As of this writing, the new Brazilian government headed by President Lula da Silva is scarcely two months old. It will require many more assessments before it can be determined just how far its accomplishments match up with its intentions in the environmental area.
So far, the most novel part of Lula’s environmental policy is a willingness to treat the theme as part of national strategic planning. Previously, many growth plans were designed without putting any thought into moderating their environmental effects. This was only done later. Now the environment will be treated as a key underlying theme in all major projects undertaken in Brazil.
The government also has new and promising perspectives on the tropical rainforest of the Amazon region. One auspicious step in this regard was the appointment of ex-rubbertapper Marina Silva as minister of the environment. She knows the region well and understands how to deal with its problems.
Also interesting is the fact that, for the first time, we are making use of SIVAM, a system of radars, computers and airplanes that cost the country $1.4 billion dollars. The only way to keep adequate watch over Amazonia was to make a basic change in our way of doing so; the vastness of the region requires electronic resources, the use of satellites and thousands of inspectors with laptops interacting with the system.
The creation of River Basin Committees (Comitês de Bacia), a new form of administration, opens the possibility of better managing the country’s water resources. These committees will include representatives of NGOs as well as water users; they will reinvest the money collected from water use fees in restoring and maintaining Brazilian rivers.
The Lula government’s first environmental test concerned the production of genetically modified crops. The Environmental Ministry wanted more time to test the effects of genetically modified food; this position prevailed. [Editor’s note: GM crop production is currently banned in Brazil, though soy farmers frequently violate the ban. In mid-March, President Lula announced that exports of illegally produced GM soy would be permitted for one year in order to avoid destruction of the crops.]
Lula’s environmental program also demonstrates great concern with quality of life. Initially, it has focused on guaranteeing basic sanitation in the poorest areas. In the future, these concerns should be expanded to include the restoration of beaches in Brazil’s great oceanfront cities. These are both a constant tourist attraction and a possible source of “democratic recreation.”
Since the 1980s, when Brazil’s environmental policy made it a kind of planetary villain, there has been great evolution in this area. This was begun by the previous government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Since 1992, when Brazil hosted the United Nations conference on the environment, the nation has not stopped evolving in this area, and, naturally, it understands that its first international duty is to, in a certain way, “internationalize” its successes in this field by bringing them into the ambit of Mercosur, the regional common market. In the last two years, work has been done to unify South American environmental laws and to find common positions to take in larger international forums.
The environmental question is one of the pillars of Brazilian policymaking, along with the question of peace and the questioning of globalization as it is currently being carried out. Our position in defense of the Kyoto Agreement [which limits greenhouse gas emissions] is an example of this. Minister Silva believes that because Brazil is a nation of great biological diversity it must assume responsibility for playing a leading role in forums where such major planetary questions are discussed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fernando Gabeira has been a member of Brazil’s congress since 1995, winning the most recent election as a candidate of the Workers Party (PT). Before that, he served as a representative of the Brazilian Green Party, of which he is a former president. Gabeira is also a well-known journalist and political activist.These comments were translated from Portuguese by NACLA.
