One of Gabon's Natural Preserves Under Threat (with Bonus Racist Colonialist Terminology from the New York Times)

There's a lot that's disturbing about this article: the threat to Gabon's (allegedly) nationally-protected forests and the damming of one of its more impressive waterfalls; the ways in which reliance upon oil for the nation's income are threatening the environment as president Omar Bongo promotes iron ore mining; the fact that Bongo has been president since 1967 (forty years!); the expectation that ecotourism will be your economic salvation without any of the extremely complex and involved infrastructural development and planning the ecotourism industry requires; the extremely understaffed park rangers, who in no way could protect much of the park when they are only 15 people. All of these are very serious issues, and I have very little hope for Gabon on this issue, especially given the economic straits it is facing and the general disregard the Chinese seem to be showing for the environment in this case (which, unfortunately, has been all too common a theme among development projects).

I also realize it's probably one of the least important aspects of the article, but the New York Times' editors most certainly should have done a better job editing Polgreen's report. Gabon is coming off bad enough as it is; there's no need to use words like "wily" to describe president Bongo, and passages like "In neighboring countries, impoverished hordes have razed and burned their forests to plant crops and make charcoal. They have slaughtered the gorillas, elephants, chimpanzees and hippos in jungles for meat. But the Gabonese flocked to cities, living in comparative splendor," while perhaps factually correct, also rely on some of the poorest choices of words to describe residents of Africa (or anywhere else) in sweeping generalities. Unfortunately, talking to people who are quite familiar with the Times' reports on Africa, this is about par for the course.

Challenges Facing Indigenous Peoples in Brazil

There were a couple of articles of note in the New York Times recently on indigenous issues in Brazil. The first deals with the growing struggles an indigneous group is having with drugs in the western-most part of the country in the Amazonian basin, where Brazil shares a border with Colombia and Peru. With the drug trade in the region growing, and with a non-indigenous town where drugs and alcohol are legal (they are illegal on the reserve) only a few miles away, growing numbers of Tikunas are getting involved in both the supply and demand sides of the drug trade: some are helping to smuggle the drugs across the border from Colombia and Peru into Brazil, while a growing number of Tikuna youths are becoming addicted to cocaine.

At a loss of what to do as traditional tribal authority has eroded, the Tikunas are turning to the government for assistance:

“We want government officials to help us save our children, so they don’t take part in these ruinous practices,” said Oswaldo Honorato Mendes, a deep-voiced Mariaçu chief. “Every day the situation gets worse. The younger generation does not obey. They do not show respect for our authority as chiefs. They need to learn respect.”

This is a rather new and interesting (albeit sad) portal into indigenous-state relations in Brazil. In Brazil, indigenous groups are not subject to most Brazilian laws, and the police are not allowed to enter reserves. The fact that the Tikunas (and maybe other groups in the region, now or in the future) are at such a loss as to be willing to cede at least some of that independence to the police in order to get a grip on the drug problem shows how bad things have gotten.

However, I'm not really sure what the police could do from either a theoretical or practical standpoint. The police themselves, after listening to the Tikuna's case, are unwilling to do much, simply because they feel the law doesn't really let them, even if the Tikunas themselves are soliciting help. They may be right, and it's definitely a murky legal issue. What is more, though, I'm not sure what the police could do. It's not like they don't have jurisdiction over Tabatinga, the neighboring non-reserve city, and the drug trade is absolutely flourishing there. Although I don't mean to question the decency of the police, I find it hard to believe that at least a few corrupt cops in what is far from a "metropolitan" part of Brazil are not at least implicitly involved with the burgeoning trade, even if it's just payoffs to look the other way (though I do not doubt, either, that many police in the area do want to do all they can to combat the problems in Tabatinga). Finally, given the police's record in places like Rio when it comes to the drug trade, I'm not even sure a stronger police presence is really the answer (though, to be fair, dealing with a very poor Amazonian border city is far different from dealing with the favelas in Rio).

And then there's the way in which Brazil deals with drug abusers. Unlike in the U.S., where drug abuse is a crime, in Brazil, it's treated as a social problem, as the article also points out:

Brazil treats drug users as victims who require treatment, not as criminals. They are usually sentenced to receiving drug-addiction treatment and performing community service in lieu of serving prison time.

I realize that's an extremely novel approach to drug abuse, but it also means that the police realyl aren't supposed to be involved with problems of drug abuse (and that's an important distinction between the indigenous reserve and the favelas - in the latter, they aren't combatting drug abuse, but drug trafficking).

And, if that weren't enough, there's the simple difficulty in patrolling the border. Brazil has historically had a very weak presence in the Amazon and its borders with Colombia and Peru (the dictatorship actually used the simple creation of a highway through the Amazon as a marker of Brazil's "progress"; it was never completed, fortunately). Brazil is enormous (larger than the United States if you take out Alaska), and it simply doesn't have the infrastructure, with police or other governmental agencies, to put the kind of strong state presence in the region that might deter the growing drug trade.

Finally, there's the fact that this isn't just Brazil's problem. Being so close to the borders of Peru and Colombia, those countries have to patrol their borders, too. Despite all of his talk, Uribe hasn't really done nearly as much as he claims in the anti-drug battle; it has simply shifted some, and is increasingly turning towards Brazil, Argentina, and even Europe. This just reinforces how un-winnable the "War on Drugs" is, and I may sound like a broken record player, but until countries like the United States deals with this issue on the demand side rather than the supply side (something Brazil has already done a much better job of addressing simply by recognizing drug addiction is a social, not a criminal, problem), then these issues will never go away.

In much more positive news, Brazilian courts have cleared the way for the federal government to establish an indigenous reserve "larger than Connecticut" in the Amazon basin. This is absolutely huge (and not just in terms of land-size). The court found that Lula's establishment of the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve, near the Venezuelan border, is legal, culminating a long-fought process:

The reserve would be one of the largest protected indigenous areas in the world. It has set off a sharp controversy over property rights, the limits of government authority and the rights of Indians to their original lands.
The reserve was decreed by Mr. da Silva’s government in 2005 after a legal battle of more more than 20 years. At more than four million acres, it encompasses about 42 percent of Roraima State and is 11 times bigger than the city of São Paulo.

If this does go through (and, at least from a legal standpoint, I don't think there are too many roads left available to challenge Lula's decision - but more on that in a second), it will be enormously important both for indigenous policy and environmental policy in Brazil.

The legal declaration is all well and good; however, I can't help but believe that actually enforcing this decree is going to take more effort from the government. According to the report, the area is inhabited by rice farmers, cattle ranchers, and even the remnants of an old gold mining industry. None of those groups is terribly interested in leaving, and each has a powerful voice in national and local politics. Lula's administration absolutely cannot just rest on the legal declaration of the court. I have little doubt that it will take a significant governmental presence, particularly military forces and national bureaucrats (local politicians simply cannot be trusted in cases like these, as they have absolutely no interest in protecting indigenous rights over the wealthy landowners - the latter, not the former, helped those local politicians arrive in office in the first place), as well as NGOs for indigenous rights and environmental protection. Fortunately, the government has shown a willingness to have this involvement, having already begun dispatching federal police to the area to evict farmers. The farmers are resisting, but it's still good that the government has begun establishing a strong state presence to enforce the decree and court decision, and one can only hope this will go through and set a new precedent for indigenous rights throughout Brazil.

Lula's New Plan to Stop Deforestation and Climate Change - Reason for Hope?

It's no secret that I think that Lula has been genuinely concerned about deforestation in the Amazon, but that his continuous approach of taking one step forward (such as reducing deforestation from 10,500 square miles in 2004 to 4,261 this year) and another step backwards (and his environmental record more generally) is one of the biggest disappointments of his administration.

That said, Lula's announcement last week to reduce deforestation by 70% and cut back on Brazil's own greenhouse gas emissions (many of which come from deforestation) is nothing short of outstanding. And as Randy comments, the fact this plan is gaining support both from environmental NGOs and from farmers is hugely important.

It's still too early for unguarded optimism - Lula's administration has had great plans before, and they haven't necessarily panned out, both because he has occasionally launched contradicting policies when it comes to the question of environment vs. development, and because it is difficult for any country to patrol that much forest, much less a country that historically has not had a very strong presence in that area. That said, the plan is more encouraging than anything else Lula has launched for a couple of reasons. First, it's focused not just on the present, but on the long-term; this isn't a simple measure to reduce deforestation for next year, but for the next 10 years, and the accompanying efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and efforts to get farmers involved with re-foresting some of their lands shows that Lula is finally thinking in the long term here.

Secondly, it the government's openness to listen to NGOs demands is important. Culturally, Brazil is very proectionist towards the Amazon, and does not like foreign groups or governments telling it what to do. These attitudes are understandable - in a broad history of exploitation of its resources by Europe and the U.S., Brazilians are more than a little cautious that foriegn efforts to tell Brazil how to deal with the forest are little more than imperialist ploys to get at the resources in the Amazon themselves (and to be clear, I don't think that's what many groups are trying to do, but to presume all NGOs or governments have nothing but the best intentions in terms of the forest is naive, too - if nothing else, there are doubtless some major pharmaceutical companies that would love to get in there without restrictions and start trying to exploit natural remedies with little to no reward for Brazil). It's a very complicated dynamic, and Americans are often confused when Brazilians get a little "snappy" towards advice on how to save the rainforest (particularly given the U.S.'s awesome environmental record). Still, the fact that both NGOs are being a little less paternalistic in this case, and the Brazilian government a bit more open, is highly encouraging.

Again, it's still too soon to be fully optimistic. There's no telling if the government will be able to actually enforce its plans here, or if farmers will really adhere to the program. Still, given how comperehensive this plan is, it is definitely a major step (vs. previous minor steps) in the right direction.

Poverty and Conservation

This is an interesting and useful story about Chinese biologist Pan Wenshi's mission to protect the white-headed langur and its forest habitat.

What is so useful about it is that it again shows that the way to protecting wildlife and ecosystems is alleviating the poverty of local residents. People use the forests to survive. They ate the white-headed langur for food. They cut down the forests for firewood. But Pan went in and built biogas digesters, which use the methane produced by domestic animal waste for fuel. By giving them these cheap devices, the people had much less reason to cut down trees. Now they could focus on other activities, making their lives easier and protecting the forest at the same time.

Alleviating poverty is not the only needed course of action. A huge problem in China is that newly rich and powerful people want to use wild animals for food and medicine as conspicious consumption. That had become a huge problem for the white-headed langur. But with the help of locals, newly interested in conservation because not destroying the forest was making their lives better, that has been curtailed for the present.

This story has larger significance for environmental efforts worldwide. Environmental organizations must make it worth people's while to protect nature. We can go in as westerners and try to save land and wildlife but without strong governments dedicated to that protection, local residents are likely to ignore those laws and go on trying to feed their families. Environmental protection must go hand in hand with economic justice.