Man’s greed for the Brazilian Amazon runs free in the unintended public forests, where land grabbers, prospectors and illegal loggers roam freely.
Due to historical circumstances and negligence of the authorities, an area of approximately 830 thousand kmtwo —about 20% of the Amazon biome, almost the size of Venezuela— is not classified as a conservation unit, nor as an indigenous land, nor as private property, and for this reason it is less guarded and more exposed to indiscriminate exploitation. They are public forests not intended.
For decades, initiatives to regulate and protect this type of area have flourished.
On the banks of the Manicoré River, a winding dark watercourse in the state of Amazonas, fifteen traditional communities that live from fishing, hunting and gathering fruit have been fighting since 2006 to constitute the nearly 400,000 hectares of dense forest in which live in a Sustainable Development Region (RDS), one of the types of conservation unit provided for in Brazilian legislation.
A handful of precarious wooden houses, surrounded by chickens and pigs, a small school and a church make up the Terra Preta community, where several families support themselves with the production of manioc flour, the collection of açaí and the extraction of andiroba oil.
“We see the devastation through the rafts that descend every day, every weekend, full of wood that comes from inside” the forest, Cristian Alfaia, one of the local community leaders, tells AFP.
According to data from IPAM (Instituto de Pesquisas Ambiental da Amazônia), between 1997 and 2020, about 87% of deforestation in the Amazon on public land took place in non-destined areas, much of it on lands that were invaded and fraudulently registered as private.
The other 13% are distributed among indigenous lands and conservation units.
An invitation to ‘crime’
The approximately 4,000 inhabitants of the communities on the banks of the Manicoré River are descendants of northeastern migrants, who fled the drought and settled in this rich place in the Amazon during the rubber boom, between the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, mixing with indigenous people and descendants of slaves.
But the state never granted the communities the category of conservation unit.
For decades, the lifestyle of the locals has been against the interests of the thriving agribusiness, which opened vast areas of land to cultivate soybeans and that still speculate with the soil, as well as the traders of the overvalued Amazonian wood, the prospectors, fishermen and hunters. illegal.
The eternal Amazonian conflict over land rights has dragged on since the military dictatorship (1964-1985) promoted the occupation of the Amazon with the motto “Integrate not to surrender”, alluding to alleged plans for foreign occupation.
After several years of struggle, the RDS project, which was opposed by local politicians linked to ruralists in the region, was shelved, amid complaints of pressure and threats.
This year, the communities of Manicoré benefited from a Concession of the Real Right of Use, a first step, albeit a very distant one, towards achieving the status of a conservation unit, which would guarantee official management and environmental surveillance.
“When a public land is not destined, you make it subject to the commission of all kinds of crimes. And you leave an entire population without access to basic public policy, such as health and education”, explains to AFP Daniel Viegas, prosecutor of Amazonas process manager at RDS Rio Manicoré and specialist in environmental processes.
‘A looted heritage’
A flight over the south of the state of Amazonas is enough to see the progress of man in these “no man’s lands”: every now and then, huge yellowish squares interrupt the green uniformity of the forest, from which newly opened dirt roads leave to take the wood to the rivers in the region.
Environmentalists accuse President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) of encouraging devastation with his rhetoric in favor of commercial exploitation of the largest tropical forest on the planet and with projects promoted by him or his allies in Congress, such as one that aims to relax the criteria for the attribution of titles to illegally invaded public lands.
For Cristiane Mazzetti, spokesperson for Greenpeace Brazil, the allocation of land is a “very effective way to combat deforestation”, but it has been “very ignored by the current federal government and even by state governments”.
“We are talking about a heritage that belongs to all Brazilians and humanity, which has been looted, destroyed and has contributed to the climate and biodiversity crisis”, he explains to AFP.
