NGOs launch document on the environmental setback in the first year of Presidente Dilma Rousseff's government

The first year of President Dilma Rosseff’s government was marked by the most intense backtracking on socio-environmental issues since the end of the military dictatorship, totally reversing the former tendency to an ever improving sustainable development agenda that governments had been implementing since 1988 and that had its high point when the Lula government succeeded in curbing the rate of deforestation in the Amazon. The progress achieved over the last two decades has enabled Brazil to become the first developing country to formalise carbon emission reduction targets and that has strongly contributed to establishing Brazil’s position as an international leader in the socioenvironmental sphere. Learn more....

Proposal from companies and NGOs opens the way to consensus on the Forest Code

Document defends changes in the law, but with maintenance of current areas of conservation on private properties. It stipulates incentives for those who uphold the law and deals with demands from the agricultural sector

We want a clear position from the President regarding the plot against environmental legislation

Read below an article written by Marcio Santilli, ISA's coordinator.

In her weekly article to Folha de São Paulo, Mrs. Marina Silva points the pressure over brazilian environmental legislation in Congress

BRAZIL IS GOING THROUGH a serious step backwards. In 1988, the Constitution reached unprecedented environmental quality and modernity, opening the path for important advances, many of them only reached after long and difficult processes. Since then – and especially during last year -, a sequence of declarations from authorities, disqualifying the environmental legislation, opened the way for initiatives that are increasing in volume and converging to the clear intention of disregarding those advances, in name of an old fashioned and narrow view of development. Learn more.

Proposal for the creation of the amazon fund is ready

The Amazon Fund, designed to attract voluntary contributions to invest in the reduction of Amazon deforestation, was presented by the Brazilian government at a side event during the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Bali, Indonesia in December last year.

Civil society organizations demand respect for indigenous rights and the upholding of the democratic rule of law in Roraima

Prominent institutions, including CNBB, SBPC, ABONG, FDDI, Instituto Ethos, ABA and others, have issued a statement in support the removal of illegal occupants from the Raposa-Serra do Sol indigenous area and calling for respect for the democratic rule of law in Roraima. The statement is open for further signatures by civil society institutions. Read the full text and see who has already signed.

NGOs launch groundbreaking initiative to end deforestation in the Amazon

Proposal for pact to acknowledge the value of the forest and reduce deforestation to zero by means of financial compensation to those conserving forests and of annual targets. Federal and state governments, parliamentarians and authorities participate in the launch in the Chamber of Deputies

Dumb Line Regarding the Soya “Moratorium

The agreement between Greenpeace, Abiove and trading companies for a moratorium regarding the purchase of soya originating from new deforestation is being interpreted in a twisted way by European importers, who are segregating producers without fomenting improvements of the social-environmental quality of the production. It would be better to share the costs pertaining to improved quality along the productive chain.

ISA releases Mining in Protected Areas in the Brazilian Amazon and calls for mining licences granted in federal environmental conservation areas to be revoked

Publication overlays official data and information and shows that mining activities can represent threats to forest integrity, even in legally protected areas. The launch took place in Brasília on Tuesday, 18 April. At the same time ISA requested Ibama, the federal environment agency, to revoke 337 licences that allow mining activities within federal environmental conservation areas

COP-8 ends like a marked cards castle

The 8th COP (Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity) ends like it started: negotiations obstructed by economical questions, decisions threatened by the lobby of the transgenic and the Brazilian government painting small advances as big conquests.