The general public prosecutor’s office has filed for the partial suspension of three elements in the newly reformed Forest Code on unconstitutionality grounds. The claims presented before the Brazilian Supreme Court represent many of the concerns held by conservationists in a long and fierce controversy between agricultural interests and environmental and social groups.
The reform “reduces and threatens the extinction of areas previously considered protected,” the office stated in a press release. Whereas according to Sandra Cureau, the acting general attorney who made the presentations, the original the purpose of the code is “to preserve and restore the essential ecological processes.”
The claim includes a rejection of the amnesty afforded agricultural producers who logged protected land illegally before 2008, one of the most polemic parts of the new Forest Code. “The unconstitutionality claims address very important questions, like not diminishing environmental protection and avoiding amnesty,” affirmed Carlos Alberto Scaramuzza from the International Institute for Sustainability, according to international agencies.
Others were less satisfied. Socialist senator Rodrigo Rollemberg described an ongoing dispute as “the worse scenario” for rural producers. “We have to conclude the process of introducing the [revised] Forest Code, with clear and definite rules,” he insisted.
The reform, which concerns an 8.5 million-square kilometre territory, including large portions of the Amazon rainforest, has seen years of intense debate. Logging and agricultural businesses stand on one side, environmentalists and small farmer and indigenous rights groups oppose them from the other. Congress passed a business-friendly Forest Code reform last May; president Dilma Rousseff partially vetoed it in October, intending to restore many of the relaxed ecological protection measures. The public prosecutor’s offices’ claim is expected to perpetuate the long and heated debate.
