the resumption of “remote embargoes”, based on deforestation detected by 11 different monitoring systems.

In this process, embargoes (which make it difficult for producers to take credit, for example) and fines tripled in 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, which tends to contain illegal activities.

Deforestation in the Amazon fell 33.6% in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period last year, according to Inpe (National Institute for Space Research).

For Azevedo, those who should be most concerned about inhibiting illegal deforestation are the producers, since they are beginning to be the target of sanctions, such as the new rules announced by the European Union.

At the end of June, the bloc’s law came into effect, which obliges companies to confirm that products such as soy, coffee, cocoa, wood, rubber and meat, among others, do not come from areas related to deforestation or forest degradation that occurred after December 31, 2020 There is an 18-month period for implementation, longer for medium and small companies.

According to Ludmila Rattis, coordinator of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, most land grabbing takes place in the Amazon, where there is a proportion of public land equivalent to the size of Spain that has yet to be allocated.