Brazil


News

On 1 December 2008, the Brazilian government unveiled a plan to cut the deforestation of the Amazon by 70 percent over the next decade. It is the first time ever Brazil has officially set a target for reducing deforestation. According to Environment minister Carlos Minc, Brazil intends to use the plan to increase contributions to the Amazon Fund, established to provide incentives for the preservation through conservation sponsorships.

In addition to cutting deforestation, the plan aims at improving energy efficiency, encourages alternative energy sources and wants to increase by 20% waste recycling in urban areas by 2015. TTAP hopes that this plan will contribute to encourage timber companies to work towards legality by eliminating illegal timber from their supply chain, thereby contributing to the reduction of deforestation.


Introduction

The forests of Brazil represent about one-third of the world‘s remaining rainforests, including a majority of the Amazon Basin. The country is recognized as the most biodiverse in the world, with more than 56,000 described species of plants, 1,700 species of birds, 695 amphibians, 578 mammals, and 651 reptiles. Brazil’s forest industry contributes approximately 4% to GDP, 7% of exports and 2 million jobs in the wood and non-wood forest products industry.

Forest Sector

The exploitation of natural resources is protected by provisions of the Brazilian Federal Constitution, the Forest Code of 1963, the Environmental Crimes Law of 1998, the National System of Conservation Units Law of 2000, and the new Management of Public Forests Law of March, 2006. Despite deforestation rates on a downward trend, estimates of forest loss each year in Brazil are between 16,000- 20000 km2. To improve sustainability of forest industry and reduce illegal activity, the Government of Brazil is focused on a combination of regulatory mechanisms, improved monitoring and enforcement of forest exploitation, provision of incentive structures to encourage legal and sustainable resource use.

Trade statistics and trends

About 10 % of Brazilian wood production, or 30% of wood exports are exported to the EU. Of Brazil’s exports, the EU imports approximately 2% of the roundwood, 25% sawnwood, 20% veneer and 42% plywood. (based on FAOSTAT and TTAP import data)

Legality

Legal timber in the Brazilian Amazon is produced from authorized land clearing or managed forests. Given the disparity between production levels within the forest industry and authorized extraction volumes, it has been estimated that as much as 80% of total timber production is unauthorized. Over the last 10 years, legislative changes (such as the 2006 Law on Public Forest Management) have sought to present a set of instruments to enable the verification of legal forest production. For instance, the introduction of a concession system on public land has sought to regularize much of the timber production in the Amazon. Within the Brazilian State of Acre, ambitious efforts to combat illegal logging and revitalize forest governance are ongoing. The state government with local and international partners including IUCN, WWZ-Brazil and Greenpeace-Brazil, are collectively working to achieve a forest governance model with positive social results.

Read more information in the Verifor Case Study on Brazil.