2023-05-03 02:56:08
The plenary of the Senate approved by symbolic vote, at the end of the afternoon of this Tuesday (2), the opinion of Senator Jorge Kajuru (PSB-GO) on Provisional Measure 1.151/2022, with amendments to the Forestry Management Law (11.284/2006) .
The measure threatens territories, access to natural resources and, therefore, the quality of life of traditional peoples and communities, according to an assessment by the ISA. Approved in the plenary of the House on 3/30, the MP now follows the presidential sanction.
The text changes the rules of forest concessions, opening up the possibility of exploiting other environmental goods and services, in addition to wood, such as the genetic heritage of plants and animals, traditional knowledge about them, fauna management and fishing. According to the final wording, the concessions may still generate carbon credits (learn more in the box at the end of the report).
Proponents of the MP allege that the law needs to be changed because the sustainable and legal handling of wood is economically unfeasible in the face of competition from illegal and predatory extraction. Maintaining the current situation, one of the original objectives of the legislation, which is to prevent illegal deforestation, is no longer fulfilled. The problem would be solved by expanding the activities subject to concession.
But the measure ended up reviving a controversy from 17 years ago, when the Forest Management Law was instituted, about the protection of the rights of traditional communities. Over the years, the implementation of the norm has provoked conflicts with some of these populations, including disputes over access to areas and resources and even over official recognition for some groups.
The lawyer of ISA Juliana de Paula Batista explains that, despite the 2006 legislation providing for the need for prior regularization of traditional territories before concessions, its text and that of MP 1,151 leave gaps for negative impacts on territories and their populations, which tend to be intensified with the expansion of goods and services that may be the object of the concession.
“The topics regulated by the MP are extremely complex and should be the subject of in-depth discussions. The rite of MPs does not allow for further debate. Unfortunately, the National Congress validated yet another setback that Bolsonaro left us with”, says Batista.
“In the state of Rondônia, we have a management system that has been in place for many years now, in the Flona do Jamari. It is important to have management plans in forest areas, in reserve areas”, said ruralist senator Jaime Bagatolli (PL-RO), praising the MP. He also defended that concessions be expanded to Indigenous Lands, which the law prohibits today and MP 1,151 does not authorize.
The National Forest (Flona) of Jamari (RO) is one of the areas where there are conflicts between concessionaires and traditional communities. The biodiversity specialist of the ISA Nurit Bensusan listed some examples like this in an opinion article. In addition to having hunting and fishing affected by the concessions, in these extractive cases, riverside communities and quilombolas were ignored by management plans or by the Brazilian Forestry Service (SFB), especially in the Conservation Units (UCs) of the National Forest and State Forest categories. The SFB is the federal agency responsible for making forest concessions viable.
government guidance
Governist senators, such as Rogério Carvalho (PT-SE) and Otto Alencar (PSD-BA), asked for more time to discuss the matter, in particular so that a law that regulates the carbon market can be approved first, a rule that does not exist today in the country.
Despite this, the government’s orientation was to approve the text coming from the Chamber, to avoid further political wear and tear, in the face of the struggle to consolidate a parliamentary base and at the risk of congesting the queue of MPs to be voted on, which include matters considered more priority, such as the redesign of the Esplanada dos Ministérios. If amended, MP 1151 would have to go back to the Chamber.
“Any setback in environmental legislation will be vetoed by the government”, guaranteed the leader of the government in Congress, Senator Randolfe Rodrigues (Rede-AP). “The government is not committed to any agenda, any device that threatens the environment,” he added.
possible veto
According to advisers from government and PT leaders, President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva may veto Article 4 of the MP, which allows the generation of carbon credits and payment for environmental services with the planting of trees of exotic species and opens the possibility of legalizing irregular deforestation committed in Legal Reserve (RL) areas of rural properties.
Article 4 authorizes considering as RL “areas recorded in registration with the objective of maintaining a wood stock, designated as technical plans for conduction and management or other similar designations prior to the conceptualization of legal reserve” made by Law nº 7.803/1989, which amended the former Forestry Code of 1965.
“As it stands, this device allows for an absurd interpretation that it would be unnecessary to maintain a Legal Reserve for those who deforested their property before 1989. land, because some would have the duty to maintain the legal reserve and others would not”, warns the legal advisor of the ISAMauricio Guetta.
carbon market
Guetta adds that, as it stands, the MP also allows the concessionaire to profit from carbon credits and payment for environmental services in public areas without any additionality, that is, without effective carbon sequestration or concrete ecological benefits, for example. “This risk can and must be solved in the regulation of the new law”, he recommends.
Senator Rogério Carvalho also pointed out the risks of approving legislation that would allow the generation and sale of carbon credits without the subject being previously regulated in a more comprehensive way.
“There is no possibility of carbon credits without registration, without land title, without ownership. There is no possibility without an agency to certify and measure the availability of carbon in a given area”, he warned. “It is necessary to register this credit, because it cannot be traded more than once. Those who buy must be sure that they are buying something real, ”he continued. He presented a project to regulate the theme in the country.
In an article published in Valor Econômico and on the ISA website, the organization’s founding partner Márcio Santilli had also drawn attention to the risks of approving MP 1,151 without prior regulation of the carbon market.
What are carbon credits and what does Brazil have to do with it?
Companies, institutions or people can offset greenhouse gas emissions resulting from undertakings and economic activities by acquiring carbon credits generated by projects to reduce these emissions or capture carbon from the atmosphere. Examples are reforestation or the control of pollutants in an industry.
There is still no national legislation on the subject. The UN Conference on climate change held in 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland, advanced in the regulation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, the international treaty on the subject. The device lists the cooperation mechanisms between countries to implement the carbon market. It establishes two mechanisms: one provides for transfers of emission reduction results between countries; the other allows companies to develop emission reduction or carbon removal initiatives to generate carbon credits that can be traded with other companies or with governments of other countries.
However, discussions about carbon credits related to avoided deforestation are still in their infancy. For now, the UN negotiations have not defined whether native forests would be part of any of these mechanisms. This makes all the difference for Brazil because most of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions originate from the destruction of forests and they have a very large capacity to store and sequester carbon, which could be an asset in international negotiations. .
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