Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has approved a controversial law granting land rights to squatters in the Amazon that campaigners fear will result in a further increase in deforestation.
The law is one of the most divisive decisions of Lula’s two terms in office, with the president coming under intense pressure from environmental groups and the powerful agricultural lobby.
Marcelo Furtado, Greenpeace’s campaigns manager in Brazil, said the approval showed that Brazil’s policy on global warming was contradictory.
“On one hand Brazil is setting targets for the reduction of carbon emissions and on the other opening up more areas for deforestation,” Furtado said.
Brazil’s government says more than 1 million people will benefit from the law, which covers 67.4 million hectares of land, an area roughly the size of France. It believes the law will reduce violent conflicts by giving people ownership of the land they live on and will make it easier to track down those illegally felling trees.
But environmentalists — who have dubbed it the “land-grabbers bill” — fear the new rules will offer a carte blanche for those wanting to make money by destroying the Amazon.
They say the law effectively provides an amnesty for those who have devastated the Amazon over the last 40 years. Around 20 percent has been lost, according to environmental campaigners, and deforestation globally causes nearly a fifth of greenhouse gas emissions.
“This measure perpetuates a 19th century practice [of Amazon destruction] instead of taking us towards a new 21st century strategy of sustainable development,” Furtado said.
He said the law — originally intended to benefit impoverished farmers in the Amazon — now benefited wealthy farmers.
The result, he said, was “a law which will not help increase governance [or] social justice but which simply raises the risk of more deforestation.”
Under the new law, small landowners who can prove they occupied lands before December 2004 will be handed small pieces of land for free, while large areas will be sold off at knockdown rates.
The government hopes this will help bring order to a region where land disputes often result in violent clashes and murder.
Human rights groups also criticized the law, saying unscrupulous Amazon ranchers, who often exploit slave labor, stood to gain from the new rules.
Faced with a vocal campaign against the measure, Lula accused “the NGOs [of] ... not telling the truth.”
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS