Brazil has announced a plan to ramp up regulated, selective logging, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government set to expand logging over the two years to capture an area the size of Costa Rica.
Wood Central understands that the role of the new concessions- believed to be categorised as “high risk” under the EUDR terms and definitions – is part of Brazil’s ongoing crackdown on deforestation. The areas covered, according to a Brazilian government media release, “are vulnerable to land grabbing and illegal deforestation, with criminals frequently taking land and clearing it.”
“The main goal of forest concessions is the conservation of these areas. They also create jobs and income in parts of the Amazon that would otherwise have little economic activity.”
Renato Rosenberg, Director of Forest Concessions for the Brazilian Forest Service
According to Renato Rosenberg, the Brazilian Forest Services Director of Forest Concessions, the companies that get timber concessions must now follow strict rules. They can only log up to six trees per hectare over a 30-year period – with protected species, such as Brazil nuts and older seed-producing trees, strictly “off limits”.
Mr Rosenberg said the idea is that granting permission to timber companies to take a limited number of trees gives them a stake in overseeing the forest. Several studies show that illegal deforestation in concession areas is significantly lower than outside them.
A working group is assessing conservation, Indigenous and forest concessions.
Currently, there are 22 such timber lease areas in the Amazon, covering more than 13,000 square kilometres. “Since the country initiated its first timber concessions, only two companies have declined to renew their leases, which shows the model works,” Mr Rosenfeld said, adding that Brazil’s Forest Service, part of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, promotes sustainable activities in public forests by private organisations.
The new plan involves a partnership with two private institutions—Imaflora and Systemiq—that will help with research and design of community forest management. Funding comes from Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transitions, the primary program of the UK’s International Climate Finance to address climate change.
The announcement was met with scepticism by the National Forum of Forest-Based Activities, representing some 3500 companies with interests in the timber industry.
“Forest management is the best way to halt environmental crime, from land grabbing to illegal logging,” Frank Almeida, president of the National Forum, told the Associated Press. “But there is no use in creating a project that won’t become a reality,” he said, referencing recent government actions in timber exports that have generated business uncertainty.
The main one is that two of Brazil´s leading timber products—ipe wood and tonka beans—are now listed with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, requiring export permits.
Frank Almeida said exports of these species would be halted unless Brazil meets a November deadline for submitting a so-called non-detriment finding. In a statement, Brazil’s environmental law-enforcement agency, Ibama, said it would address this issue before the November deadline.
Maisa Isabela Rodrigues, a forest engineering professor at Brasilia National University, said the plan was the right approach but needed some adjustment.
“Forest management is the best way to reconcile forest preservation and logging,” she told the Associated Press. However, research indicates the 30-year period between timber harvests is not long enough to recover some of the most valuable species.
Maisa Isabela Rodrigues, a forest engineering professor at Brasilia National University
Professor Rodrigues said the program probably wouldn’t work in remote areas because sky-high transportation costs could make them economically unattractive.
EUDR: Brazil joins Australia and Chile in clashing with EU over forest data
The new concessions come after Brazil joined Australia and Chile arguing that the EU are using the wrong maps to determine deforestation.
Brazil’s concerns come after twenty (out of 27) European Agricultural Ministers called for rules to be delayed amid fears of global supply chains, echoing warnings from government officials in China, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Columbia, Indonesia and Malaysia.
“Our private sector has documented multiple cases of cocoa and coffee plantations, as well as commercially grown tree plantations, that have been misidentified as forests,” said Pedro Miguel da Costa e Silva, Brazil’s ambassador to the EU. Adding that producers would now need to spend millions of dollars on private compliance systems because “European operators and competent authorities will not cooperate with authorities to use local monitoring systems that have much higher precision rates.”
- For more information about the EUDR and its impact on the global supply chain for timber products, click on Wood Central’s special feature.
