New PPCDAm foresees bioeconomy and fight against organized crime – 04/19/2023 – Environment

One of the most awaited steps in the area of ​​the federal government’s environmental policy was taken on the 10th, when the MMA (Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change) published the new version of the PPCDAm —or Plan of Action for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon.

The document, which is open for public consultation until April 26, shows the map that should guide the government’s actions to protect the Amazon rainforest over the next four years.

Created in 2004, the PPCDAm had four updates until, in 2019, it was discontinued by Jair Bolsonaro (PL). The measure was undone in January of this year, when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and Marina Silva (Rede) published a decree reinstituting the plan, which is now in its fifth version.

“The plan aims to provide the bases for achieving the goal of zero deforestation by 2030”, states the document.

Experts heard by Sheet evaluate that the new PPCDAm is better than its previous versions, advancing in points that worked in the past and bringing innovations. Despite this, they consider that there is a lack of greater detailing of the execution of actions and the elaboration of intermediate goals for the outlined objectives.

In 82 pages, the text recovers the history of the plan and draws a picture of the current environmental scenario in the country, with deforestation rates at a very high level, a fragile inspection structure and a lack of personnel in government agencies.

One of the new highlights is the association between deforestation and the high incidence of organized crime. Associated with drug trafficking, the activities of criminal organizations intensify conflicts over land and violence.

For the executive secretary of the Ministry of the Environment, João Paulo Capobianco, this generates an additional concern, as it raises the level of danger of actions to combat deforestation.

“Since 2022, the number of large-scale deforestations has grown, which cost millions of reais, require a lot of capital. There is an exponential growth in large-scale deforestation associated with land grabbing, which is a resource for real estate speculation and has become a business largely financed by money from organized crime”, he says.

The plan also lists five other significant changes in the pattern of forest destruction: the interiorization of deforestation; reconcentration of deforestation in large areas; reduced state governance in protected areas; persistence of environmental crime in production chains; and increased forest degradation.

“This plan has the same structure as the previous versions, but the diagnosis of the problem is different – ​​and it is very well done”, says socio-environmentalist Natalie Unterstell, president of the Talanoa Institute, focused on regulation and climate risks.

“The text recognizes, for example, that the expectation of legalizing deforestation has grown in recent years and has affected the expectation of gains from land grabbing.”

Another point highlighted by the expert is the diagnosis of the new frontiers of deforestation. The limit that was known as the arc of deforestation left the edges of the biome to get closer to the heart of the forest in states like Amazonas, Pará and Acre, especially along federal highways such as BR-163, BR-230, the BR-319 and the BR-364.

As in previous versions, the strategy for confronting destruction is divided into four axes: sustainable productive activities, environmental monitoring and control, territorial and land planning and economic normative instruments.

Paulo Barreto, an associate researcher at Imazon, assesses that the most effective points in the past were inspection actions (in jargon, called command and control actions) and land ownership actions (with the creation of protected areas).

“In the economic sector, a resolution by the National Monetary Council not to provide credit for those who did not comply with environmental rules was important”, he says. “In the area of ​​support for sustainable activities, however, there were no major advances.”

This last point is one of the corrections that the new edition tries to make, emphasizing bioeconomy and sustainable development initiatives as tools to keep the forest standing.

“They are putting the emergence of the bioeconomy at the forefront,” says Unterstell. However, she believes that this development model will only manage to prosper if there is a significant reduction in deforestation.

This is because the illegally produced product ends up being cheaper. “If the issue of deforestation is not resolved, the product of the bioeconomy will not compete in the market.”

Suely Araújo, senior specialist in public policies at the Climate Observatory and former president of Ibama (2016-2018), also praises the new document, but points out that this and other axes need to be reinforced.

“The public consultation phase gains importance precisely so that specialists and society in general can suggest how the four axes of the plan must be given attention, not just environmental inspection”, he says.

Araújo adds that the role of inspection is not just for the Union. “What is clear today is that the axis of monitoring and control needs to be expanded and count on the participation of the states.”

Questioned about the involvement of the states of the Legal Amazon in the elaboration of the text, Capobianco stated that the preliminary version is “a plan of the federal government”, but that there is an approximation between the ministry and local governments.

Barreto highlights the inclusion of an idea of ​​deforestation prediction as an advantage of the new version, so that actions take place in the initial stages of forest destruction.

The new PPCDAm proposes, in addition to satellite deforestation alerts, to monitor indicators of forest degradation intensity and use them to organize inspection.

“What has been happening in many places is that the first step in deforestation is not felling, because it is very easily captured by the satellite. The first step has been the degradation of the forest, elimination of the flora, cutting down part of the trees for occupation, throw grass seed to the area quickly degrade and only then cut it down”, explains Capobianco.

On the other hand, a point that should be increased in the plan, says Barreto, is the monitoring of production chains and the accountability of large industries, particularly in agriculture.

“The activity that most deforests the Amazon is cattle raising”, he says. “Some large slaughterhouses have made an agreement with the Federal Public Ministry to check where the cattle they buy come from. But they buy fat cattle and not all the cattle were born there. Many fattening farms buy cattle from breeding farms, which many times are not monitored. So there is no complete tracking of the cattle”, he adds.

The researcher also considers that many elements of the text of the new plan function as a kind of “to-do list” that needs further structuring. The view is shared by Unterstell.

“We have to know what, when, how, with whom, with what effort this plan will be implemented. It has to have both goals for the actions and metrics for evaluating them”, she says, who hopes that these points will be considered in final version of the text.

“Bearing in mind that the government wants to eliminate deforestation by 2030, we have to know what will happen by then and how this is linked to climate goals.”

Araújo, however, sees that operational detailing can be elaborated at a later time. “The important thing is that there is a lot of transparency about what, concretely, each ministry, each organ, will do.”

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}