Bolsonaro government eases logging on indigenous lands after pressure from companies

The government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) published this Friday (16) a normative instruction that makes logging more flexible in indigenous lands (TI), including the participation of non-indigenous groups. By law, the natural resources of these areas can only be used by the indigenous people themselves.

The document, signed by the presidents of Funai (National Indian Foundation), Marcelo Xavier, and of Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources), Ricardo Bim, is described as a “sustainable forest management plan”.

The creation of management plans is not rare and allows for the creation of exceptions to the law. The device, for example, is used so that indigenous and riverside people can catch fish in certain regions of the Amazon, for example.

Documents obtained by Sheethowever, indicate that the plan published by the Bolsonaro government may serve the interests of loggers, who have been pushing for it, and that the norm has been gestating in the bodies for some time.

In 2021, Funai was consulted by an international manufacturer of wooden furniture about the feasibility of creating a “pilot project” for a sustainable management plan for the Baú Indigenous Land, in Pará.

The craft, to which Sheet had access, indicates that “there is no legal impediment” to such an activity, but that it lacks regulation, and states that “inter-institutional articulations are being carried out between Funai and Ibama for the construction of a joint normative instruction” to resolve the issue.

The document is from the Foundation’s Directorate for the Promotion of Sustainable Development. It is not possible to say, however, whether the instruction to which he refers is exactly the one published this Friday, even if it meets the company’s demand.

THE Sheet it also had access to letters exchanged between Funai and Ibama, including by their presidents, in the course of 2022, which debate the creation of the plan for logging.

In January 2022, for example, Marcelo Xavier writes to Ricardo Bim to request “that the respective adaptations be made to the draft” on the forest management plan in ILs.

In addition, despite having been edited in the Official Gazette two weeks before the end of the Bolsonaro government, the title of the normative instruction says that it is from “October 31, 2022” —that is, in theory it is ready from the day after the second round of the election, in which the current president was defeated.

One of the focuses of the transition team of the future government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) has been precisely the so-called repeal.

The transition working groups propose that a series of measures edited by Bolsonaro be revoked as soon as possible by the next administration – most of them in the area of ​​the environment, but also in public safety, for example.

According to Aloizio Mercadante, Lula was given 23 pages with possible rules to be revoked.

Apib (Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil) and the working group on the indigenous question of the transition also proposed a series of reversals related to the theme.

There is, within the indigenous movement, a debate about the regulation, or not, of logging activity in indigenous lands. There are even communities that demand the creation of rules for extraction.

Critics of the measure published by the Bolsonaro government, however, claim that it has loopholes for logging by non-indigenous people and also for carrying out works without envisaging environmental impact studies.

“The instruction edited at the end of a defeated government’s mandate, without consultation with the indigenous peoples and in breach of the Constitution and the Statute of the Indigenous People, because it allows non-indigenous people to appropriate forest resources that are intended for the exclusive use of indigenous people,” he says. lawyer Juliana de Paula, from ISA (Instituto Socioambiental).

The norm published this Friday allows the exploitation of wood by indigenous peoples, but also by societies with a mixed composition, and defines these as: “a form of association or cooperative where the participation of non-indigenous people is admitted, provided that this participation is less than fifty percent percent (50%)”.

In addition, according to De Paula, the norm opens the way for works to be carried out, such as roads and even buildings, within indigenous lands, without an environmental impact study.

Article 15 of the document says that the “opening of roads, patios and branches” and the “construction of special works of art, such as bridges, roads, drainage works and others” can be carried out, in addition to of “buildings”.

“To carry out forest management, the instruction foresees that roads and buildings can be built, but it does not explain whether these activities will be licensed, nor how. This could generate more impact on the indigenous people and increase deforestation”, she says.

Historically, indigenous territories have concentrated some of the largest areas of preserved forest in Brazil. Under the Bolsonaro government, however, deforestation in these areas has skyrocketed.