The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil inherited, in its National Forest Program, a formidable proposal to increase the area designated to national forests (Flonas) in the Amazon from eight to 50 million hectares by the year 2010. This objective is an ambitious and worthy conservation goal, and one that appears to be holding approval, give or take a few million hectares, within the new government. Attached to this plan, however, is a lingering desire to allow private timber harvesting on Flonas through a system of forest concessions.
Institutional subversion and deforestation: learning lessons from the system for the environmental licencing of rural properties in Mato Grosso
Institutional subversion and deforestation: learning lessons from the system for the environmental licencing of rural properties in Mato Grosso
Following the influential Brundtland Report, environmental preservation, social welfare and economic growth ceased to be seen as opposite objectives, but rather, were considered as pillars of what came to be known as ‘sustainable development’ (WCED, 1987). In order...