Two leading environmental groups and the World Bank have thrown their weight behind the largest-ever tropical forest conservation plan.
The Brazilian initiative will give complete protection to 12 per cent of the Amazon, the World Wide Fund for Nature said.
The World Wide Fund, the World Bank and the Global Environmental Facility
- a fund aimed at helping poor countries clean up their environment - will contribute much of the $856 million needed to gradually set aside land reaching an area the size of Spain in 10 years.
The backing by the three international organisations for the Brazilian Government's plan was decided at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg.
"The Amazon region is a biodiversity treasure," said Mohamed T. El-Ashry, chairman of the Global Environmental Facility, made up of 32 donor countries.
"This programme is important for the people of Brazil, as well as for the region and the world."
The Amazon, which extends to neighbouring countries like Venezuela, Peru, Colombia and Bolivia, is the world's largest tropical forest, covering an area larger than Western Europe and is home to up to 30 per cent of the planet's plant and animal species.
About 15 per cent of the Brazilian Amazon has been destroyed since the mid-70s and despite commitments made at the first Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992, its destruction continues unabated, with an area about half the size of Belgium burned or cut down each year.
The Brazilian Government's plan aims to set aside 500,000sq km out of the Amazon's total area of 4.1 million sq km under complete federal protection.
The areas will be made into national parks or biological reserves so they cannot be touched.
Increasingly large parts of the Amazon have been put under complete protection over recent years. Among them has been the demarcation of Indian lands equivalent to the size of Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland combined.
The rest of the Amazon, such as private farmland, is protected by a law obliging 80 per cent of a property to be set aside for protection, and loggers are allowed to cut down trees only if they have a sustainable logging plan. But because of the vastness of the Amazon, it is extremely difficult to monitor and police.
One of environmentalists' biggest fears is that a plan to build new roads across the Amazon will open vast new areas to illegal loggers and farms.
- REUTERS
nzherald.co.nz/environment
