From: Inside Climate News
'Gold mining stopped, logging stopped, everything stopped. I don't have anybody to sell to.'
A
team from the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural
Resources (IBAMA), the government's environmental law enforcement
agency, monitors property near Novo Progresso, Para, for illegal logging
and other activity. Many residents there have yet to make their peace
with the law to curtail deforestation, or the government seeking to
enforce it. Credit: Jeff Tollefson, InsideClimate News
Jeff Tollefson is reporting from the Brazilian Amazon for eight
weeks and exploring Brazil's efforts to protect the world's largest
rainforest—and the earth's climate.
The situation was still a little tense when I arrived in Novo
Progresso, Para, a frontier town that serves as the regional base for
the federal government's environmental law enforcement agency, known as
IBAMA. Two weeks earlier an IBAMA team had burned three large logging
trucks and a tractor that were operating illegally outside a neighboring
city; protesters rioted, briefly trapping agents in a hotel and later
blocking one of the main highways into the Amazon. Everybody in Novo
Progresso had an opinion on the matter, and many felt that a line had
been crossed.
As an outsider, I could see many lines being crossed. I wondered why
this one in particular triggered a revolt, or alternatively, why such
tactics haven't triggered national controversy. After all, the nightly
news was chock full of protests against government spending on soccer's
World Cup rather than health, education, infrastructure and security for
Brazilian citizens. A simplistic reading would suggest that the
tradeoffs are the same when it comes to spending on trees, but I never
saw anybody rioting in objection to government investments in forest
conservation.
This tension drew me to Novo Progresso, a roadside town whose
jurisdiction covers 25,000 people sprawled across an area larger than
Maryland. My travels to the south in Mato Grosso had focused on regions
where occupation of the land was more or less established, where the
frontier had come and gone. Farther north, I had centered on areas that
were turning a corner, where communities seemed to be buying into the
government's battle against deforestation. By contrast, Novo Progresso
is in a region where many residents have yet to make their peace with
the law, or the government seeking to enforce it. MORE
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