CONSULTATION TO BECOME BASE FOR DEFINITION OF GOVERNMENT POLICY
Luana Capobianco
Bráulio Dias (photo), Biodiversity director of the Environment Ministry’s (MMA) Forests and Biodiversity Secretariat participated in the entire Amazonian Biodiversity Consultation Seminar in Macapá and told Parabólicas how the government intends to use the data produced in the meeting.
Parabólicas – How does the MMA intend to use the results from the Amazonian and other bioma consultation seminars?
We hope to make executive summaries and reports with all the product-generating documents available in the Web as soon as possible, and support the publication of maps. It is important to make it clear that, behind such results, lies the process of integration and consensus-building. MMA intends to put these results to several uses, one of them being to use them as a major input in defining a national biodiversity policy. We have pledged to conclude an integrated proposal for such policy no later than next year. Ours are two parallel processes: one is the regional approach, via biomass, consolidating information and consensus-building, especially for the scientific and environmental community but also for governmental technicians. A second approach deals with topics such as legislation, access to genetic resources and technology. We are financing some studies and work groups and we intend to launch a process of consulting states and private initiative. We will pass biodiversity materials on to the states and we will encourage them to carry out a consultation process, so that the biodiversity interests of each state may be made explicit, from the point of view of conservation, of sustainable use, of benefit sharing, research, matters of biosafety and education. The Ministry will communicate these results to the state governments, asking that such results be considered and internally disseminated.
There is a possibility that the states will hold meetings jointly with the Ministry and with each consortium, so that we may lay out what has been accomplished and clarify any possible doubts.
We will specifically ask the industry to make a stand on this issue. This industry uses biodiversity, frequently destroys it, interacts with it in several ways - albeit oftentimes unaware of it. We want more clarity on this matter.
All these consultations should consolidate a national policy, to serve as a reference beacon for the Federal government's priorities - reference not only for the Environment Ministry but to all other ministries alike. We expect, for instance, the area of Science and Technology when prioritizing research to give priority to those areas of biodiversity which we have identified as more important. Another case in point: if we are to discuss transportation and development axes, let us see how best to reconcile better access and transportation in Brazil with the conservation of biodiversity. Since there are no funds or resources to do everything, it is important to identify what the Brazilian priorities are. In parallel, we want to put together action plans for each bioma.
Parabólicas - What will these action plans be like?
These workshops consolidate an enormous amount of information and a series of consensus to point to directions. However, they do not detail how this will be done. The strategies must be defined into an action plan: who will do what and how, how much will it cost and who will finance it on what scale. We will initially put together work groups to work on the workshop results. These groups will translate the materials into a proposal for action, incorporating inputs from other industries.
In parallel, we have to secure funds, for there is no money to do all we intend to. We will encourage the elaboration of specific proposals, in order to negotiate external and internal funds. With a tiny budget for the environmental area, we have to leverage extra funds. It is wishful thinking to imagine that the Federal government will loose its purse strings. It may match other funds which we might be able to secure. Our priorities are international funds and resources. After all, in the Biological Diversity Convention the rich countries have pledged to help pay the additional cost of biodiversity conservation. Another major source is the Brazilian private sector. Inasmuch as "the polluter must pay", we have to make it foot part of this bill. Those who benefit from the use of biodiversity must help pay the bill for preserving or reclaiming this biodiversity.
The problem is that we have to be creative enough to think about tools to make this happen - e.g., an ecological sales tax, green protocol, levying taxes on the use of water resources, recovering areas which have been degraded by mining, reforesting, ecotourism. We have to mobilize ourselves, so that we will not depend solely on Federal funds to do what has to be done.
Parabólicas - What are the strategies to negotiate these priorities with programs from the Ministry and from other agencies?
The battle within the Ministry has not been won. We must improve on this process. We may potentially leverage a more positive impact on biodiversity if we articulate better the various actions of the Ministry. All the projects involve biodiversity but are not restricted to it. We have to articulate better with the Ministry's several programs in order to maximize a positive impact upon biodiversity, whether it be by promoting conservation, sustainable use or recovery. This challenge is easier, because the will to do it is there, but it cannot be taken for granted. Outside the Ministry the challenges are tougher because objectives do not always converge. There have to be negotiations and I can see two possibilities. One is to identify partnership opportunities, situations wherein interests converge - and explore them, joining efforts with several sectors.
The other possibility, and a more complicated one, involves the conflicts. Proposals put forth by other areas will potentially impact the biodiversity. E.g.: infrastructure expansion, road paving in the Amazon, constructing hydroelectric power complexes, waterways. We must be competent enough to partner with society and stand up for these interests. We have to pinpoint the specific situation which concerns us, what exactly the problems are, and to negotiate, to see what are the possibilities for mitigation or compensation, what the alternatives are - in such a way as to meet these concerns.
This is an open agenda and negotiations involve not just the government but also the private sector and international organizations.
Parabólicas - In the Seminar for Consultation on the Amazon it stood to reason how important the Indigenous Areas are for preserving biodiversity. Does this change in any way the environmental perception of the Indigenous Lands?
I think so. That indeed would be wonderful, and the Macapá Seminar could well get the ball rolling. The Indigenous Lands occupy a large area, especially in the Amazon. The Seminar showed that many of these areas have a major biologic importance. Biodiversity preservation is compatible with the interests of the Indigenous communities, which feature low density and a generally more sustainable management. That is not to say that they cause no impact, just that the impact is on a lesser scale. We have to make alliances, to work together, to do away with the unfortunate situation we find ourselves in today, the constant social vs. environmental bickering, when the two sides should be together on this issue. Obviously, we must understand the fear the environmental technicians have of being wholly left out, given the dimension of the social questions. But we must look at the other side of this matter: the possibility of an alliance, of gains, of synergy. For instance, Australia's largest park has two million hectares within an indigenous area. They built a hotel for ecotourism whose total net income goes to the community. This is a very interesting model and it could be used here in Brazil. Let's stop all this dispute, all this infighting. Obviously there are conflicting situations.
Parabólicas - Is it possible that the recommendations to revise the proposal for Ecological Corridors be taken into account?
More than a possibility there is a commitment. The Amazonian Secretariat, which coordinates PPG7, has already pledged to take into account the results of the Seminar and, if necessary, to carry out any adjustments. Attention would be drawn to convergence rather than to differences. As regards the ecological corridors, what is surprising is all the overlapping, not the differences. It is unbelievable how a process not bent on identifying corridors ended up identifying clear corridors in the Amazon and how some of these corridors match what had been proposed by the Corridor project. Others feature a partial mismatch. For instance, where would the South Corridor be, part of the Tapajós / Xingu rivers' interflow? Over half of this corridor matches what had been proposed.
Parabólicas - If, based on these studies, you had to list three priorities of action, what would they be?
First, the results of this Seminar will direct efforts to the project known as "Amazônia 10%", recipient of GEF funds, in order to widen the conservation units in the Amazon and consolidate the existing ones. I think that the results of the Macapá Seminar will greatly help to identify areas and types of actions, including opportunities of economic sustainability. It was previously negotiated with the World Bank and the Amazon Secretariat that these results would serve as the basis for just such purpose.
Advances can be made on this issue of protecting biodiversity in indigenous lands. We have to start by providing greater depth to the proposals. As they stand today, they are nothing but provocation. We have to further detail the practical operational issues and look into the existing legislation and see if we need new laws or not. We have to acquire further experience through some pilot projects, to gain the trust of the indigenous and the environmental communities, to bring the two closer to each other. One way to do all this is through demonstrative projects.
At the outset, we will promptly communicate to the other areas of the government the results of the Seminar, calling attention to the fact that, in carrying out these programs of infrastructure development and expansion, we need to guarantee biodiversity conservation and to minimize impacts. We also need to come up with a proposal to identify areas of conflict and the possible alternatives.
Parabólicas - In a general appraisal of the processes already concluded, do you think that the Ministry's expectations were met? Would you change anything?
Each meeting is a process and we always think of what could have been improved. For instance, in the Amazonian Meeting we scored a major gain in linking the environmental to the social. This did not happen in the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest Meetings. It is indeed a reflection of how mobilized society as a whole is. In the Amazon, social issues are more developed than in the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest regions.
There are other hurdles. For instance, the basic criterion defined to consolidate the biologic information was information of species, negotiated many years ago with the World Bank. Today we would have done it a little differently, because we now know that species data are not uniformly available. There is more information on some biological groups, such as birds, yet more information in some places and less in others. Obviously this kind of information is fundamental for in it are the inventories for richness of species, threatened species, endemism and so forth. But it is difficult to accord an across-the-board uniform treatment for a whole region. If I had to do it over again, I would include in the term of reference a representativeness analysis, such as the WWF work but with some changes, since the WWF did not take into account the water systems, for example. This is interesting because we work with cartographic data - vegetation map, soil typology, climate - and all this is available and can be used as a model. If there are different soils and vegetation, possibly there is different biodiversity and it is possible to propose some conservation actions, even without any survey of biodiversity in those areas. We have to regard all this as a process. The results we got are not the final word and there is nothing to stop us from enriching ourselves.
adriana@socioambiental.org
>>> Next
