By Margaret Janelle Hutchinson
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BRASÍLIA, Brazil – As Brazil prepares to host Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, president Dilma Rousseff is trying to set an example through legislation and other environmental projects, but environmentalists say her efforts don’t go far enough.

Activist and former Brazilian presidential candidate Marina Silva called Tuesday for protests matching the magnitude of Egypt’s Tahrir Square demonstrations at the upcoming environmental summit.

More than 100 heads of state and tens of thousands of participants from governments, the private sector and NGOs will converge on Rio de Janeiro from the 20th-22nd of June for the conference.  Marking the 20th anniversary of the “Earth Summit” in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, the Rio+20 gathering aims to break years of deadlock on pressing environmental issues and set up long-term paths toward green development and sustainability.

Late last month, President Rousseff partially vetoed a bill that would have weakened her country’s efforts to protect the Amazon and other forests.  Legislators in both houses had passed a set of revisions to the Forest Code that threatened permanent preservation areas – a key provision in Brazilian environmental legislation – that obliged farmers to keep a proportion of their land as protected forests, particularly on the fringes of rivers and hillsides.  Brazil’s powerful agricultural lobby has long opposed the preservation requirement.

Speaking on World Environment Day, Rousseff stressed that economic problems should not serve as a pretext to abandon efforts to safeguard the planet.

“The crisis can’t be an argument to suspend measures to protect the environment, much as it can’t be an argument to suspend policies of social inclusion,” Rousseff said.

Everybody from the Brazilian Academy of Sciences to, literally, the Brazilian equivalent of Bugs Bunny was saying ‘veto this bill completely,’ according to Steve Schwartzman, director of Tropical Forest Policy for the Environmental Defense Fund.

In the end, President Rousseff vetoed 12 sections of the bill. The most controversial clause would have given amnesty to all landowners that illegally deforested before 2008.  Instead, Rousseff modified that section to only apply to small landowners.  Congress has until mid October to discuss and vote on an amended version of the bill.

Many environmentalists see Rousseff’s actions as not going far enough.  They feel that Rousseff is striking a precarious balance between powerful economic players and the future of the planet.

“This sends a bad signal on the eve of the Rio+20 when Brazil could have been an example,” Silva said.  “If on the eve of the Rio+20 we practically eliminate the law that protects forests, we change the law that defines the boundaries of indigenous lands and we withdraw the capacity of a federal agency responsible for combating illicit deforestation… imagine what will happen,” she said.

Nevertheless, Brazil has made strides in forest preservation.  Deforestation of the Amazon has fallen to its lowest levels since records began, according to data recently released by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research.

Using satellite imagery, the institute said 6,418 sq km of Amazon forest was stripped in the 12 months before 31 July 2011 – the smallest area since annual measurements started in 1988.

“This reduction is impressive; it is the result of changes in society, but it also stems from the political decision to inspect, as well as from punitive action by government agencies,” Rousseff said.

She was speaking at a ceremony on Tuesday to mark the opening of two new nature reserves: the 34,000-hectare (83,980 acres) Bom Jesus Biological Reserve in Paraná, and the 8,500-hectare (20,995 acres) Furna Feia National Park in Rio Grande do Norte.

Likewise in advance of the Rio+20 summit the state government of Rio do Janeiro last week announced the closure of one of the world’s largest open-pit landfills, where thousands of people have made a living sorting the debris.

Long a symbol of ill-conceived urban planning and environmental negligence, the Jardim Gramacho dump is being transformed into a vast facility that will harness the greenhouse gases generated by the rotting rubbish and turn them into fuel capable of heating homes and powering cars.

Environmentalists had blamed Gramacho for the high levels of pollution in Rio’s once pristine Guanabara Bay, where tons of run-off from the garbage had leaked.

Despite these efforts by the government to make progress in environmental preservation and sustainability efforts, key activists are calling for large scale protesting and demonstrations during the Rio+20 summit.

“I hope that Rio+20 will become the Tahrir Square of the global environmental crisis and that international public opinion will be able to tell leaders that they cannot brush off the science,” Silva told AFP. “They cannot lower expectations in the face of a crisis worsening every day,” said the 53-year-old figurehead of Brazil’s environmental movement.

The Brazilian military plans to deploy 15,000 security personnel for the UN summit and a parallel “people’s summit” at the Flamengo park in southern Rio, which will be sponsored by civil society and is expected to see the attendance of nearly 20,000 people a day.

For further information, please see:

The Guardian – Amazon deforestation at record low, data shows – 7 June 2012

Merco Press – In anticipation of Rio+20, Brazil creates new nature reserves and closes major land-fill – 7 June 2012

iBahia – MP do Código Florestal será votada no Congresso até outubro – 6 June 2012

Public Radio International – On eve of Rio +20 environmental conference, Brazil’s president pushes back on forestry changes – 6 June 2012

Ahram Online – Brazil’s Silva calls for Tahrir-style demo at Rio+20 – 5 June 2012

The Guardian – Brazil’s leader vetoes portions of new Amazon rainforest law – 25 May 2012