ARTICLE 1: Understanding Brazil's biodiversity battle: A social and environmental struggle

By Joanne Tucker and Kendra Ablaza

Recent efforts to improve Brazil’s Amazon forest have not gone unnoticed as the environmental minister Carlos Minc and president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed two different government acts to help thwart environmental crimes last Friday.

At the World Environment Day in Caravelas, Brazil, the Community and Family-based Forest Management Programme and a National Policy for Payment for Environmental Services were signed by the president and minister in order to draft a bill to be sent to the Brazilian National Congress.

According to the Ministry of Environment Web site, “payment for environmental services is a viable solution for recuperating degraded areas, since it allows populations involved in environmental crimes to find different ways of guaranteeing their livelihood without harming the environment.”

Social issues are only one factor of Brazil’s biodiversity battle. While most research in Brazil on specific species of plants and animals and their role in Amazon ecosystems have taken place within the last two decades, such as research on the jaguar, there are few actual regulations set in place to protect the intricacy of the jungle and its inhabitants, according to Antonio Messias Costa, the Museu Paraense Emilio Goelde veterinarian and zoobotanist in Belém, Brazil.

In 1992, the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) took place in Rio de Janeiro and was opened for signature. A main focus of the CBD is to ensure that thorough research is being done in different regions on what are considered domestic or invasive plant and animal species.

This in depth research must be done in order for nations like Brazil to enforce more strict regulations on the use of plants and animals. Recording and gathering this information is important for both regulating biological invaders and to figure out how to cease the reduction of biological diversity.

All countries except for the United States, Iraq and Somalia have signed since, according to the CBD Web site.

The CBD Web site describes biological invaders as those that “cause economic or environmental harm or adversely affect human health. In particular, they impact adversely upon biodiversity, including decline or elimination of native species — through competition, predation, or transmission of pathogens — and the disruption of local ecosystems and ecosystem functions.”

Brazil has five known biological invaders according to Messias Costa and Francesca Gherardi, a professor of zoology and conservation biology at the University of Florence in Italy. These species include the tilapia, an African fish, a Malaysian shrimp, a soft-shelled turtle, red piranhas and a species of slug.

By 1998, Brazil’s Ministry of Environment created the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action plan, which started and expounded upon several policies already set in place, one of which focuses on “the strengthening of regional cooperation concerning biodiversity issues,” according to the ministry’s Web site.

Projects are also aimed at protecting species within the Brazilian Atlantic forest, which now is less than 8 percent of its original area, according the CBD Web site.

Research can be difficult on the effect of the reduction of native plant and animal species on the rest of the environment, such as sparse top predators like the jaguar in the Amazon. “Because of [the presence of] white man and Indians; it can’t necessarily be affirmed,” Messias Costa said.

The jaguar, an endangered species in the Amazon, plays an intricate role within food webs in this environment. However, Messias Costa said that the presence of humans in this area especially the indigenous peoples located there make it difficult to measure what this is doing to the rest of the ecosystem. Humans consume many of the same species normally eaten by jaguars, such as the white pig.

When trying to examine this effect in the wild, it would seem that the depleting jaguar population would have a negative effect on lower parts of food chains, Messias Costa said, but that the efforts made in recent research has not yet been conclusive.

At the 1992 CBD a 2010 target was made by those countries that signed. According to the CBD Web site, “The Project for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Brazilian Biodiversity supports the elaboration of a national report on invasive alien species, which will compile important information on the country’s needs and priorities.”

The main goal of this 2010 target is to map out different species in order to figure out not only issues with biological invaders but to ensure solutions for groups who rely on certain plants and animals for survival. Social effects are more easily measured that those in the wild.

Messias Costa said that to solve the environmental issues, the Brazilian government must solve socioeconomic issues, as well. This played a large factor in the World Environment Day and the policies signed by the minister and president.

Messias Costa is soon going on a 10-day excursion to a remote Amazon tribe to help teach them how to subsist on different resources other than what their heritage usually survives on. He said he will be there with biologists and anthropologists in order to understand not only the requirements of the environment but also the tribe’s culture.

According to the Ministry of Environment Web site, the CBD is “ ‘Conscious of the intrinsic value of biodiversity and ecological values, socially, economically, scientifically, educationally, culturally, recreationally and aesthetically when it comes to biological diversity and its components.’ ”

Taking a holistic approach to environmental reform must be taken in countries like Brazil because many facets of Brazilian culture depend on its resources as it is an export-driven country, unlike the United States and other more developed regions.

Come 2010 when those countries participating will reconvene for the CBD, the Brazilian government must report and make conclusions not only by taking into consideration its environmental impact, but the economic and social impacts future policy-making will incur.

Note: the Web site’s cited have been translated from Portuguese to English via Google Translator.