They take up land that could be used to grow crops or farm useful animals; they are impossible to traverse quickly without hydroplanes, and a journey that would take hours by road can take weeks by boat. And they harbour disease and dangerous animals. So it’s little wonder that a previous governor of the Amazonas region of Brazil – in which there are still 157 million hectares of virgin forest – handed out free chainsaws to anyone willing to go and develop what rich westerners would regard as a priceless and inviolable part of our global heritage.
The great challenge in such regions is to provide sustainable alternatives to environmental destruction for the local population. Bald appeals for greenness cut little ice if the felling of a rare tree provides your family with half a year’s income. And when, as is true in Brazil, it is four times as profitable to farm cattle in the frontier country up north as it is in the south, again the forest simply stands in the way of a better life. As this correspondent was also forced to confront, it is also an act of grotesque hypocrisy to ask the planet’s poorest inhabitants to remain in conditions of extreme deprivation to heal the consciences and climate of those who have done all the damage.
Leading Brazilian bank Bradesco, already among the greener financial institutions, with an Amazon planting programme that has now surpassed 21 million trees, is at the forefront of innovative solutions to this conflict between development and conservation. With an initial donation of R$20 million ($12.2 million) and a further four annual payments of R$10 million, the bank has helped fund the Sustainable Amazonas Foundation (www.fas-amazonas.org). Bradesco Asset Management also manages the Foundation’s funds to provide it with an income.
The Foundation is headed by professor Virgílio Maurício Viana, a former secretary of the environment of Amazonas state. “Our job is to make the forest more valuable standing than cut down,” he says. “To do this we need to pay people an amount that represents the value we place on them not cutting it down and it means coming up with sustainable ways to create income from forest products.”
The organization is dedicated to helping isolated groups of local inhabitants, who live by subsistence cropping with the most meagre access to any forms of modern technology. In one area, for example, 247 families live over a length of river it takes a day to travel, with the largest group just 20 families. The larger groups may have access to two hours’ electricity a day from a diesel-powered generator, and everyone lives for the most part on an unpalatable diet of manioc pancakes (think airline hot towels), fish when in season and fruit.
No smoke
The foundation provides a system of monthly family and community payments. These are effectively compensation payments to local people for leaving the trees standing; additional grants, access to credit, advice and technology transfers help the indigenous populations increase their production of valuable, sustainable goods – fruit, nuts and fish, for example – while avoiding activities that, as the locals say, “make smoke”. Longer-term initiatives aim to eradicate poverty and develop educational programmes that will give local populations the tools with which to improve their livelihoods without causing too much damage to their surroundings.
“We work to improve the value of local produce – which can be as simple as caging migratory fish and waiting until the season of plenty has passed before going to market. We try to link people with activities in the Amazon that actually work economically. And we find ways to increase the overall value of the forest economy so that it makes more sense to maintain the forest than it does to farm cattle or soy beans,” says Viana. “Bradesco’s funding has been vital in getting our efforts up and running.”
The foundation’s lack of a link with the government is telling. While the Amazonas government has been extremely successful in reducing rates of deforestation and is committed to a sustainable Amazon free trade area, private institutions are still uncomfortable tying their fortunes to the political process. Viana hopes that his independence will continue to attract more funding from local and foreign private sector donors.
There is a long way to go. The people of the reservation visited by this correspondent have no legal title to land they have lived on for decades and, while they might not want to cut down their environment, are painfully aware that they would stand little chance against a powerful logging concern. A change of attitude at the state or federal level – where their concerns are mostly ignored – is all that stands between them and that fate. However, financial institutions – HSBC is another – are at the forefront of environmental initiatives in the country and it is to be hoped that their financial and political clout will be felt far into this still wild land.
