MANIFESTO AGAINST THE GREEN DESERT AND IN FAVOUR OF LIFE

The Alert Against the Green Desert Network, an articulation that joins more than 100 entities of the social movements, local leaders and representatives of traditional and indigenous populations of the States of Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, hereby makes public:

a) The socio-environmental disaster caused in the last 35 years by the eucalyptus and pine monocultures, associated to the iron and steel and cellulose sectors, that affect several ecosystems and people of our territory, thus impoverishing our biological, social and cultural diversity, and causing expropriation, unemployment, exodus and hunger;
b) The need for another model of generation and division of wealth and of occupation of our territory, that respects and places rural, traditional and indigenous populations and the interests of the Brazilian society and not of the global capital as protagonists.

Since the year 1500, Brazil has placed its natural resources and the labour of its population at the disposal of the exportation of wealth to the countries so-called “developed”. With the modernization of the rural areas, since the 1960s and 1970s, the encouragement and the implantation of the monocultures have been dramatically increased. Among them, tree monocultures, specially of eucalyptus and pine (that are not forests), have probably been those with major socio-environmental impacts in the regions Vale do Jequitinhona, Vale do Aço, North and Centre of Minas, South of Bahia and North of Espírito Santo, with the predatory establishment of complexes of the iron and steel and cellulose sectors. This impact created a common identity among indigenous, quilombolas (slave descendants) and rural populations directly impacted –those achieved by the monoculture of eucalyptus- people who have always lost in the 500 years of Brazil, for the benefit of capitalist groups that enlarge their profits at the expense of the sacrifice and expropriation of the traditional populations and Brazilian workers and of degradation of our ecosystems, formerly rich in biodiversity and water, currently arid and impoverished, that are becoming green deserts.

In the last period of neoliberal government of FHC (Fernando Henrique Cardoso), this disaster was legitimated and intensified, following the interests of the capital invested in such powerful complexes, in spite of some advancements in the legislation in terms of rights of the traditional populations and of the importance of rural agriculture that have counteracted a little this devastating process.

However, we are horrified by the position of the current government of Lula, that carried the hopes of these oppressed and ignored people in these 500 years, of being rescued and of starting to build a model of democratic development that enabled a reorientation of the tenure and use of our territory, to achieve inclusion, justice and sustainability.

This government (as well as some State governments) has been submitting itself to oligarchic interests of such complexes, allocating vast resources through the BNDES (Development Bank) and the Ministry of the Environment (PNF – Plano Nacional de Florestas –National Forest Program-), being obliging with the fallacy of the Clean Development Mechanisms, promoted by the World Bank (PCF – Prototype Carbon Fund), that legitimates the pollution of developed countries through the creation of carbon credits, that transforms photosynthesis (a gift from the nature) in private assets subject to global trade. An environmental pretext is also used to disseminate tree monocultures, that generate the above-mentioned socio-environmental disaster.

For traditional populations and entities that are part of the Green Desert Network, to negotiate limits and conditions to the excesses of the tree monoculture sector is not enough. Environmental licenses and green seals have only deepened socio-environmental inequalities. The whole model is compromised with the excluding logics of the large estates for export, appropriating public entities and legitimating itself through non-participative and non-independent certification. We submit another agricultural and agrarian model in spite of the current monoculture order, where priorities are reoriented to the Land Reform, Agroecology, Food Security and the defence of Forests, Cerrado (Scrub Lands) and Traditional Populations. Only a new model of development may guarantee a decrease in the socio-environmental inequalities in the rural areas and its collateral effects in urban centres.

In this sense, the Network states: MONOCULTURES ARE NOT FORESTS!!

Affected populations claim from this government the creation of public policies that recover such disastrous socio-environmental liabilities and promote actions to strengthen our biological, cultural and agroecological diversities.

Belo Horizonte, May 07, 2004
ALERT AGAINST THE GREEN DESERT NETWORK
(REDE ALERTA CONTRA O DESERTO VERDE)